Suzy Davidkhanian, Max Willens, and Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf

The Weekly Listen: Will
people start to
SearchGPT, a dynamic
pricing minefield, and
more
Audio

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Page 1

On today's podcast episode, we discuss the likelihood of people using OpenAI's new
SearchGPT, how much of a minefield dynamic pricing is, if its better for shoppers to havefewer choices, Harley Davidson waiting for customers to age in to the brand, how Olympic
athletes are changing, and more. Tune in to the discussion with host Marcus Johnson, vicepresident of content Suzy Davidkhanian, and analysts Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, and Max Willens.

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.

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Page 2

Episode Transcript:
Marcus Johnson (00:00):
eMarketer is your trusted partner for actionable data and insights on marketing, advertising,commerce, and more, if that's possible. But did you know eMarketer also has a divisionfocused on B2B media solutions? Partner with eMarketer today and connect your brandCopyright © 2024, EMARKETER Inc. All rights reserved.

Page 3

messaging with our powerful audiences. If you would like to learn too much more, you canhead to emarketer.com/advertise.
(00:24):
Hello everyone and thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind the Numbers Weekly Listen,an eMarketer podcast. This is the Friday show that tricks Suzy into being on today's show by
pretending we are going to play a game.
Suzy Davidkhanian (00:40):
That's 100% factual
Marcus Johnson (00:42):
And it worked. We're not playing games.
Suzy Davidkhanian (00:42):
It always works.
Marcus Johnson (00:46):
Yeah, I can just shout out point totals throughout.
Suzy Davidkhanian (00:46):
It's fine.
Marcus Johnson (00:49):
Okay.
Suzy Davidkhanian (00:50):
I mean, even the games aren't real, so it's fine.
Marcus Johnson (00:52):
Yes, they are. Probably not. I'm your host, Marcus Johnson. In today's show, will people start
to SearchGPT? Will customers embrace dynamic pricing? Are fewer choices good for
shoppers? Is it a sound strategy to let customers age into your brand? And how are Olympic
athletes changing?

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(01:18):
Join me for this episode. We have three people. Let's meet them quickly. We start with our Vice
President of Content, who heads up our retail and e-Commerce desk. Based in New York City.
It's Suzy Davidkhanian.
Suzy Davidkhanian (01:18):
Hello.
Marcus Johnson (01:30):
Hello there. We're also joined by two folks who both cover digital advertising and media. One
is based in Virginia, called Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (01:38):
Howdy, Marcus. Howdy, everybody.
Marcus Johnson (01:40):
Hello there. And the other, is called Max Willens. He is based in Philadelphia.
Max Willens (01:45):
Yo.
Marcus Johnson (01:45):
Hey, chap. So what do we have in store for you? We start with the story of the week. We havea debate in the middle. We end with some trivia. Let's get to it. We start, of course, with thestory of the week.
(02:01):
Will people start to SearchGPT? With Google in its sights ChatGPT maker OpenAI unveils
SearchGPT, a search feature designed to give timely answers to questions drawing from web
sources, writes Kyle Wiggers of TechCrunch. He explains that it looks and feels like ChatGPT.
You type in a query and SearchGPT serves up information and photos from the web with links
to sources. You can ask follow-up questions or explore additional related searches in a
sidebar. SearchGPT collects and shares general location data with third party search
providers to improve the accuracy of its results. It says it launched last Thursday, July 25th as

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a prototype for a small group of users and publishers. We'll start with Evelyn, who covers
search the most for us. Evelyn, will people start to SearchGPT? I mean
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (03:00):
Eventually, sure, some people will. Broadly speaking, my stance, I've said it before, I will say it
again, is that Google has sort of a leg up here because it is the default search engine acrossmost smartphones, devices, major browsers in the US and globally. And because of that, it is
the path of least resistance to search. It is the easiest way for consumers to get what theywant on the web. And Google is also, I think, dabbling is putting it lightly, maybe goingheadfirst into the AI evolution here. So I think there will be, I mean it has a competitive
product sort of in AI overviews. So the use case that SearchGPT might serve that is different
from the typical Google query is Google will be able to serve that use case as well. So I think
SearchGPT will certainly see some traction, especially among those ChatGPT enthusiasts out
there, but I don't think it's going to be any huge market disrupter that's going to totally upend
search dynamics as we know them today.
Suzy Davidkhanian (04:11):
Do we know if it's a separate plugin or tool that you have to go to? Or is it part of ChatGPT?
Do you need to open something different? Is it another step? Or you're already in ChatGPT
and you're like, "Oh wait, I don't remember this," and then you're searching in it and then you
go back to whatever you were going to use ChatGPT for?
Marcus Johnson (04:28):
I believe it's currently separate, which is what's so interesting about this.
Suzy Davidkhanian (04:33):
Oh, which is even worse.
Marcus Johnson (04:34):
Well, it seems though, for now, because it seems like they're implementing a bit of a Trojan
horse strategy here, because OpenAI says that they plan to integrate their new search engine
technology with its existing online chatbot, ChatGPT. So they will be smashed together atsome point. We estimate, I was looking, 68 million Americans will use ChatGPT this year. 77

