February 12, 2021 • 20 mins
Democrats have wrapped up their case in Trump’s second impeachment trial using new video of the Capitol riots and his own words against him, but it seems that the former president is still on his way toward acquittal. A majority of GOP senators have already voted saying the trial is unconstitutional and will stick to that in their final votes. Anita Kumar, White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico, joins us how it’s played out so far.
Next, there is only one airline left where you can book a flight with no one in the middle seat, at least until the end of April, and that is on Delta. Despite a pandemic, most people just want the cheapest fare possible and Delta has even lost money with this plan, but they feel like they are building up some goodwill when business travelers come back. Scott McCartney, Middle Seat columnist at the WSJ, joins us for more.
Finally, an Israeli company named Aleph Farms has unveiled the first 3-D printed ribeye steak. This is not plant-based and instead uses a culture of live animal tissue to grow the steak. It is a proof of concept for the company which hopes to bring these lab grown steaks to market in the second half of 2022. Laura Reiley, business of food reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for what to know about this new meat making process.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, February. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. Democrats have wrapped up their
case in Trump's second impeachment trial, using new video of
the Capital riots and his own words against him, but
it seems that the former president is still on his
way toward a twiddow. A majority of GOP senators have
(00:22):
already voted saying that this trial is unconstitutional, and we'll
stick to that in their final votes. Anita Kumar, White
House correspondent and associate editor at Politico, joins us for
how it played out so far. Next, there's only one
airline left where you can book a flight with no
one in the middle seat, at least until the end
of April, and that's on Delta. Despite a pandemic. Most
(00:44):
people just want the cheapest fair possible, and Delta has
even lost money with his plan, but they feel like
they're building up some goodwill when business travelers come back.
Scott McCartney, middle seat columnist at The Wall Street Journal,
joins us for more. Finally, an Israeli come being named
Alice Arms has unveiled the first three D printed ribby Steak.
(01:05):
This is not plant based and instead uses a culture
of live animal tissue to grow the stake. It is
a proof of concept of the company which hopes to
bring these lab grown steaks to market in the second
half of two. Laura Riley, Business of Food reporter at
The Washington Post joins us for what to know about
this new meat making process. It's news without the noise.
(01:26):
Let's dive in say not only presented a persuasive pace
to the Republican senators, but also to the American people.
They put us on record for all of history about
what Donald Trump did to subvert the constitution of the
United States and from America. Joining us now is Anita Kumar,
(01:48):
White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico. Thanks for
joining us, Anita, sure, thanks for having me back. I
wanted to check in on the second impeachment trial of
press it in Trump. We've seen a lot of compelling
evidence from the Democrats kind of laying out what happened
the day at the Capitol on January six and how
(02:09):
the riots really played out. They were using President Trump's
own words and tweets, connecting a lot of the dots.
But despite all of that, it still seems that the
President is on the path to acquittal. You know, a
lot of this started with Senator Ran Paul and that
vote that they took before all of this started, where
basically almost all the Republicans said, this is not constitutional.
(02:31):
This whole trial is not constitutional, and despite some of
this evidence, they're holding that line of it. So I
need to tell us what we've been seeing so far
in the impeachment trial. We haven't gotten any indication that
any Republicans have changed their mind. It's possible, but my
colleagues that are they're covering the trial and other reporters
get to talk to some of the senators in between
(02:52):
and the breaks, and they've interviewed some of them and
it just doesn't sound like any of them have changed.
So President Trump and his teams still feel that they
would lose a few, maybe a handful of Republicans, but
definitely not the seventeen that's needed to convict him. The
House impeachment managers are wrapping up their case today on Thursday.
On Wednesday, they sort of talked a lot about these
(03:14):
they released new videos showing how close lawmakers were to danger.
But on Thursday they took a different route. They sort
of they're expanding on that. They're really talking about how
President Trump has a history of promoting and glorifying violence,
or they're trying to show that anyway, And they've been
playing video clips of President Trump at his campaign rallies back.
(03:37):
They're also talking about how it doesn't seem like he
has any remorse or had any remorse for what happened
on January six, And they're saying they're trying to prevent
him from even running for office again because they don't
know what that would be like if he lost. Could
we face the same thing that we faced on January six?
