♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. we are here at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's issue, iconic companies tackling our global macro concerns. first up, we have got the ceo here on what he is doing to combat global warming. jason: and then sharing worries about brexit. carol: then, we have the global cover story.

president trump's government shutdown. jason: how it is redefining washington politics. carol: josh green joining us to talk about this. what is interesting about your story, so many different things, but this shutdown is different from what we have seen in the past. josh: it really is. i have been covering washington politics for 20 years. since 1980 there have been 10 government shutdowns. this is the first one engineered by the president himself. he shut down the government. that has created a set of circumstances that explain why things are so contentious, why it has dragged on for so long, and why there is really no end in sight as we enter month two of the crisis. jason: take us back to the prologue to the shutdown, that sort of now famous meeting in the oval office, and the cameras are rolling, and the president says, "i will own this, this is my shutdown." does he regret that? what did he mean? did he expect this would happen? josh: i think what happened is trump planned a confrontation. to assert his alpha male status. if you talk to the white house, that is what he thought was going on.

the problem is he got caught in a bickering match and accepted responsibility for the crisis in advance before it even kicked off. that is the worst thing you can do from a strategic standpoint because the minute the government shut down, the question every reporter and every pollster asked is who is to blame, and trump has taken that in advance. one problem we have had is there isn't an easy way out of the crisis because trump does not want that blame. he tried to toss it back to democrats saying there is a crisis, there is a crisis, but at the same time trump is the president, he has been able to mitigate the nastier effects of the crisis. he winds up in a strange division where he cannot go on but it isn't clear how it will be resolved. carol: in terms of the -- what about when it comes to perception and the constituents, whether democrat or republican? who is losing? josh: what is interesting about this shutdown as opposed to ones in the past, it was the legislative ranch, it was congress that shut down the government. we remember last spring when the

government closed to try to get progress on daca. ted cruz tried to shut down the government and block obamacare. the problem with that path is the government -- president can turn around and exacerbate the pain from the shutdown. obama closed national parks, and monuments, and commodity prices were not available. people got angry. it caused a lot of disruption. republicans could not withstand the pressure. trump has done the opposite, he has been able to use his presidential power to mitigate the effects. when it became clear the irs could not process tax returns, everyone in the middle class was going to revolt, trump ordered 46,000 irs workers back to work. we are lacking the forcing mechanism that has ended every shutdown in the past before now. you know, it is not clear this time around what that mechanism will be. jason: you talked about pressure on republicans, and it does feel like in the senate, that does

feel like the most vulnerable group to some extent. you know, a handful up for reelection. mitch mcconnell has come back onto the scene in the past few days. what happens there? does this really rest on the senate? who has the power? josh: it does rest on the senate. what is different in this shutdown from the previous ones is that in the past, usually the broad middle of the country has turned against the party that orchestrated the shut down. that happened. trump's favorability has gone up amongst republicans. the border wall is going up. that is a fact that republicans are rushing to their teams. republicans in the senate are stuck in a sense. they don't want to go against trump. they don't want to go against voters. there are few like cory gardner from colorado, lisa murkowski from alaska who are up for reelection next year and really need do get the government open. we have seen movement there but

not enough to break the dam. carol: i wonder in terms of how this lays out, are we getting another page from president trump's playbook? because if he does not get his wall, will it come up in a few months with the debt ceiling? josh: this is the real scary scenario i raise in the business week cover story. trump is in this for one reason alone, get money for his border wall so he can run for election saying i said i would build the wall, i am building the wall. if trump is forced into a humiliating climb down in the current shut down, i flash forward six months to a scenario where the debt limit is about to be reinstated, treasury can pursue extraordinary measures, but come august, the u.s. is running out of borrowing power, i do not see anything from stopping trump to take the debt limit hostage and say if you do not give me money for the wall, i will not raise the debt limit. there you would see a real effect in the market. it is a lot scarier than anything we have seen. jason: i love me some josh green. another way to look at the shutdown is how it is impacting consumer confidence. we pull up a chart that breaks it down, and it is clear.