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million will use them next year. So the question becomes what happens when those folks get
instant access to search?
Max Willens (05:07):
I think that the answer could very well be not that much. One thing that I think is really worth
keeping at the front of our brains is we have those numbers which you just cited, Marcus, but
those don't get into frequency of the use.
Marcus Johnson (05:20):
Good point. That's once a month use, yep.
Max Willens (05:22):
That's exactly right. And if you look at research that has been done into frequency, what youfind is that the number of people that are kind of reliably turning to ChatGPT is quite small.
The Reuters Institute, which puts out really phenomenal research every summer about
essentially digital's behavior around news, found that in the United States it's less than a fifthof its users use it even weekly. And that's actually quite high relative to other developed
Western economies. So in places like Denmark for example, it's closer to one-tenth. And to
Evelyn's point, Google is still effective and still free and still almost completely penetrated.
(06:04):
But I do think that if there's a chance for this to sort of jump itself into kind of mass digitalconsciousness, it could come from the integrations that ChatGPT has made into lots of othersystems. So I think about something like Apple Intelligence for example in Siri.
Marcus Johnson (06:23):
Yeah.
Max Willens (06:23):
So it's possible that once this really gets rolling, if they can kind of use the right sort ofmarketing and advertising push to get people to get used to asking Siri the questions thatthey might've opened a browser for on their iPhones, that potentially changes everything. But
I guess you would say that the bloom is off the rose for consumers for ChatGPT and that's
going to make it difficult for this to take off quickly.

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Marcus Johnson (06:49):
And Max is mentioning Siri because the Apple intelligence, the Siri there, if it doesn't knowwhat you want, will go on and ask ChatGPT and that's a deal they've made with Open AI.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (07:01):
It will eventually It's not yet.
Max Willens (07:09):
That's right.
Marcus Johnson (07:09):
Yes, yeah.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (07:09):
And Apple Intelligence got delayed.
Suzy Davidkhanian (07:09):
But I will also add, in addition to all that stuff, it sounded like to use the search, you're going tohave to give it more information about yourself and I think people are just weary about data,
giving as much data. So it's just another friction point. Why would you go to anothercompletely different tool to try and get the answers that Google Overview is doing a great
job at? And offers the same things? Like it's saying, "We'll give you the links. We'll do this. We'll
do that." But Google's already doing that, so why?
Marcus Johnson (07:37):
So to that point, and also to push back a bit against the argument that it won't work, tosuggest that there maybe this could work. There's a good line by Kylie Robinson of the Verge
that said, "It's the start of what could become a meaningful threat to Google." And so maybe
this isn't going to happen overnight, but is it fair to posit that this might be a death by 1000
cuts? This might be a slow and steady momentum gain from a rival? Especially because on theplus side for OpenAI, Google has a huge antitrust case going on at the moment, which could
provide a window of opportunity for an alternative search platform.
(08:22):