But I think the most compelling thing from Thursday was
(03:58):
really showing that some of the people that went to
the capital on January six really were listening to what
President Trump said. They took their orders basically is what
they're saying. According to these people that they were interviewed
or or made statements that they said, well, look, President
Trump said to do this, so I'm doing it. The
defense team is going to be coming up next, and
(04:20):
I think there are a lot of sixteen hours for
the defense. They're saying they're going to wrap it up
in one day and not even use all the time. Yeah,
that's right. They're gonna wrap it up on Friday, and
what senators are saying is they expect a possible vote
on Saturday. So this is a little bit of a
change because they thought they might not even be there
on Saturday, but things have changed. So the defense will
be pretty quick, and then if they have the final
(04:42):
vote on Saturday, that's it. They've wrapped up in less
than a week, which is surprising because at the beginning
of this week they thought they'd go into early to
mid next week. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty quick.
I mean one of the reasons it's quick is because
we haven't seen witnesses. What we're seeing is House Impeachment
manaitors talking and showing videos and similar. On Friday, when
President Trump's team defends him and presents their evidence, we're
(05:05):
probably going to not see witnesses again. We're going to
see some videos and they're gonna be talking and making
some arguments, but the witnesses are sort of would slow
it down. You know. What President Trump is expected to
argue is that a lot of politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike,
make these fiery, passionate speeches, but that doesn't mean, they're
(05:28):
directing people to go commit violence and trespass and hurt people.
And so what they're gonna show is videos of likely
to show videos of Democrats saying different things. You can
already see President Trump's team and former aids and current
aids tweeting about some of those things. You know, they're
pulling up old things that Democrats have said in the
(05:48):
past and just said, oh, look at this, this is
the same kind of thing. The President obviously was not
expected to show up at the trial, but they did
say something about a letter possibly have we seen or
hurt anything about that We haven't. And of course it's
if something comes forward that would be something likely that
his team would unveil tomorrow, and we don't. We still
(06:09):
don't know exactly what this is gonna look like. You know,
I mentioned that there's not really any witnesses. There's still
the possibility that they could say, look, we'd really like
to call someone and they could have a specific vote
on that. So we don't know exactly what's going to happen.
This is what they were talking about, this is a
very unusual trial and that the rules were kind of
done that the last minute. We're still don't know exactly
(06:31):
what things look like. Unlike his first impeachment trial, where
it felt like for a long time they were planning it,
it was, you know, much longer. President Trump had a
much bigger team and bigger defense than he does now.
Outside obviously had the White House at that time, so
people were defending him all over the place, and he
had a big legal team. It's just a very different situation.
So that's possible they could read something or talk about
(06:54):
something that President Trump is saying. Obviously, we do not
expect him to be in Washington at all for this.
Anita Kumar, White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico,
Thank you very much for joining us. Sure, thanks for
having me. While customer satisfaction on Delta has always been strong,
(07:19):
we've seen over the last year it's even stronger, and
we know the middle seat is one of the things
that people really value when they make the decision in
the face of a pandemic to to travel on Delta.
Joining us now with Scott McCartney, middle seat calumnist at
The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining. Scott. Good to
be with you. I wanted to talk about the last
airline who was still blocking the middle seats on flights.
(07:41):
Delta announced that they're going to be extending their middle
seat blockage for at least one more month, to the
end of April. Now, a lot of the airlines were
doing this throughout the pandemic. Most of them ended just
at the tail end of last year. But Delta is
kind of betting that they'll build up some goodwill and
at least insumer confidence in them. But they're losing a
(08:02):
lot of money. They're being beat out by cheaper flights.
That still is king. Everybody wants that cheapest flight that
they can get, so Scott tell us a little bit
more about it. That's right, Delta's extended through the end
of April. They're paying a huge financial penalty for this.
It's very clear. Before the pandemic and the last half
of two thousand nineteen, Delta was the most profitable airline
(08:23):
in the US and then in the last half of
two thousand twenty it flipped to the airline with the
biggest losses. Delta is getting a revenue premium, so the
people who are flying Delta are paying more, and presumably
that's because not having somebody in the middle seat is
attractive to them, but there just aren't enough of them.
The Delta's overall revenue is much weaker than other airlines,
(08:47):
and you can see it. Delta has been filling about
of its seats, Americans filling more than sixty percent of
its seats, so Americans carrying a lot more people on
each flight, and even though people are paying a little
bit more to Delta, it doesn't nearly make up for it.