carol: it is pretty clear. what we are seeing is americans, they are not confident, and it is falling to a two year low, the lowest point we have seen in president trump's presidency. also consumer confidence, wages, job prospects, but the continued really uncertainty out of the government has really kind of weighed on consumers. jason: you see that sharp drop there. that goes back to december. that government shutdown started then, there was worry about it, but it has gone on and on. carol: it is one for the record books. already, we know that. coming up next the we look at how global companies are faring in the face of the u.s.-china trade war. talk about declining confidence. jason: our conversation with a pioneer in equities. what he says americans get wrong about beijing. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: and i am jason kelly. join carol and me every day on the radio. you can also catch up on our daily show with our podcast on itunes, soundcloud and bloomberg.com. carol: you can find us online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. this week the economic section is all about china. jason: and specifically the risks and rewards with beijing's clout. carol: to see that clout, see this chart in the magazine. it shows you how important china is to many of the world's biggest companies, and what you see, take a look at apple,

boeing, procter & gamble, huge multinational companies. the dark part is revenue from the rest of the world. that top light part of the chart, the white part shows you the amount of revenue coming from china. just take apple alone, $52 billion coming from china. jason: i think back to earlier this month, that news hitting the tape about apple's exposure to china about it being responsible for its revenue shortfall, that had a huge impact on the market, and it raised the question and turned the tables in a lot of ways in terms of what your exposure to china meant. maybe now a negative more than a positive. carol: china has always been the market everybody has been looking to to grow their top line. jason: we got more from economics editor cristina. cristina: the question about whether china fudges its numbers has been around for a long time. it seems a good time to look at it because now the country accounts for something like 16%

of world growth. back in the late 1990's when a lot of conversation, you know, began around this question, it was 3%. so then it was of academic interest if china was cooking the books. so something happened in this latest quarter that was interesting, which was for the first time in a long time the official figures aligned with this big range of independent proxies that economists including at bloomberg and at banks have been devising and working on for many years. so the question now remains, and it cannot be answered yet, is whether china has turned a new leaf, or whether, you know, this is an anomaly. jason: i do not want to get too far away from something important you said. you said essentially the market decided it had to come up with its own figures because it could not ultimately trust with what the chinese were saying. how are those built? what do they look at to get what they think is a more accurate number? christine: it is a huge cottage

industry. it was almost triggered by a comment from a chinese diplomat who in a conversation with the u.s. said china's gdp numbers are man-made. rail freight, electricity consumption and bank loans to gauge what the activity in my province is. so people quickly -- the economists made their own index from those three metrics. bloomberg looks for example, had an index that looks at electricity consumption in -- across a number of industries weighed by their share of gdp. like again, lending is an important industrial production, retail sales, all of the things you would expect people to look at in a normal economy, except i don't think electricity in developed economies is something people look at, but often used in informal economies to gauge the level of activity. carol: it is interesting this story kind of went into the history of how statistics have been gathered in china.

talk to us about the difference between what local leaders have to worry about in the data and what national leaders kind of don't have to worry about. jason: and the incentives are so perverse in some ways. cristina: i think understanding incentives would be an interesting part on why china would stop doing this. it used to be, from the era of mao, local officials were reporting the figures to beijing. the incentive was because your promotion, you know, your prospects of promotion were tied to the performance of your local economy, the incentive existed to over, you know, inflate the level of economic activity. [speaking simultaneously] cristina: right. you see that looking back. you wonder, did china ever grow at 14%? [laughter] jason: for another perspective on china, we caught up with hong

kong-based chairman and ceo weijian shan. carol: his personal story is a riveting one. it is one that includes doing hard labor in the gobi desert at the age of 15 to all the way attending school in the united states and eventually becoming a private equity investor, a successful one overseeing billions of dollars in investment. jason: he writes that in his new book, "out of the gobi, my story of china and america." carol: we had him on our daily radio show, and we wanted to bring him back because there is so much insight he really provides. jason: you started by talking about the trade war between washington and beijing. weijian: i think, reflecting back on the 40 years of this relationship, both countries have benefited from this relationship. and you would find that 40 years ago, the differences between the two countries in terms of the

system, in terms of the economy, in terms of some of the politics, social aspects of things, it could not be as different, more different. they are completely different worlds. right? even at the time when richard nixon first visited in 1972, they somehow found some common ground, common interests to establish a relationship, which was formalized under jimmy carter. since then, the relationship flourished. these countries are the largest trading partners.