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On the other side of things, Mr. Wiggins of TechCrunch was noting the launch of SearchGPT
comes at an inopportune moment as AI powered search tools are under justifiable fire forplagiarism, inaccuracies, and content cannibalism. So you could argue it's good because it's
coming when Google is at its weakest, which is not probably not a fair term given how well it'sdone most media performance. You could also argue that maybe this is a bad time for them toenter a market that's under a lot of fire for a lot of different reasons.
Max Willens (08:54):
Well I think also there's the issue of, you mentioned the scrutiny that OpenAI is under and allthese other guys are for sort of scraping data, but when I was thinking about this question, thething that I kept coming back to is what I use search engines for and a lot of it relies on aknowledge graph which I believe ChatGPT doesn't have. So I'm often kind of doing lazy
Googling of things that I, as a person who once didn't use the internet because I'm that old,used to just keep in my head. So the names of coffee shops that are near me and small
business data and things like that, which based on what I've read about SearchGPT, that is notpart of it and I think that that's another thing that's going to tamp down on it. If really all that
this means is that now you can ask SearchGPT to tell you the latest in the conflict between
Israel and Gaza? That's more valuable than ChatGPT is today but it doesn't mean that
instantaneously SearchGPT is at parity in terms of functionality with a Google or a Bing or any
other legacy search engine.
Suzy Davidkhanian (10:10):
Well, and don't forget to your point that Google has so many other components to it. So it's
the Maps, it's the Google Search, it's Google shopping. I mean it's so much. The more people
are accustomed to doing something with less and less friction and people are looking forways to save time, the easier it is for that to take hold. And so the only way I see the
SearchGPT working is if it's embedded in and helping you so you don't move from one
platform to the other. Like you couldn't remember the name of something and before you ask
ChatGPT to help you with something you ask search for what are the right words to use or if it
starts getting embedded in other people's services that you're using on a day-to-day basis.
Habits are important.
Marcus Johnson (10:51):

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Page 9Yeah, that's a really good point. And everything we were talking in yesterday's episode, which
was on Google and their performance, we touched on SearchGPT. You were saying that a lotof people use Google as a navigational tool and a stepping stone to other sites. And so unlessthere's a way where you can speak to SearchGPT and just say, "Open up YouTube, open up
Amazon, open up whatever," a lot of people will use Google to spell check something, to use it
as a calculator, or more often than those things to get to a site. So it depends what people aregoing to be using these search engines for. That's all we've got time for the story of the week.
Time now for the debate of the week. Today's segment, make the case.
(11:39):Where our panel, Suzy, Max, and Evelyn present the for and against arguments for each of thefollowing questions based on three news stories. Two contestants face off per question. Also
the following takes don't necessarily reflect the analyst's personal views. Their job is to justpresent the best case regardless offering objective analysis. Let's start with question one,
Suzy going up against Max. We're talking about dynamic pricing and it being a potential
minefield for retailers and consumers being divided on it. This was a piece written by our
Retail Briefings Analyst, Rachel Wolf. She was explaining that on the one hand 22% ofAmericans say they won't shop at a business that uses dynamic pricing, pricing that changes
because it's on a digital display and it can change throughout the day, throughout the week,
the month. This is according to NerdWallet and Harris Poll.
(12:27):On the other hand, a similar share of people. 25% would take advantage of dynamic pricing if
it meant lower prices. Rachel notes that Wendy's was recently met with a backlash after
revealing its plans to use digital menu boards to adjust pricing throughout the day, forcing thefast food chain to clarify that it will use the screens only to offer promotions during slower
day parts. Question is, will customers eventually embrace dynamic pricing? Suzy is arguing
customers will eventually embrace dynamic pricing. 60 seconds on the clock. Make the case.
Suzy Davidkhanian (12:56):
So dynamic pricing is not new for consumers. We know it's in Uber and rideshare, we know it's
part of planes, hotels, I mean there are a lot of industries that are doing it. More importantly,
it's already been happening in retail with Amazon. So Amazon changes the price of things all

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Page 10the time. It's just behind the scenes and nobody knows about it. In fact, McKinsey did a wholestudy in 2021 around dos and don'ts of dynamic pricing in retail. So none of this is new.
(13:24):
I think there's two things that are happening right now that we're talking about it. It's thedigital signage, which is getting confused with dynamic pricing. So that's a problem. And thenit's the surveillance pricing, which is also a problem. At its core, dynamic pricing is meant tohelp a retailer make things leave their inventory, sell things that are fashion items that you're
not going to buy pink three summers in a row so they're trying to get rid of inventory. It's notmeant to be price gouging. So I think as long as retailers are doing it in a transparent, easy tounderstand, it feels like it's more about macro activity and not consumer information, that
consumers will understand that this is what they have to do.
Marcus Johnson (14:04):
So dynamic pricing, pricing that changes throughout the day for everyone. Surveillance
pricing, which Suzy referred to, there's actually an FTC probe into this. So that's a gatheringof information about how companies are using AI and other tools to enable retailers to chargefolks different prices for the same product based on their finances and shopping habits.
Suzy Davidkhanian (14:24):
But even that, I mean now it's like next level surveillance, the way that they're talking about itwith AI. But I mean if you think about it, a coke in New York City, a can of Coke or eggs is adifferent price in New York City than it is in a different part of the US. And wine is more
expensive in the US because of taxes than it is in Europe. So we're already paying different
prices for the same things. It's just that right now it's at the forefront again
Marcus Johnson (14:50):
Just not on the individual level. I think that's part of the concern here. Max, you're arguing it
won't eventually, dynamic pricing, sorry, you're arguing customers won't eventually embrace
dynamic pricing.
Max Willens (15:02):
Yeah, I just think that price transparency and a modicum of stability is kind of one of thecornerstones of consumer relationships. Everyone has basically no choice but to accept that