We've all seen the pictures of really packed flights, everybody
with their masks on, sitting really close to each other.
(09:09):
Everybody kind of sees that and they say, wow, that's scary,
maybe we shouldn't be flying. But you know, that's not
really how it played out in practicality. Delta lost a
lot of business to other airlines with really cheap bears
like Spirit packing people in there. You know, the lesson
of this is that people do want cheap fares, and
that's really always been the lesson of the airline industry
(09:30):
when airlines have tried on a large scale basis to
offer more room, more comfort. You know, years back, American
did more room throughout coach and people just weren't willing
to pay enough. People weren't willing to pay extra for it.
I looked at some particular markets and it was fascinating. Um,
Atlanta Chicago is a good market to look at. Its
(09:51):
Delta is the biggest airline in that market, obviously because
of its giant Atlanta hub, but United's in there, Americans
in there, so you have a lot of competition on
that is that route, And when you look at it
for the third quarter prime time in the pandemic, Delta
lost market share. It's fairs held up pretty well in
that market compared to the other guys, but Spirits slashed
(10:14):
it's fairs, and Spirit was nine of the market going
in and Spirits average fair one way was thirty four dollars,
and you know, it's this sort of ridiculous sixty eight
dollar round trip tickets between Atlanta and Chicago. The Spirit
was up of the market, and so it was pretty
clear evidence that given the choice empty middle seat or
(10:37):
cheap fair, more people were opting for cheap fair. So,
I mean, it doesn't really seem like it's working out
for them. Delta, for its part, says they're selling peace
of mind to those people that kind of want to
be a little more spaced out. What's their big bet
that it's just going to come back once vaccines are
in place and more people are traveling and all that.
I think the way to look at it is that
(10:59):
Delta is not worried about winning the pandemic. Delta is
playing the long game here and really marketing to people
who aren't traveling, and what they're saying is we will
take care of you better than other airlines. And they
think that when business travel does start to come back,
when people who have been afraid to fly for the
(11:21):
past year now when they start coming back, that they
will opt for Delta over other guys. So, you know,
the pandemic is costing them a huge amount of money,
but essentially they hope to get it back in a
sense when things get better, by doing better than their
competitors in the recovery. We've talked a little bit about
(11:43):
this before, you know, just kind of the science of
flying and and virus transmission. You know a lot of
people are saying, well, it's really safe because the planes
have these really good ventilation systems, but there are studies
that suggest that, you know, proximity matters. We've talked about this.
You know, the people right in front of you, the
people right in back of you. It's kind of on
both sides. Whether more bodies in the plane could make
(12:05):
you more susceptible to get in the virus, there is
a common sense logic to this. I think there's no
doubt that more bodies in the airplane increase your chances
of contracting the virus. On the other hand, the risk
is very small to begin with, and it's small to
begin with because of ventilation on airplanes. It's small to
(12:26):
begin with because there are fairly rigid mask rules now,
and that does make a difference. So what you're talking
about is increased risk off a very small risk to
begin with. And so airlines argue that's not significant. Other
people have argued, well, it may be significant, but there
is acknowledgement that it's still a small risk even with
(12:48):
somebody in the middle seat. That said, I think being
shoulder to shoulder with a stranger these days, you know,
sort of flies in the face of common sense when
we're told the socially distances a six ft apart. And
and so that's sort of what Delta is thinking. They
say they're not doing this for safety, they're doing it
because it's what customers, what they think customers want. Scott McCartney,
(13:14):
middle seat calumnist at the Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Always good to be with you.
