Morning Brew Daily - Amtrak Launches NextGen Acela & The Wizard of Oz Takes the Sphere

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Episode 659: Neal and Toby discuss Amtrak’s new Acela that will zip up and down the Northeast corridor of the United States. Then, taking a look at the 20 years since Katrina and how the city of New Orleans recovered. The guys share their stock and dog of the week which includes the Wizard of Oz and India’s tariff conundrum. Finally college football is set to kick off and the headlines you should know heading into Labor Day. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Check out LinkedIn.com/mbd for more. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue. But it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morningbrewerdaily. That's aflac.com slash morning brew daily.

Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Amtrak rolled out the fastest trains in America, but will they have decent Wi-Fi? Then follow the yellow brick road to the Las Vegas strip. The Wizard of Oz has arrived at the sphere. It's Friday, August 29th.

Let's ride. There's been lots of recent controversy around rebrands, but one organization is hoping to freshen up its design language without setting off a firestorm. And that could be tough because it's the state of Massachusetts. it's my home state, well, technically it's a Commonwealth, is updating its state flag, seal, and motto. And this week unveiled the finalists after receiving more than 1,150 submissions from the public.

Toby, you poured through them all. Are we going to do better than Cracker Barrel? Absolutely not. One of the flag submissions is just a dinosaur running while holding a cup of Duncan. But I really enjoyed the motto submissions. Right now, the current Massachusetts state motto is Latin for by the sword we seek peace, but peace

only under Liberty, which is good, but listen to this one. In Cod, we trust. Come on, that's perfect. I also liked the Gateway to New Hampshire and God darn it. Massachusetts, number one again, question mark, question mark, question mark, which three cents 6093 is also objectively hilarious. My submission is we put the mass in massive student debt. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads.

Neil, I'm really going to miss August. The warm summer nights, the out of office auto replies. in the B2B ad platforms. Toby, you can use B2B ad platforms like LinkedIn ads all year round. Yeah, but not while fireflies are buzzing around my head. Well, you can get over 10 million C-suite execs and over 130 million decision makers, aka the people you need for your business on their platform a buzzing. You can target by job title, industry, company, and more.

They can link you with the right audience for your brand. So don't let the sunset on your strategy. LinkedIn ads will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign, so you can try it for yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Own it all.

Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly, big board buck slot machine by aristocrat gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th.

Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Here's something you don't hear every day. America is getting new high-speed trains.

Beginning yesterday, travelers along the Boston to D.C. corridor will start seeing next-gen-gen-a-cela-trains intended to speed up service along Amtrak's busiest route. These new trains put Thomas the tank engine to shame with the ability. with the ability to reach speeds of up to 160 miles per hour. That's 10 miles per hour faster than the current Acella fleet and could shave off 20 minutes of your journey between Washington and New York. But there's a catch because, of course, there is when you're talking about trains and the United States.

For now, these next-gen trains will actually be slower than existing Acellas because the rail infrastructure in the Northeast is ancient a century old. Its aging switches, signals, and power system wasn't built for high-speed trains, which are also slowed down by having to share the tracks alongside freight and the slower standard Amtrak trains that most of us take. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new trains are scheduled to take at least seven hours and five minutes to complete the trip from D.C. to Boston, compared to six hours and 56 minutes for the current Acela trains. Still, officials are billing the $2.5 billion project as the biggest investment in Amtrak's equipment in 25 years and a key part of the company's push to catch up with the rest of the developed world and having trains that, you know,

aren't embarrassing. This was supposed to come out in 20, 21, but it's just been held up by testing complications by infrastructure can strengthen, also just the COVID-19 pandemic as well. And right now, the bottleneck is not the trains themselves, because these trains are pretty sweet. We're looking at them today. They look pretty state of the art. But the infrastructure is what's holding its back right now. Right now, that corridor is actually shared with commuter and freight trains as well, which is not something that happens overseas in Europe or in Asia like that. So that's just one constraint. And then also just these tracks, power systems, these switches, these signals, some of them

are over 100 years old. So even though you take modern technology, if you put it on 100-year-old tracks, it slows it down more than their top speeds. So they're only going to get to their top speeds in certain portions of the track, which is why initially you're actually seeing a slower timetable for these faster trains. And one aspect of these trains that I didn't mention was that they're going to be bigger. They're going to carry 27% more passengers, which is necessary because Amtrak is doing actually really well. There was record ridership in fiscal year. 24. It surpassed pre-pandemic levels