i think that, of course, if we look at the differences today, they are much smaller than 40 years ago. you know, china is opened up, it has become more or less a market economy. the private sector is the largest part of the economy. so there are more commonalities between these two countries. i think that if the two countries just look at the common ground, the common interest, and focus on those, and not so much on the differences, then this relationship will continue to develop. carol: tell me about this book and why you wrote it. weijian: well, as the title suggests, "out of the gobi" is my story about china and america, my experiences living through that most horrific part of the chinese modern history. i think my stories are rather unique, but they are also very representative of the people in my generation who lived through similar experiences. carol: tell us a little bit about growing up in china as a kid.

tell us a little bit about that experience. weijian: i -- when i was a small child, i think my life was more or less normal, even though china was a very poor country. and we lived in rather poor standards and conditions. carol: you grew up in -- weijian: in beijing. in beijing. but the hell broke loose in 1966 when i was 12 years old, and when i was just finishing elementary school. the so-called cultural revolution started, and the entire country was thrown into chaos. the president of the country was thrown into jail without anybody knowing about it. he died there three years later. many teachers, including mine, were beaten up by the students. i witnessed teachers beaten to death by their students. it was totally chaotic. so three years later, after you know three years of total chaos, i and many of my friends were sent to the gobi desert to do hard labor. when i was 15 years old, it was

extremely hard work, and in very bad conditions. and we did not have enough to eat. we had to work 16 to 18 hours a day. but the worst thing was that there was no education, so we were out of school in -- when i was 12, and for the next 10 years, there was no schooling. this generation of mine is referred to as the lost generation because we never had a chance to acquire formal education. jason: up next, while japan sets its sights on flying cars -- carol: we are still trying to work out some of the problems and safety concerns of the relatively new world of ridesharing apps. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek."

i am jason kelly. carol: and i am carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio at sirius xm channel 118, 99 fm and washington, dc. jason: london on dab digital and on the bloomberg business app. in the technology section, japan does not want to fall behind the technological curve. carol: it does not. so its very important ministry trade and industry is working to speed up the arrival of aerial taxis and trucks area we are talking about flying cars. jason: flying cars. jeff: we talked about the last couple of years in the u.s. and elsewhere to make these fantastic machines of the future finally a reality including by google cofounder there a bridge. there are a couple of startups in california. but japan over the last few years, the last 12 months, has started to take an earnest approach on a governmental level, sort of lapping other government efforts around the

world in terms of calling a very old kind of moonshot, saying in a next 10 years, we will get from a standing start to air taxis and trucks. carol: so wait a minute. where is japan in terms of, if we look at the high tech universe and who is doing what, -- because i love the story that says japan, you know, they still use a ton of flip phones and yahoo! by a mile is like the most popular internet service. they have kind of falling behind when it comes to high-tech. jeff: yeah, and particularly these kinds of technology, japan is an unlikely source of this moonshot effort. it seems that our writers, especially a campbell on this story, said he was very much stuck in yesterday's vision of tomorrow, the 1980's idea of the future. carol: how do they do it then? jeff: the -- carol: what is their plan? jeff: japan's ministry is one of the lead actors here, and in

operation that was in the era of the post economic miracle for having come up with the transistor radio, the walkman but it has been quiet since then. here is the government saying in the last year, we are going to make an effort to sort of grease the skids that we can and roll together a bunch of private startup efforts and venture capital. jason: you highlight a couple people who seem to come across initially as voices shouting in the wilderness, saying, this is our opportunity. we can get there. these sort of young guys to a large extent who are running up against a large bureaucracy that may be a little skeptical. so what sort of broke through? jeff: there were plenty of headwinds as matt and the other writers on the piece point out. the big one is it is hard to do anything quickly in japan.

much more so certainly than in the u.s. are a lot of western societies. they are very safe. there hasn't been the kind of serious air accident or rail accident that you will see in most other developed nations in decades and decades in japan. so it has been a challenge for people on the sort of cutting edge of the flying car industry to sort of work their way through the various government bureaucracies in play here. but nonetheless, the government did finally allow just last month the test flight of a flying car by a startup group. carol: now we head to singapore in the feature section for a look at how ride-hailing apps are getting drivers. jason: this is an amazing story. a car crash led one of our reporters to wonder what these companies are doing to protect passengers from negligent drivers. carol: here is our editor max

chafkin. max: our technology reporter in singapore has been covering the rideshare industry. came to us with this story which is that she was -- on the day uber and grab, which is the dominant player in singapore, merged with grab, the local champion becoming the acquiring company in that market, got in a grab car and was in a terrible accident. and the sort of weird confluence of events, you know, writing about this fast growing company, and then nearly dying in this car crash. one of the arteries that goes to her brain was severed, she was in the hospital for days. it was very serious. she recovered to sort of try to think about whether or not the fact of these ride-hailing companies, the fact they are growing so fast and have added thousands of new drivers to the roads, has, may have contributed to the accident.