It is the shape of a Ribby steak and it
has that edge marbl ng and the kind of interstitial
marbling that you associate with that cut doesn't have a bone,
(13:37):
but it does have the kind of I mean, I
haven't eaten it, but looking at a variety of pictures,
it has that kind of the striations of tissue with
all that kind of lovely marbling inside. Now is Laura
Riley business, a food reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks
for joining us, Laura, Oh, happy to be here. And
Israeli Company has unveiled the first three D printed rib
(14:00):
I steak. They use a culture of live animal tissue,
you know. They call it a bunch of different things,
lab grown meat, cultured meat, and there's a lot of
high hopes for this. I want to start off by
asking you to describe what it looks like. I've seen
a few pictures of it. Let's talk about how it presents,
and then we'll get into all of the other stuff
behind it. So Ribi is one of my favorite cuts,
(14:22):
So I might be a little bit biased here. It
looks a little scruffy, I guess, I'd say, but it
is the shape of a ribbi steak and it has
that edge marbl ng and the kind of interstitial marbl
ing that you associate with that cut doesn't have a bone,
but it does have the kind of I mean, I
haven't eaten it, but looking at a variety of pictures,
(14:43):
it has that kind of the striations of tissue with
all that kind of lovely marbling inside. Uh, and it
looks juicy. So as the first effort out of the
gate of this sort, it's pretty impressive. Okay, Now let's
talk a little bit more where this is coming from
and the technology behind this. This is alf Arms and
this is their three D bioprinting technology. How does it work?
(15:07):
A lot of this is intellectual property, and they used
a lot of words that are not in my vocabulary,
like immortalized cells. But what they do is they basically
they build a plant based scaffolding and then they take
animal tissues. So they basically take something like a punch
biopsy from a living animal and they transfer that into
this medium and basically this kind of scaffolding helps the
(15:31):
tissue grow with something like a vascular system from an
actual animal, so that nutrients are passed through the tissue
and it grows and grows, so it grows into a thick,
steak like kind of structure. I mean, a lot of
the cultivated meat that has been unveiled so far, and
none of it's in the marketplace yet, this is all
just kind of uh prototypes developed. Most of it has
(15:53):
been kind of unstructured meat, so what you call like
ground meat or the inside of like a nugget, that
kind of thing, because it's much more difficult to get
something that has that kind of vario similitude that looks
like the real deal and has the right fat and
the right color and the right kind of texture once cooked.
So this represents a real quantum leap forward for this
(16:14):
kind of new technology. One of the biggest hurdles for
all of this. They have proof of concept now all that,
but regulatory framework for this to be released to the
public that's going to be one of the biggest hurdles
to overcome. The interesting thing is it's going to be
shared jointly by the FDA and the U s d A.
And I don't know if this is a case of
like kicking the candle, you deal with this thorny issue. No,
(16:35):
you deal with it. But these two agencies together, so
the FDA will deal with the front end, and the
U s d A will deal with the labeling and
kind of exactly how it needs to be represented in
the marketplace, and and together. There's a lot of pressure
put on them right now to advance this fairly swiftly.
I think that last March they kind of decided how
(16:56):
they were going to split up the task. Then they
kind of end it up for questions and it should
somehow get resolve itself this year. What have people from
Ali Farms said about this? I know one of their
things they said, you know, time to acceptance is very
important for them. You know, obviously this is brand new
to a lot of people, but in the long run
(17:17):
for people the public to accept this is something that
they're really looking forward to. Well. I actually think the
pandemic has done them a great favor. I think that
the pandemic has supercharged the phenomenon of the alt protein
so plant based burgers, which were I mean, if we
can sink back to like last February, they were kind
of a novelty item them, and just in the past
(17:37):
year there's been a huge embrace of alt protein products
across the board. Some of it is fear based, some
of it is because we had that supply chain kind
of constriction in March and April and into May, and
people were a little bit squeamish about their meat supply
and worried about COVID outbreaks and meat processing facilities, and
so I think people were quicker to embrace plant based
(17:58):
versions of these foods and the cultivated cruelty free, you know,
animal cell based versions of this probably are going to
benefit from our quick acceptance of the plant base. Alice
Arms is the company that has this ribby steak right now.
They also had like a thin cut steak that they had.
But there's other companies working on this, people that are
(18:20):
doing cultured seafood, other meat alternatives. Tell me a little
bit about that. So some of the original ones. For
some reason that the two kind of real epicenters of
activity in this space are in Israel and the Netherlands,
and so Mosa Meat and Meatable are two companies Dutch
companies that are fairly close to bringing something to market.
Another Israeli company, Future Meat, is also fairly close. So
(18:43):
we are we're looking at kind of the regulatory framework
to be set up and then for there to be
some indication about whether they're going to be accepted in
the marketplace. And a lot of people have talked to
have said they're going to start with restaurants, that restaurants
are the key. So if you can get a major restaurant,
their high end or a chain or whatever to embrace
this kind of technology and put it forward so that
(19:06):
people are willing to give it a go for the
first time and say, well, that's pretty good or you
know that's not for me whatever, to kind of take
that step that that is going to encourage kind of
more widespread acceptance and kind of at the grocery store level.