for the first time. And then Acela specifically, now, if you haven't heard of the Acella, it's Washington to Boston on these premium higher speed trains. It costs more. There's only business class and first class. So you're going to pay a pretty penny. But it's quite a comfortable experience. There were three million passenger trips on Assella last fiscal year, which generated $530 million in ticket sales. So Ascela is doing well. It's why they're expanding the capacity of these trains to fit all these people that are shuttling up the East Coast. Even though the ridership is increasing, Amtrak's profitability is still in question. It's been losing money. It spent $4.3 billion on operations last year, but only brought in $3.6 billion. So the White House is putting a ton of

pressure on Amtrak to become more profitable. So it's been reducing a little bit of its head count and trying to get to an operational profit by 2028. We'll see if these new trains, you know, bring more people out, get more people excited about the train system, which is not something that usually happens. Famously, California has been trying to build one stretch of high-speed rail for literally decades now and they haven't been able to manage it. Maybe this is just an incremental improvement that will show that, hey, we can make these foundational upgrades the system needs. Yeah, I mean, let's compare it with the rest of the world. I know I said high-speed trains, but technically topping out at 160 miles per hour is not even a high-speed train. That's characterized as systems that

run above 186 miles per hour that doesn't yet exist in the United States. We're still at 160. If you go around the world, a number of train systems do exceed 186 miles per hour in Europe and in Asia. The fastest train in the world right now is in China. It has a 217. mile per hour max. So the United States is still behind in terms of how fast these trains can go. Moving on, today marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. In that time, the city has been rebuilt, but remains on precarious ground, both geographically and economically. New Orleans has always been a city at war with its environment, built with rising water on one side and sinking land on the other. But on August 29, 2005, Katrina overwhelmed the city's levees.

It flooded, killing 1,800 people displacing roughly a million and causing $200 billion in damage. It remains the costliest storm in American history. Some politicians argued whether New Orleans should exist at all, given its tenuous environmental position. The country eventually decided yes, but it's been a long road to recovery in the decade since. Washington pumped $125 billion into rebuilding the shattered community. Later, another $14 billion went into a flood protection system of levees and pumps. But its three core industries, tourism, shipping, and oil and gas are still shedding jobs to this day. The city is bleeding residents faster than any other city of its size, is now 23% smaller than in 2000.

And in the next 50 years, Louisiana is expected to lose as much coastal land as it did in the past 100, according to the economists. Neil, Katrina, was 20 years ago, but in many ways, the city still sits on the edge of existential risk. Yeah, I think people are forgetting just how big this government, recovery was. They poured $140 billion into New Orleans in order to rebuild this city post. Katrina, that is bigger, adjusted for inflation than the amount spent on the post-World War II Marshall Plan or the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan after the September 11th attacks. These two guys, a journalist and a urban planner, both from New Orleans, have this op-ed in the New York Times where they wrote the $140 billion failure. We don't talk about. They

said that this particular recovery was painful, expensive, and ultimately a failure. They say that New Orleans is more unequal and poorer than it was before Katrina. They said that the $140 billion was not spent wisely. It went to a variety of contractors and companies and local governments that were all at war with each other. And there was lack of organization and accountability. And that all this money kind of ended up as a slush fund for contractors and didn't actually go to the places where it was needed.

Still, there are some success stories from the rebuilding project. The West Closure Complex is the biggest pumping station in New Orleans. It can empty an Olympic pool in five seconds, which is just difficult for my mind to comprehend. Residents pay about $150 a year to maintain it, and it's looked at as the gold standard for flood prevention in the U.S. New York City actually looks at Louisiana and New Orleans in particular to figure out how they can protect their city from flooding. And then also, one thing that you don't think about is that you had to rebuild the entire school system as well after Katrina because basically public schools shut down.