she had kind of a really unique opportunity to investigate because she was able to get her own accident records -- in singapore there is a law that allows you if you are part of the accident to get the records -- but also to get to know the ceo of grab. in singapore he is one of the most famous entrepreneurs in southeast asia, and so she was able to get, you know, sort of unusual access to him because he started visiting her. carol: talk about that, unusual access. i mean, he came to the hospital? max: yes. so, grab is different from uber. they presented themselves as a kind of sober, law-abiding company. anthony tan is a christian. he is very much into displays of his faith, and his seriousness, and his sobriety. given that combination, after

the reporter was in the hospital, he started showing up. and you have to really read the story to sort of understand what she was going through. it comes off as kind of a little bit too much. and you sort of wonder, one of the subtexts of this story is there is a protest too much quality about grab's response. we should say, she did not find anything about grab specifically doing anything wrong. the company apologized to her. anthony tan apologized to her in the story. it is more a question of, are they giving safety records, are they really being honest, even with themselves about what they are doing to ensure safety? jason: up next, an insider's look at how angela merkel's power faded away in germany. carol: also we sit down with consumer and business woman jo malone. what brexit can mean for small business owners and entrepreneurs across the u.k. jason: this is "bloomberg

businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. still ahead, why you probably cannot sue your boss. jason: it is an interesting look at arbitration. then in the business section, killer snails, golden state cider, and some really cool east german sneakers. carol: very cool. we start in the politics section with german chancellor angela merkel who is among the list topping of leaders in the world economic forum in davos this

past week. jason: her dominance in davos and across europe is coming to an end. carol: definitely changing times. we talk about what happened to her once firm grip. arne: she has two years ago, two years and eight months altogether. but she is of course seen as a bit of a lame duck here, because everybody knows she will not run again, and she has already named her possible successor, who is -- a very difficult name. carol: [laughter] it is foreign to us because and somebody is out, they are gone, it is a very different system. but tell us about how angela merkel kind of lost, and you take us to a day in 2018, june 12. what happened then? reporter: you know, while she was still seen as very powerful and very dominant abroad in germany, beginning with the refugee crisis, she actually lost a lot of confidence here, and this event on june 2018 was the first time that really her

own parliamentary group, her own people openly revolted against her, and the nobody defended her. jason: and why? as you say, this was over the refugee crisis. she took a step it sounds like and keep us honest here, that was maybe unexpected or certainly not politically palatable to people even in her own party in terms of her embrace of syrian refugees. arne: exactly. many people were taken by surprise because she was known as a pragmatic politician who always thought about the consequences of her policies, and suddenly, she reacted very emotionally, people have the feeling, and you know, it left many people in here without actually knowing who was coming,

and especially for conservatives, there was a kind of very hard issue to follow. jason: and arne, this is all happening against the backdrop of obviously a very different europe, both in dealing with itself as a union but also dealing with the rest of the world. how does angela merkel find herself amid this new leadership across europe and candidly in the united states and elsewhere? arne: you know, she was celebrated as like the last leader of the free world, i think a name which she herself never really liked. i think but now she sees she is one of the few leaders left who seem to act rationally and also who, who, you know, still has human values in mind when they make decisions. we think multilaterally, together with of course emmanuel macron, but of course she feels

pretty lonely on the world stage. jason: and carol, while merkel has lost support among her people and her party, so too has her counterpart in the u.k., theresa may. she is continuing to work out a plan for brexit. carol: lawmakers are scheduled to vote on brexit this week. for more on the uncertainty on businesses, we caught up with respected entrepreneur jo malone. jo: it impacts every business owner and anyone who says it does not, it does in some way. i am heartbroken actually by what is happening because this is people's lives, and when someone gets a job, it affects them and their family. but you know what, that job affects the community in which they live, the city, and eventually, the country. and that is what we are seeing, is a slowdown in the economy. and it is tough.