Laura Riley, Business of Food reporter at The Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. Oh thanks for
(19:27):
having me today. That's it for today. Join us on
social media at Daily Dive pod, on book, Twitter, and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us where is it you're interesting. Follow us on I
Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This
(19:49):
episode of The Daily Dives produced by paper Right and
engineered by Tony Sarrentino. Hi'm Oscar Ramirez and this was
your daily dive Fast
It's Friday, February. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. Democrats have wrapped up their
case in Trump's second impeachment trial, using new video of
the Capital riots and his own words against him, but
it seems that the former president is still on his
way toward a twiddow. A majority of GOP senators have
(00:22):
already voted saying that this trial is unconstitutional, and we'll
stick to that in their final votes. Anita Kumar, White
House correspondent and associate editor at Politico, joins us for
how it played out so far. Next, there's only one
airline left where you can book a flight with no
one in the middle seat, at least until the end
of April, and that's on Delta. Despite a pandemic. Most
(00:44):
people just want the cheapest fair possible, and Delta has
even lost money with his plan, but they feel like
they're building up some goodwill when business travelers come back.
Scott McCartney, middle seat columnist at The Wall Street Journal,
joins us for more. Finally, an Israeli come being named
Alice Arms has unveiled the first three D printed ribby Steak.
(01:05):
This is not plant based and instead uses a culture
of live animal tissue to grow the stake. It is
a proof of concept of the company which hopes to
bring these lab grown steaks to market in the second
half of two. Laura Riley, Business of Food reporter at
The Washington Post joins us for what to know about
this new meat making process. It's news without the noise.
(01:26):
Let's dive in say not only presented a persuasive pace
to the Republican senators, but also to the American people.
They put us on record for all of history about
what Donald Trump did to subvert the constitution of the
United States and from America. Joining us now is Anita Kumar,
(01:48):
White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico. Thanks for
joining us, Anita, sure, thanks for having me back. I
wanted to check in on the second impeachment trial of
press it in Trump. We've seen a lot of compelling
evidence from the Democrats kind of laying out what happened
the day at the Capitol on January six and how
(02:09):
the riots really played out. They were using President Trump's
own words and tweets, connecting a lot of the dots.
But despite all of that, it still seems that the
President is on the path to acquittal. You know, a
lot of this started with Senator Ran Paul and that
vote that they took before all of this started, where
basically almost all the Republicans said, this is not constitutional.
(02:31):
This whole trial is not constitutional, and despite some of
this evidence, they're holding that line of it. So I
need to tell us what we've been seeing so far
in the impeachment trial. We haven't gotten any indication that
any Republicans have changed their mind. It's possible, but my
colleagues that are they're covering the trial and other reporters
get to talk to some of the senators in between
(02:52):
and the breaks, and they've interviewed some of them and
it just doesn't sound like any of them have changed.
So President Trump and his teams still feel that they
would lose a few, maybe a handful of Republicans, but
definitely not the seventeen that's needed to convict him. The
House impeachment managers are wrapping up their case today on Thursday.
On Wednesday, they sort of talked a lot about these
(03:14):
they released new videos showing how close lawmakers were to danger.
But on Thursday they took a different route. They sort
of they're expanding on that. They're really talking about how
President Trump has a history of promoting and glorifying violence,
or they're trying to show that anyway, And they've been
playing video clips of President Trump at his campaign rallies back.
(03:37):
They're also talking about how it doesn't seem like he
has any remorse or had any remorse for what happened
on January six, And they're saying they're trying to prevent
him from even running for office again because they don't
know what that would be like if he lost. Could
we face the same thing that we faced on January six?
But I think the most compelling thing from Thursday was
(03:58):
really showing that some of the people that went to
the capital on January six really were listening to what
President Trump said. They took their orders basically is what
they're saying. According to these people that they were interviewed
or or made statements that they said, well, look, President
Trump said to do this, so I'm doing it. The
defense team is going to be coming up next, and
(04:20):
I think there are a lot of sixteen hours for
the defense. They're saying they're going to wrap it up
in one day and not even use all the time. Yeah,
that's right. They're gonna wrap it up on Friday, and
what senators are saying is they expect a possible vote
on Saturday. So this is a little bit of a
change because they thought they might not even be there
on Saturday, but things have changed. So the defense will
be pretty quick, and then if they have the final
(04:42):
vote on Saturday, that's it. They've wrapped up in less
than a week, which is surprising because at the beginning
of this week they thought they'd go into early to
mid next week. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty quick.