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Page 11the price of an airline flight changes and I know of zero people in my life that are pleased
about that. They would much rather have the stability and kind of clarity about what the priceof a good or service is going to be. And once you inject uncertainty or a lack of transparency
into that relationship, it makes the relationship hostile.
(15:40):And I think also one thing that's worth thinking about here too is that if people, if consumers
start getting trained to believe that the price of something is liable to change based on certain
factors, they're are just going to wait to buy things until things are at a certain low price point.
I mean I think about brands like Banana Republic and Gap, which have put themselves under
tremendous strain by sort of over discounting and training their consumers to think, "I'm notgoing to buy this at full price. That's for suckers. I'm going to wait for them to do a salebecause hey do a sale every 15 minutes." And once you sort of start messing around with that,
that's a real Pandora's Box that I think that retailers should be very, very cautious about
opening.
Marcus Johnson (16:27):
The uncertainty portion of this is interesting and Rachel had some great lines in this piece. Oneof them was saying that this could basically distort consumer's reality is what she's getting at.
She says, "There are customer concerns that the prices," sorry, "the practice is merely an
attempt to pad companies bottom lines as well as the sense that tactics like digital pricelabels exacerbate price volatility and make it difficult for consumers to know what things
actually cost," digital price labels versus dynamic pricing as Suzy was saying. But she says,"However, there are some very powerful use cases." Rachel was suggesting companies needto make clear what the advantages are for consumers, such as the ability to lower prices forfood items as they approach their expiration date to help with things like food waste, which
seems like a really good one. This chart on the screen though, for folks watching on YouTube,shows that most folks today aren't convinced, according to CivicScience, 68% of consumers
view dynamic pricing as price gouging versus 12% who don't.
(17:25):
Okay, Max won that one, so congratulations to him. Cue confetti. And move on to question
two. Suzy versus Evelyn. Shoppers have fewer choices. Brands and retailers like it that way,
writes Jennifer Williams of The Journal. She notes that retailers, Hanesbrands, dollar General,

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Page 12Under Armour et cetera, started thinning their product lines to focus on items consumers
wanted most to help raise profits as supply chain bottlenecks made it difficult to stock many
items. Hasbro had cut around half of its individual product types heading into this year.
Hanesbrand's net unique products in Q1 were down 50% from five years ago, 2019. And as oflate April, Levi's had eliminated about 15% of its unique products. The question is are fewer
choices good for shoppers? Suzy's arguing that fewer choices are good for customers. Make
the case.
Suzy Davidkhanian (18:21):
So the article was all about the retailer perspective. Less things, mean less markdowns, meanbetter margins, means we can have smaller footprints or we can buy more things that are notrelated. There is a fine balance. This is where art and science comes into play around do you
really need to have 37 pairs of jeans? Probably not. But do you need to have multiple color
ways of a v-neck and a round neck? Yeah, probably. But at the end of the day it's the retailer's
fashion office or buyers who set the tone. So every retailer, if you're in fashion, will have all thebasics and the staples that they'll buy a lot of and then they're going to have pops of colorthat they will help consumers better understand what they should be wearing. If you think
about fashion runway shows that all sort of interties together. But the best point I can make,which was one of the first concepts I learned, I was going to say the name of the company, atmy previous job, was there is a study that isMarcus Johnson (19:20):
We know where it was.
Suzy Davidkhanian (19:21):
Oh, yeah, everybody knows where it was.
Marcus Johnson (19:21):
Bring it up at least twice an episode.
Suzy Davidkhanian (19:25):
There was a study in 2000, literally it was called the Jam Study. Do you guys know about thisone? It's worth looking up at the end. I am running out of time, so all I'm going to say about
that-