you know, this christmas, for instance, for a lot of shopkeepers, you saw things going on sale way before christmas. how do you catch up with that? people were sitting there waiting for the 70% discount to come in, and that really hurts retailers. that is why we are seeing shops being empty on the high street. what do we do with that? i don't want to talk her down because as an entrepreneur, what entrepreneurs are really great at is picking up the pieces and building something. that is always where my mindset is. after this christmas, we worked three times harder for every pound that we made, but we did it. we did it. and it means the next six months for us are much easier than some of the other retailers who were unable, who were really struggling. but there will always be a place in the market for retail. brexit is not going to stop that but it is making it really hard. i tell you what it is, it is the uncertainty.

right? nobody knows what is -- i would like to think of myself as a pretty savvy person, but i do not know what is going to happen today let alone tomorrow. so how am i supposed to build my business and invest in my business? carol: make decisions. jo: make decisions, right, so small little businesses which obviously is where my heart always lies, they do not have huge teams to advise them. they do not have the money to go and get lawyers. they need to know where are we going? is this safe for me to take this for the next year or the next six months? when you sign a lease and build a business, it is a commitment to yourself, to the community, and the people you employ. jason: up next, the ceo of mars, the candy bar king, sits down with bloomberg businessweek's joel weber. carol: they talk candy and the commitment to the environment. jason: and pets, oddly enough. also a rare look inside of a wall street hearing. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the radio. you can also catch up on our podcast that you can find at itunes, soundcloud, and apple books. jason: and find us online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. in debrief this week, sitting down with bloomberg businessweek editor joel weber. carol: the company known for its sweets and yet there is so much more. joel: mars is a really interesting company, privately held, family-owned, global, and it mints money, north of $35 billion of revenue. jason: remind us, these are brands everybody -- joel: these brands that everybody has this amazing affinity for and yet it is highly secretive and something nobody really knows much about.

we are talking about brands like mars, m&m's, skittles. that is the confectionery side. carol: but you push them a little bit by saying wait a minute, we are talking about healthier snacks, but he did not seem to back away. joel: he said they view it as a treat. he said, you should only do confectioneries and their candy product as treats. they are not supposed to be something you eat all the time. but they do see an opportunity in nutrition and that is something that we talked about. their partnership in india with tata group and that there is a malnutrition problem, and could there be a product they develop that fits that space and solves a problem for the world. one of the interesting things we talked about the sustainability. i framed it around this idea of you have a candy bar, you throw away the wrapper, but you can recycle back. does it actually get recycled, and that is one of the challenges he talked about. they talked about it a lot and you look at the oceans with all the plastic ending up in them, what are you going to do about

that? jason: here is what he had to say about sustainability and global warming. grant: we are basically an agricultural company that takes agricultural products, you know, fish, corn, cocoa, and turn it into brands. we are very dependent on the supply chain and the farmers, so supply chain and the farmers, so we see what we are trying -- so we believe climate change is real. you know, we believe in the paris agreement, and again we have been cutting out greenhouse gas emissions ourselves, so step back for a second. initially when we are looking at operations, we looked at just our own operations, and we did some great stuff around zero waste to landfill. we have renewable energy to cover all of our energy in the u.s., u.k., mexico and sydney, australia are all using renewable energy. we also realize that the metrics and capability to examine that

got more complete, then that is only a small part of the impact that we have in the world. mars inc. we found, when we looked at the supply chain, has a greenhouse gas emission equivalent to something like panama, which is not insignificant. so we are really got to play our part, and we looked at our whole supply chain. we are working with cocoa farmers, communities, and another great example that we are doing as a part of collaboration again with -- part of our livelihood in madagascar. we are working with partners, looking at ways to improve productivity, to manage some of the effects that are going to come with that change. carol: in the features section, what is like to go through arbitration with your employer. jason: millions of american workers sign away their rights without even knowing. carol: reporter max abelson has more.