I mean one of the reasons it's quick is because
we haven't seen witnesses. What we're seeing is House Impeachment
manaitors talking and showing videos and similar. On Friday, when
President Trump's team defends him and presents their evidence, we're
(05:05):
probably going to not see witnesses again. We're going to
see some videos and they're gonna be talking and making
some arguments, but the witnesses are sort of would slow
it down. You know. What President Trump is expected to
argue is that a lot of politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike,
make these fiery, passionate speeches, but that doesn't mean, they're
(05:28):
directing people to go commit violence and trespass and hurt people.
And so what they're gonna show is videos of likely
to show videos of Democrats saying different things. You can
already see President Trump's team and former aids and current
aids tweeting about some of those things. You know, they're
pulling up old things that Democrats have said in the
(05:48):
past and just said, oh, look at this, this is
the same kind of thing. The President obviously was not
expected to show up at the trial, but they did
say something about a letter possibly have we seen or
hurt anything about that We haven't. And of course it's
if something comes forward that would be something likely that
his team would unveil tomorrow, and we don't. We still
(06:09):
don't know exactly what this is gonna look like. You know,
I mentioned that there's not really any witnesses. There's still
the possibility that they could say, look, we'd really like
to call someone and they could have a specific vote
on that. So we don't know exactly what's going to happen.
This is what they were talking about, this is a
very unusual trial and that the rules were kind of
done that the last minute. We're still don't know exactly
(06:31):
what things look like. Unlike his first impeachment trial, where
it felt like for a long time they were planning it,
it was, you know, much longer. President Trump had a
much bigger team and bigger defense than he does now.
Outside obviously had the White House at that time, so
people were defending him all over the place, and he
had a big legal team. It's just a very different situation.
So that's possible they could read something or talk about
(06:54):
something that President Trump is saying. Obviously, we do not
expect him to be in Washington at all for this.
Anita Kumar, White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico,
Thank you very much for joining us. Sure, thanks for
having me. While customer satisfaction on Delta has always been strong,
(07:19):
we've seen over the last year it's even stronger, and
we know the middle seat is one of the things
that people really value when they make the decision in
the face of a pandemic to to travel on Delta.
Joining us now with Scott McCartney, middle seat calumnist at
The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining. Scott. Good to
be with you. I wanted to talk about the last
airline who was still blocking the middle seats on flights.
(07:41):
Delta announced that they're going to be extending their middle
seat blockage for at least one more month, to the
end of April. Now, a lot of the airlines were
doing this throughout the pandemic. Most of them ended just
at the tail end of last year. But Delta is
kind of betting that they'll build up some goodwill and
at least insumer confidence in them. But they're losing a
(08:02):
lot of money. They're being beat out by cheaper flights.
That still is king. Everybody wants that cheapest flight that
they can get, so Scott tell us a little bit
more about it. That's right, Delta's extended through the end
of April. They're paying a huge financial penalty for this.
It's very clear. Before the pandemic and the last half
of two thousand nineteen, Delta was the most profitable airline
(08:23):
in the US and then in the last half of
two thousand twenty it flipped to the airline with the
biggest losses. Delta is getting a revenue premium, so the
people who are flying Delta are paying more, and presumably
that's because not having somebody in the middle seat is
attractive to them, but there just aren't enough of them.
The Delta's overall revenue is much weaker than other airlines,
(08:47):
and you can see it. Delta has been filling about
of its seats, Americans filling more than sixty percent of
its seats, so Americans carrying a lot more people on
each flight, and even though people are paying a little
bit more to Delta, it doesn't nearly make up for it.
We've all seen the pictures of really packed flights, everybody
with their masks on, sitting really close to each other.
(09:09):
Everybody kind of sees that and they say, wow, that's scary,
maybe we shouldn't be flying. But you know, that's not
really how it played out in practicality. Delta lost a
lot of business to other airlines with really cheap bears
like Spirit packing people in there. You know, the lesson
of this is that people do want cheap fares, and
that's really always been the lesson of the airline industry
(09:30):
when airlines have tried on a large scale basis to
offer more room, more comfort. You know, years back, American
did more room throughout coach and people just weren't willing
to pay enough. People weren't willing to pay extra for it.