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Marcus Johnson (19:36):
Ran out of time, but keep going.
Suzy Davidkhanian (19:37):
That more choice equals paralyzing a consumer and they just walk out. So they studied, if you
had 24 SKUs of jams at this California grocery store versus only six, how much moreconverted? When there were only six you forced a customer to make a choice. Just think
about when you go to a restaurant and you have one page to choose from versus a wholebook. You're like, "Waiter, please help me." Consumers need help deciding and that's where thebuyers come in. The article takes it in a completely different way, and so similar to dynamic
pricing, if you do the right thing for the consumer, you're going to win as a retailer.
Marcus Johnson (20:10):
You went horribly over. Negative two. Candice Medeiros, an insight strategist at trend
forecasting firm WGSN had a great quote saying, "More and more retailers are realizing thattoday's consumer no longer wants an endless aisle. They want the right aisle." Evelyn, what say
you? Fewer choices aren't good for customers is what you're arguing. Make the case.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (20:29):
All right, I'm looking at the big picture here. For physical goods, a company paring down its
catalog of products is great. Will the world lose some of those niche products that wereabsolutely perfect for a specific scenario or life moment for a particular person? Yes, and thatwill sting. But it's better for the environment, better for retailers bottom lines. Zooming out
though, it is not good for consumers to have fewer choices when it comes to where to shop. It
is not good for consumers to have fewer choices when it comes to price to quality ratio. It's
not good for consumers for there to be one major internet provider in the city or a region.
We've all been there. It sucks. Why? Because market power is concentrated and thosecompanies can stop innovating without risking customers. They can also raise prices without
risking customers. Higher prices for an outdated product? No thank you. Mic drop.
Marcus Johnson (21:27):
Please don't, they're very expensive, but it's a really good argument. They're both really goodarguments. And I thought it was interesting in this piece that this is customer driven, at least
Michael Schwindle, CFO at bagmaker vera Bradley was saying. "What you're seeing is a

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Page 14consumer who's very discriminating in tough economic times," he's saying. So we have to bediscriminating in terms of how we manage SKU. So people are being much more selective andso this is the retailer responding.
(21:56):Miss Williams of The Journal is saying, "In a more stable economic environment, many retailers
give shoppers the luxury of choice." I thought that was interesting because this is a stableeconomic environment. Doesn't feel like it, but we just had nearly 3% GDP growth in Q2.
Inflation has been close to 3% for a year. It's not 2% what it was, but it's still a lot lower.
Unemployment has been below 4% for two and a half years, so it feels like maybe this is justthe new normal. This is a strategy a lot of retailers are realizing is working. Evelyn for the win.
Oh for two, Suzy. That's tough. Tough episode for you. Anyway.
Suzy Davidkhanian (22:27):
I think it's only because I complained at the top of the game that it wasn't a game before weeven got on line.
Marcus Johnson (22:30):
Primarily, yes.
Suzy Davidkhanian (22:31):
I know it's fine.
Marcus Johnson (22:35):
And now it's Max against Evelyn. So you can't lose, Suzy, in this one, technically.
Suzy Davidkhanian (22:39):
Thank God.
Marcus Johnson (22:39):
Can't win either. Question three, Harley-Davidson will ride or die with the gray beards. John
Keilman of the Wall Street Journal writes that the legendary American brand focuses on highend motorcycles, but some say it isn't cultivating the next generation of buyers. Something
has to change though. As Mr. Keilman points out, Harley is selling less than half as many bikes