max: people are familiar with arbitration, maybe they have a sense that has something to do with unions, maybe they have a sense of a consumer when you sign arbitration agreements when you get a cell phone. but what makes this story cool is it is really a story about workers and a story about american workers and we, you and i are both workers, what the american worker has done in the last 30 years is lose what feels like a very fundamental right. and that is a right, and i hope our bosses are listening -- a right to sue your boss in court should something go wrong. that means something along the lines of sexual harassment, or discrimination, or cheated, and realistically workers in america, if that happened to them, they will be in this quiet sort of shadow system called arbitration. and no one really knows what it looks like, and that is why this story is exciting because we got to shine a light on it. carol: let's talk about it because you take us behind the scenes of what goes on when there is an arbitration case or situation going on. max: yes. i do not want our audience

watching to think, arbitration is boring. carol: not boring. stay with us. max: it is a fun story because it has a real tale. carol: you call it "welcome to arbitration hell." max: that is a good, that is a good headline. i did not write that. i did not write that. it has got amazing art too. so there is a guy named alex bagel and. alex is a nerdy computer guy, he comes from the ukraine, and he was laid off by ubs, the biggest bank in switzerland. he is a tech guy, a very senior tech guy at ubs, and he found out when he got laid off that he was not going to get his bonus, which he thought he was days away from getting. it was around this time of year, january. carol: right. max: not only that but they were basically like if you want your deferred compensation, which is of course sort of a ton of money that comes with a built in timer, you have to wait, he thought he had all of this comp coming this way, and ubs said,

you want your deferred comp, please sign your paper saying you are not going to sue us. he would not do that. carol: and we talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. max: over $1 million. over $1 million essentially. he did two things, he took them to arbitration, and the second thing he did was he basically felt that his arbitration clause had a loophole that would allow him to file a class action which is when you team up with someone else. the supreme court, though, recently ruled that basically employers can get out of class action lawsuits thanks to arbitration clauses, so let's not worry about that fight. what we can talk about instead is that after the arbitration was over, i got a call from his lawyer, linda friedman, who is kind of an iconic civil rights attorney, and said i'm going to show you the transcripts. i am just going to send you the transcripts. carol: you got the transcripts? max: so i got the transcripts.

let me tell you something. we don't brag as reporters, but it is hard to get transcripts for arbitration sessions because a court case, if you and i decided to take a fun day off of work and go see court cases, you can walk in. you can walk into el chapo's case, the drug dealer. arbitration -- carol: it is private. by its nature. max: it is private. you can really think of it as more secretive, more shadowy, not necessarily all confidential, but from the outside you know much less about it. which is why the #metoo movement has emphasized arbitration. it is a way of keeping complaints quiet. carol: up next we have a fun story, rebooting a communist sneaker. jason: and out to eat like a king even when you're not in new york or l.a. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, also a.m. 311 in new york, 106.1 in boston. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area, in london on dab digital, and of course the bloomberg app. this week solution section is focused on small businesses. jason: specifically, very creative entrepreneurs making cider and sneakers, of course. carol: these are great stories. we got more from our editor. it is called zeha. dimitra: it is called zeha. i am not sure how to describe either. one of the classic styles is like a combo of a bowling shoe and a soccer shoe. not to draw comparisons, but i will draw comparisons. some people say they look like campers, but they are kind of cooler than campers. they have got stripes on the sides, they are leather, very

sturdy, and these were very popular in east germany before the fall of the wall. and kind of competing with the likes of puma, that is what was available to east germans with the zeha brand. and they kind of went away because of them it was open to all kinds of products after the fall of the wall, people were like, why do i need this. but they were cool and well made. and -- carol: how did they come back? i am always curious about a brand. dimitra: one of the three investors in the business now was somewhere and noticed a friend of his wearing a pair and he recognized them because he grew up in east germany and was like, wait a second. those look kind of familiar. he was intrigued to so he started looking into what had happened, where there are still a factory and so on and so forth. he decided, i'm going to do this. he, against the advice of some people, he found the cobbler that works for the original company, and the cobbler was like, you are crazy. what are you thinking about doing here? there are all these brands of footwear and sneakers. i have always been competitive.