I looked at some particular markets and it was fascinating. Um,
Atlanta Chicago is a good market to look at. Its
(09:51):
Delta is the biggest airline in that market, obviously because
of its giant Atlanta hub, but United's in there, Americans
in there, so you have a lot of competition on
that is that route, And when you look at it
for the third quarter prime time in the pandemic, Delta
lost market share. It's fairs held up pretty well in
that market compared to the other guys, but Spirits slashed
(10:14):
it's fairs, and Spirit was nine of the market going
in and Spirits average fair one way was thirty four dollars,
and you know, it's this sort of ridiculous sixty eight
dollar round trip tickets between Atlanta and Chicago. The Spirit
was up of the market, and so it was pretty
clear evidence that given the choice empty middle seat or
(10:37):
cheap fair, more people were opting for cheap fair. So,
I mean, it doesn't really seem like it's working out
for them. Delta, for its part, says they're selling peace
of mind to those people that kind of want to
be a little more spaced out. What's their big bet
that it's just going to come back once vaccines are
in place and more people are traveling and all that.
I think the way to look at it is that
(10:59):
Delta is not worried about winning the pandemic. Delta is
playing the long game here and really marketing to people
who aren't traveling, and what they're saying is we will
take care of you better than other airlines. And they
think that when business travel does start to come back,
when people who have been afraid to fly for the
(11:21):
past year now when they start coming back, that they
will opt for Delta over other guys. So, you know,
the pandemic is costing them a huge amount of money,
but essentially they hope to get it back in a
sense when things get better, by doing better than their
competitors in the recovery. We've talked a little bit about
(11:43):
this before, you know, just kind of the science of
flying and and virus transmission. You know a lot of
people are saying, well, it's really safe because the planes
have these really good ventilation systems, but there are studies
that suggest that, you know, proximity matters. We've talked about this.
You know, the people right in front of you, the
people right in back of you. It's kind of on
both sides. Whether more bodies in the plane could make
(12:05):
you more susceptible to get in the virus, there is
a common sense logic to this. I think there's no
doubt that more bodies in the airplane increase your chances
of contracting the virus. On the other hand, the risk
is very small to begin with, and it's small to
begin with because of ventilation on airplanes. It's small to
(12:26):
begin with because there are fairly rigid mask rules now,
and that does make a difference. So what you're talking
about is increased risk off a very small risk to
begin with. And so airlines argue that's not significant. Other
people have argued, well, it may be significant, but there
is acknowledgement that it's still a small risk even with
(12:48):
somebody in the middle seat. That said, I think being
shoulder to shoulder with a stranger these days, you know,
sort of flies in the face of common sense when
we're told the socially distances a six ft apart. And
and so that's sort of what Delta is thinking. They
say they're not doing this for safety, they're doing it
because it's what customers, what they think customers want. Scott McCartney,
(13:14):
middle seat calumnist at the Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Always good to be with you.
It is the shape of a Ribby steak and it
has that edge marbl ng and the kind of interstitial
marbling that you associate with that cut doesn't have a bone,
(13:37):
but it does have the kind of I mean, I
haven't eaten it, but looking at a variety of pictures,
it has that kind of the striations of tissue with
all that kind of lovely marbling inside. Now is Laura
Riley business, a food reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks
for joining us, Laura, Oh, happy to be here. And
Israeli Company has unveiled the first three D printed rib
(14:00):
I steak. They use a culture of live animal tissue,
you know. They call it a bunch of different things,
lab grown meat, cultured meat, and there's a lot of
high hopes for this. I want to start off by
asking you to describe what it looks like. I've seen
a few pictures of it. Let's talk about how it presents,
and then we'll get into all of the other stuff
behind it. So Ribi is one of my favorite cuts,
(14:22):
So I might be a little bit biased here. It
looks a little scruffy, I guess, I'd say, but it
is the shape of a ribbi steak and it has
that edge marbl ng and the kind of interstitial marbl
ing that you associate with that cut doesn't have a bone,
but it does have the kind of I mean, I
haven't eaten it, but looking at a variety of pictures,
(14:43):
it has that kind of the striations of tissue with
all that kind of lovely marbling inside. Uh, and it
looks juicy. So as the first effort out of the
gate of this sort, it's pretty impressive. Okay, Now let's
talk a little bit more where this is coming from
and the technology behind this. This is alf Arms and
this is their three D bioprinting technology. How does it work?