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as it did during its 2006 peak. Its share of the US large motorcycle market is down to its
lowest level since the '80s, and its stock has been cut in half from 2006 to today.
(23:16):
The article notes that in 1990 when the Harley boom was just getting started, The Journal had
reported that the typical buyer was 35. Today the company says the average age is 49. Thatmatches the motorcycle industry. However, UBS analyst Robin Farley thinks the average ageof a Harley buyer is actually closer to a person in their late '50s. Harley Davidson CEO Jochen
Zeitz says, "I always talk about how you age into the brand. You get older, you actually realize
it's a really cool thing" the question is it a sound strategy to wait for customers, to let themage into your brand? Max is arguing that it is. Make the case.
Max Willens (23:57):
So I think that if you have a brand that is synonymous with a quality and a certain level of
excellence, aging in is something that you should aspire to do rather than go the other way
around. For all the article's points about Harley's declining sales and it targeting older buyers,
the article also makes the point that the average age of their buyers is in line with industry
standards and I think it's more down to, in this particular instance, motorcycles generally
losing the cultural cachet that they enjoyed 20, 30, 50 years ago, which is responsible for the
declining sales rather than them pursuing a kind of misguided marketing or branding strategy.
(24:40):The way that I think about this all the time as a kind of north star is The Wall Street Journal
actually, which for years and years was always fretting about the fact that its readership wason the older side. It didn't have a lot of younger readers and the reality is that that's not
because their website was unpleasant to use or the content wasn't shiny and TikTok friendly
enough. It's because young people don't care about business news because they're too busy
running around and having fun or working in sectors where knowing that information is not
relevant. If you're working as a barista, you don't need to be reading about the bond market.
But by holding fast and ensuring that the product is as good as it is, that's what's going toensure its long-term viability. I mean, The Journal is having some of its best years in its history
and it's not because they're putting more content on TikTok.
Marcus Johnson (25:35):

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Evelyn is arguing it isn't a sound strategy to let your customers age into your brand. Make thecase.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (25:41):
So I think the real answer here is that it depends on the brand and it depends on the product.
But I think it's risky to hope that the same brand narrative and image that worked with 30year-old women in 1980 or even 2000 will work with 30-year-old women now. Because times
change and it's one thing to serve 30-year-old women to focus steadfastly on their needs andchange as they do, but a winning strategy has to evolve over time. Keeping up with younger
generation's needs and preferences will help build longevity. That doesn't mean generating
sales from teenagers necessarily because teens preferences are going to be different fromadults, but it does mean thinking ahead and proactively developing a strategy that's authentic
to your brand, that is important, but it fits the next generation of customers rather than juststicking to your guns and hoping that they will realize one day that they got it wrong and yourbrand is actually cool.
Marcus Johnson (26:40):
Yeah, great arguments, folks. That is where, oh yeah, more please, please.
Suzy Davidkhanian (26:45):
I did not read this question in the same way that you guys answered it. I was thinking about,like I worked for a hot second at Tiffany and they had charms on purpose and the silver
jewelry line is on purpose for younger folks to move them from, so nothing about their brandchanges, it's more like the adjacent product assortment mix is catered to multiple different
and it's mostly in luxury.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (27:08):
Well, I think that's a good point though, but I think it goes back to the depends on the brandand the product because not every brand is going to be able to have a line that is suited foryounger people in the same store with the same branding and not alienate both audiences. I
think about Victoria's Secret with the Pink line that's geared for younger people. It's like aseparate room, separate store entirely, than the more sexier lace and all that kind of stuff.
Marcus Johnson (27:38):

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Page 17Yeah, excellent arguments, folks. Great segment. Let's move to our final one of the day. It's ofcourse dinner party data.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (27:49):
Wait, who wins?
Marcus Johnson (27:51):
Not Suzy. This is the part of the show where we tell you about the most interesting thing we've
learnedSuzy Davidkhanian (27:57):
It's not even a winning game. I don't even know why we're pretending
Marcus Johnson (27:58):
It was. Real points.
Suzy Davidkhanian (27:59):
Then who won?
Marcus Johnson (27:59):
It was a tie.
Suzy Davidkhanian (27:59):
Obviously.
Marcus Johnson (28:04):
Evelyn and Max joint first, Suzy.
Suzy Davidkhanian (28:09):
Zero. Minus two
Marcus Johnson (28:10):
Negative two. That's true.
Suzy Davidkhanian (28:12):
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Page 18

Probably minus five because I butted in on one that's not even mine.
Marcus Johnson (28:15):
You did, you won't be invited back for a while. Let's start with Evelyn for the dinner party data.
Suzy Davidkhanian (28:19):
Did everyone hear that? I just want to make sure that everybody heard that.
Marcus Johnson (28:22):
We'll cut it out.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (28:27):
Okay. So I did a little bit of research on allergies. The USDA has identified the most common
food allergies. They call them the big nine.
Marcus Johnson (28:38):
Whoa.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (28:39):
They are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, I don't know why those are separate, but tree nuts andpeanuts, also separate. I guess peanuts aren't tree nuts. Wheat, soybeans and sesame.
Marcus Johnson (28:55):
Are these in order? Like most to?
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (28:55):
They're just the big nine.
Marcus Johnson (28:57):
Okay.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (28:57):
And according to the CDC, food allergies affect 6% of adults and about 8% of children, which
is lower than I thought it would be. Some food allergies can be outgrown or appear later in