we think of sneakers as being a big deal now, but sneakers are always something that i've been very competitive. people want what is the coolest and what is the latest, where is it coming from. whatever the cache it has got. carol: sneakers to killer snails, i have no better segue than that. tell us about killer snails. dimitra: killer snails, another company based in brooklyn founded by three women, and that is all about science and education and really trying to get kids, teenagers excited about science and careers in science. when the founders of the company, who came together in various ways, would talk about what was going on with science and science education, they were seeing trends that were kind of troubling in terms of not enough young people really pursuing careers in science. and they thought, we have to find a way to excite kids by science. what we want to do with this story was when nick leiber, who is one of our regular contributors to businessweek, met one of these women, she was talking a lot about how

everything is based on their testing and their piloting. it is all about that. you do not create a product for kids, and middle schoolers, and high schoolers especially if you do not find a way to tap into that audience and see how something works with them. so more and more what we would like to do with small businesses and what we are trying to do is identify parts of the business that might be challenging, or that you might have some questions about, and break it apart for you in ways that are accessible. jason: cider, steph curry, bring it all home. carol: [laughter] dimitra: we thought, let's do funny here. there is nothing official behind what we posit, and what the owner of this business, golden state cider, posits. but golden state cider is a cider company is in california, and it does quite well when steph curry is out there working his magic. when we looked at the timeline and the history of the company as compared to something like

when were the warriors in the playoffs, and when did steph curry's sign for the warriors, we thought this is a fun way that we can bring this all together. it is, it was, it is an old family business that was an apple orchard that simply sold apples, but apples were not enough to cut it in the very pricey sonoma region that it is in when more and more the land started selling for more and more five or 10 years ago, especially because of pinot noir production. so they pivoted and decided, we are going to take what we have, which is apples and we are going to create hard cider. there was nothing much happening with cider at the time that this happened around 2015, 2014. but right after that, cider really started just taking off and booming. jason: in pursuit of a foodie's guide to the best restaurants outside of new york and l.a. carol: from philly to minneapolis, food critics with the best eats in second cities. kate: second cities are

basically the cities that have been overshadowed by their neighbors and have like a bigger reputation, especially in the food world, maybe not in everything, but certainly where i sit, the food in some of these cities that set a couple of hours away from their bigger, better known neighbors have been getting all the headlines. and now we are seeing the emergence of these really cool cities that now you want to go to even more than their better-known counterparts. carol: i love it, and reading through this list, i want to go to philadelphia. kate: you totally want to go to philadelphia, and the funny conceit of it is, 10 years ago, you never would have thought that manhattan would advertise real estate its proximity to queens, right? i am a new yorker, never ever in my lifetime. likewise, you would not say, let's go to philadelphia to eat anything besides a cheesesteak, but it has really changed. like it is really, there has been a critical mass of chefs who have set up shop there. the food scene has gotten so

good i think it is threatening new york's, and i say that as a new yorker, a native new yorker. carol: let's go to other cities because you also talk about san antonio, minneapolis. who knew. kate: let's talk san antonio because austin has been in the foodie world, it has been the darling and gotten so much attention. about an hour and a half away, san antonio was known more for the birthplace of chili con carne, but now, about a decade ago, this place called "the pearl" was created, and it is a mixed space. carol: 22 acres. kate: it is huge. anchored by this gorgeous old building that was a brewery, and now there are 19 food and drink concepts in it. carol: minneapolis, indianapolis, asheville, richmond. kate: i think indianapolis is a cool story because who would have ever thought? you think about indy 500 and sports teams, and they have actually built up this really, really cool food scene, and one

thing they have done, the city has been good about creating parks and paths and walkways that take you from one food area to another. it has helped drive foot traffic, literally drive foot traffic there. carol: i think that washington dc, you go. there are tons of restaurants. richmond, though, just outside of dc. kate: it is cool. washington, dc in and of itself is a cool food city, but richmond has a fantastic beer city. and hand in hand with that, often, when beer, craft beer starts coming up, you see restaurant developing as well, and they have noticed something called the boomerang effect where chefs who work there or chefs who started there went away to make their name in a place like new york city, but now they are going back and establishing their own places, and they are and they are getting recognition across the country which is great. carol: "bloomberg businessweek"

is available on newsstands now. jason: and also online at businessweek.com. you are clapping already for your must-read. carol: i am. the global cover story, we love him, we get a chance to read something written by josh green and get to talk to him as well. how this shutdown in washington is different this time around. jason: and he puts it in gray -- great perspective because his expertise goes back decades in washington, but specifically on this administration, he wrote the book "devil's bargain," and he understands what this makes this administration and candidly what makes this president tick, and is a whole new ballgame with this congress. he says this is a shutdown like no other. carol: some great insights there. check that one out, and you can

also find more stories on businessweek.com over the weekend. jason: check out our daily businessweek podcast. carol: more bloomberg television starts right now. amazon prime video is now on xfinity x1.

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