(15:07):
A lot of this is intellectual property, and they used
a lot of words that are not in my vocabulary,
like immortalized cells. But what they do is they basically
they build a plant based scaffolding and then they take
animal tissues. So they basically take something like a punch
biopsy from a living animal and they transfer that into
this medium and basically this kind of scaffolding helps the
(15:31):
tissue grow with something like a vascular system from an
actual animal, so that nutrients are passed through the tissue
and it grows and grows, so it grows into a thick,
steak like kind of structure. I mean, a lot of
the cultivated meat that has been unveiled so far, and
none of it's in the marketplace yet, this is all
just kind of uh prototypes developed. Most of it has
(15:53):
been kind of unstructured meat, so what you call like
ground meat or the inside of like a nugget, that
kind of thing, because it's much more difficult to get
something that has that kind of vario similitude that looks
like the real deal and has the right fat and
the right color and the right kind of texture once cooked.
So this represents a real quantum leap forward for this
(16:14):
kind of new technology. One of the biggest hurdles for
all of this. They have proof of concept now all that,
but regulatory framework for this to be released to the
public that's going to be one of the biggest hurdles
to overcome. The interesting thing is it's going to be
shared jointly by the FDA and the U s d A.
And I don't know if this is a case of
like kicking the candle, you deal with this thorny issue. No,
(16:35):
you deal with it. But these two agencies together, so
the FDA will deal with the front end, and the
U s d A will deal with the labeling and
kind of exactly how it needs to be represented in
the marketplace, and and together. There's a lot of pressure
put on them right now to advance this fairly swiftly.
I think that last March they kind of decided how
(16:56):
they were going to split up the task. Then they
kind of end it up for questions and it should
somehow get resolve itself this year. What have people from
Ali Farms said about this? I know one of their
things they said, you know, time to acceptance is very
important for them. You know, obviously this is brand new
to a lot of people, but in the long run
(17:17):
for people the public to accept this is something that
they're really looking forward to. Well. I actually think the
pandemic has done them a great favor. I think that
the pandemic has supercharged the phenomenon of the alt protein
so plant based burgers, which were I mean, if we
can sink back to like last February, they were kind
of a novelty item them, and just in the past
(17:37):
year there's been a huge embrace of alt protein products
across the board. Some of it is fear based, some
of it is because we had that supply chain kind
of constriction in March and April and into May, and
people were a little bit squeamish about their meat supply
and worried about COVID outbreaks and meat processing facilities, and
so I think people were quicker to embrace plant based
(17:58):
versions of these foods and the cultivated cruelty free, you know,
animal cell based versions of this probably are going to
benefit from our quick acceptance of the plant base. Alice
Arms is the company that has this ribby steak right now.
They also had like a thin cut steak that they had.
But there's other companies working on this, people that are
(18:20):
doing cultured seafood, other meat alternatives. Tell me a little
bit about that. So some of the original ones. For
some reason that the two kind of real epicenters of
activity in this space are in Israel and the Netherlands,
and so Mosa Meat and Meatable are two companies Dutch
companies that are fairly close to bringing something to market.
Another Israeli company, Future Meat, is also fairly close. So
(18:43):
we are we're looking at kind of the regulatory framework
to be set up and then for there to be
some indication about whether they're going to be accepted in
the marketplace. And a lot of people have talked to
have said they're going to start with restaurants, that restaurants
are the key. So if you can get a major restaurant,
their high end or a chain or whatever to embrace
this kind of technology and put it forward so that
(19:06):
people are willing to give it a go for the
first time and say, well, that's pretty good or you
know that's not for me whatever, to kind of take
that step that that is going to encourage kind of
more widespread acceptance and kind of at the grocery store level.
Laura Riley, Business of Food reporter at The Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. Oh thanks for
(19:27):
having me today. That's it for today. Join us on
social media at Daily Dive pod, on book, Twitter, and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
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Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This
(19:49):
episode of The Daily Dives produced by paper Right and
engineered by Tony Sarrentino. Hi'm Oscar Ramirez and this was
your daily dive Fast
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