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life, which has happened to me and it is awful because you get used to eating something andthen all of a sudden you can't have it. Also, if you've noticed that your seasonal allergies areworse now than they used to be when you were a kid, you aren't alone. Seasonal allergies
affect one in four US adults per the CDC and according to the Association of American
Medical Colleges, allergists have reported in recent years anecdotal increases in patientsseeking treatments for seasonal allergies and there's evidence to suggest that climate change
is increasing airborne pollen loads.
Marcus Johnson (29:45):
Great.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (29:46):
Yeah.
Marcus Johnson (29:48):
Fascinating. Let's go to Max.
Max Willens (29:53):
Fantastic. Thank you, Marcus. Flash poll of everybody on the call here.
Marcus Johnson (29:57):
That's just random, random.
Max Willens (30:01):
What's the worst month of the year?
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:03):
In what way?
Marcus Johnson (30:04):
The worst month?
Max Willens (30:06):
What's the worst month?

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Marcus Johnson (30:07):
February.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (30:07):
February. I was going to say
Max Willens (30:10):
Suzy?
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:11):
I feel like the question is very poorly worded.
Max Willens (30:16):
That's probably intentional.
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:17):
December, I don't know.
Marcus Johnson (30:19):
Attack the question.
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:20):
January.
Max Willens (30:21):
No, I'm kidding. According to a bunch of people on Reddit, the answer is February.
Marcus Johnson (30:28):
Suzy, man, this is a rough one for you.
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:29):
I did it on purpose.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (30:31):

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How could it be December? December's got the holidays.
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:34):
But then the year, all the fun festivities and the gift giving is over and now you need to makeJanuary New Year's resolutions of exercising and eating less and drinking less. And I mean
that's not fun.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (30:43):
But that's in January. That's not in December.
Suzy Davidkhanian (30:45):
Well that's why I said December, January. I said two.
Marcus Johnson (30:47):
You picked two.
Max Willens (30:50):
Well then half of you is extremely wrong. I don't know. This is something that came up because
I don't know that I would say it's the very worst, but for me August is always up there
becauseEvelyn Mitchell-Wolf (31:03):
It's hot.
Max Willens (31:04):
It's hot and summer is while not over, there's a lot less of it than there was in June and Julywhen it just seemed like ofEvelyn Mitchell-Wolf (31:11):
It's the Sunday.
Max Willens (31:12):That's right.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (31:12):
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It's the Sunday of summer.
Marcus Johnson (31:15):
That's a good way of putting it.
Suzy Davidkhanian (31:15):
It's like camp blues.
Max Willens (31:16):
Everyone knows what I'm talking about. And so I just thought to myself, what a delightfully
arbitrary but still somewhat interesting thing to look into and so what I decided to do was in
keeping actually with our conversation about search instead of using Google, I used Reddit
and looked for information about the worst month and there is in fact a subreddit calledsample size, which I think is basically exists to poll random people on random questions. And
they got a decent sample. Over 900 people responded to this poorly worded question.
Suzy Davidkhanian (31:49):
You put the poll in?
Max Willens (31:51):
I believe so, yeah. I haven't monkeyed around on the subreddit. There might be rules as far as
who can ask questions, but that does seem to be how it works.
Suzy Davidkhanian (31:51):
Holy cool.
Marcus Johnson (32:00):
Yeah, some people would take this segment pretty seriously, Suzy, unlike some of the otherpeopleSuzy Davidkhanian (32:00):
I have a really good one.
Marcus Johnson (32:05):

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Who looked two minutes before we start the show slash during the intro for theirs, which
we're about to hear right now. So everyone lower your expectations. Yes, go ahead.
Suzy Davidkhanian (32:16):
Max, I think I'm going to brighten up your August with my fun fact.
Marcus Johnson (32:21):
Too much.
Suzy Davidkhanian (32:22):
August 2nd is International Beer Day. It was founded in 2007 in California. It is actually the
first Friday of August, which this year happens to be August 2nd. Do you guys know what are
the four main ingredients of beer?
Max Willens (32:39):
Barley, hops, malt, and water.
Suzy Davidkhanian (32:44):
I don't know if those are synonyms.
Marcus Johnson (32:44):
What are you a brewer? Where did you get that stuff from?
Suzy Davidkhanian (32:45):
But it's waters, grains, hops and yeast. So I don't know if the ones you picked were synonymsof the ones that I got, but anyways, it doesn't matter. Do you know who the largest volume
producer in the world, since it is International Beer Day, is?
[NEW_PARAGRAPH]China.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (32:45):
Maybe InBev.
Marcus Johnson (33:00):
China? Oh, a country?
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Suzy Davidkhanian (33:03):
Nope, but that is the number one company, which was the next one on my list.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (33:07):
Sorry.
Suzy Davidkhanian (33:08):
Yeah, no, you guys are confusing me. The number one company, which is based in Belgium,
because it is International Beer Day, so we wanted to do trivia on lots of things, is AnheuserBusch, InBev.
Marcus Johnson (33:20):
The country is China you said?
Suzy Davidkhanian (33:21):
Yes, the number one producer, which is kind of weird, but maybe not. The number one byvolume, which is it was like I'd never even heard of this volume metric is China and the second
one is the US.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (33:21):
Oh, I see. I see.
Marcus Johnson (33:40):
Okay. All right, I've got one for you real quick. How are Olympic athletes changing? I thought
this is fascinating. Pallavi Rao, Visual Capitalist, was noting that Olympic athletes are getting
bigger. He writes that, "Using data from sports reference via Kaggle, Georgios Karamanisplotted the average height and weight of Olympic athletes by sport to show how their bodydimensions have changed over the last 50 years, 5-0.
(34:08):Only sports where a direct comparison could be made between 1960 and 2016 were included.
He found, go through the male Olympians first, so out of 19 sports, so 19 sports that he could
compare from 1960 to 2016, basketball players have added the most weight going from anaverage of 185 pounds to 220. So that's nearly 40 pounds heavier than they were in 1960, a

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20% increase. For our metric system listeners, that's like going from 84 kilograms to a 100.
Wrestling was a close second. They are now 19% heavier than they once were 50 years ago.
The only Olympic sports where male athletes weighed less in 2016 versus 1960 was?
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (34:59):
Swimming.
Marcus Johnson (35:01):
Fair guess. Gymnastics.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (35:04):
Oh.
Marcus Johnson (35:04):
Losing a few pounds on average going from 143 to 139 or 65 to 63 kilograms. Malebasketball players also first for largest increase in average height, maybe unsurprisingly goingfrom six two to six five or 188 in centimeters to 200. Water polo and swimming with second
and third in terms of height increases. And the only Olympic sport where male athletes wereshorter today than they used to be was?
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (35:33):
Gymnastics.
Marcus Johnson (35:34):
Gymnastics, again, going from just above five five to just below five five. For female
Olympians, there are only eight sports to compare versus 19 because if one got added, there's
no comparison, and a lot have been added. So if they've added or removed categories for thegames, several sports didn't have direct comparison. So of the eight sports he was able to do
this analysis on, fencing saw the biggest gains for women in terms of the average weight was
up 8%. Women gymnasts weighed nine pounds or four kilograms less than 50 years ago andwere nearly one inch or three centimeters shorter in 2016 versus 1960. So a similar trend tothe men, lighter and shorter. And female swimmers also grew the most in terms of height, 5%change in the last 50 years.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (36:20):

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That's really cool.
Suzy Davidkhanian (36:23):
It's really cool, but what is that compared to regular average people because I feel like we've
all, people from '60 to now, 1960s to now, are probably slightly heavier and maybe taller?
Marcus Johnson (36:32):
Yeah. That's Monday's fact of the day for me. I'll look it up. Tune in Monday and I will tell you
then. Thank you for that, Suzy. That's all we've got time for today's episode though. Thank you
so much. To my guests, thank you to Suzy.
Suzy Davidkhanian (36:44):
Thanks for having me.
Marcus Johnson (36:45):
Yes, indeed. Thank you to Evelyn.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf (36:47):
Thanks Marcus. This was fun.
Marcus Johnson (36:48):
And thank you to Max.
Max Willens (36:49):
Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thank you.
Marcus Johnson (36:50):
Yes indeed. Thank you to Victoria who edits the show. Stuart runs the team. Sophie he does
our social media. Lance runs our video podcast. And thanks to everyone for listening in. We
hope to see you on Monday for the Behind the Numbers Daily. That's an eMarketer podcast.
Happiest of weekends.

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