They decided to shift to an all charter school system, which was the first time in the country that a city had done that. And it's led to gains in education outcomes. It is now looked at as a massive success story where test scores have risen. So when you have the chance to rebuild like that, some parts of the city did in fact come back better. Yeah, the charter school system is very interesting. interesting, 56% of high school students graduated on time before the storm. Now around 80% of students graduate on time. There's still a lot of controversy around whether this system is working as well as intended. But, I mean, you can't argue with the metrics. Test scores, high school graduation

weights, college going pretty much every metric across the board when it comes to educational attainment has improved due to this, you know, charter school overhaul. New Orleans looks like there's a long way to go. Its population is 23% lower than it was before Katrina is going to be commemorations and memories all over the country today might be worth checking out a documentary or two or reading up on it this weekend. Welcome back to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, where Neil and I pick one stock from the week's news that is Grimsby Town and one stock that is sad, sad Manchester United. I won the pre-show game of Tongue Twisters saying a stunning rendition of unique New York. So I'm up first. And my stock of the week is the

the Sphere Entertainment Company because the hotly anticipated recreation of the Wizard of Oz began showing at its Las Vegas location last night. Emerald City is moving to Sin City for this whole month, with the Las Vegas sphere transforming the classic film into a 1700 seat sensory roller coaster. For over $100 a ticket, you can see the yellow brick road stretched out over its 160,000 square foot LED screen and can hear the rest of the tornado on its 167,000 speakers. The goal, as producer Carolyn Blackwood put it, was to create an immersive medium, not a passive one. Visitors will be thrust into Oz with a barrage of real-life effects, tornado winds from wind machines, actual fire when the wizard shows up, flying monkeys that take flight via inflatable drones.

The goal is to make the movie feel both enormous and alive. Before the launch, the show sold over 200,000 tickets. Of course, using technology to recreate and expand upon the classic film has not come without criticism. film historians and online critics have slammed the spectacle as a desecration of the source material, pushing back specifically on the use of AI to, quote, enhance the original work. But producers of the film have dismissed that backlash as premature, since no one had seen the whole film yet. But that all changed yesterday. Neil, this movie arrives right as the broader film industry grapples with anxiety over AI replacing jobs.

The sphere's publicly traded stock is up about 8% this week, but it'll be interesting to see how Dorothy and Toto, on the biggest screen ever is received by the masses. It'll be a huge test for how AI and Hollywood can collaborate. One specific AI use that has gotten critics all riled up is the fact that they are artificially generating images that are not there in the original 1939 movie because this screen is so much bigger than what the Wizard of Oz has typically been shot in. So Dorothy has legs in a particular scene where it was cut off before. Coffee field goes on and on and on the cowardly lion and Uncle Henry in certain scenes were not in the scene.

They were technically off the screen, but they were generated to be on the screen in this particular format for this massive screen. So we'll see how audiences respond. I think it's particularly cool. But if you look at the comments of the CBS Sunday morning video on YouTube where they talked about The Wizard of Oz, you saw things like artistic butchery, the death of cinema. You should all be ashamed. and that is coming from a place of deep concern for Hollywood and creatives across the board where AI is threatening to take their jobs. The sphere working with over 2,000 people from Google DeepMind to Warner Bros.

People are saying that we can do this collaboratively where it enhances and refreshes a classic. Well, the issue is, is your view of cinema. A lot of people view cinema as I'm calling it cinema because I'm a cinephile. They view it as a static medium. You release a movie and then the movie is what it is. This reimagines it as almost a software program that you can update and remix and just endlessly change with the technology we have at our disposal today to improve it or maybe not. That's the question that people will have to sift through themselves.

So a lot of the producers are saying you've got to unlearn how you used to watch movies. This is the future. We have this insane medium. Why not use it and project more effects in there than you're typically used to? so maybe it's just an ultimate commodification of just classic IP, or maybe it is an awesome reimagining. I also thought it was very interesting why they chose the Wizard of Oz specifically. Well, first of all, it's the most viewed movie in history, according to the Library of Congress. So there's that name recognition. Everybody knows the Wizard of Oz, and if you're trying to sell

tickets, well, that's obviously a good choice. And then second was the symbolism. They chose Wizard of Oz because it was the technical marvel of its time. It was pushing boundaries. It used technicolor. and it was one of the first movies to do this and make those colors actually pop. So back in 1939, it was a technological marvel. They're hoping that the same goes for 2025. I can't wait to see it. Now let's take a quick break before we go to our dog of the week.

It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your breakfast. backyard, then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot.

Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to home depot.com slash price match for details. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ali's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-Dianine for both kiddos and grown-ups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the Whole Family at Ali.com. That's OLLLY.com.

Okay, my dog of the week is India, which the U.S. slapped with one of the highest tariff rates of any country in the world, 50%. With the American market becoming too expensive, analysts are warning of a job's bloodbath for labor-intensive Indian industries, including textiles, jewelry, and farming, which employ hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S.'s 50% tariff rate on India, which went into effect on Wednesday, is made up of a 25% reciprocal tariff, plus a 25% tariff to penalize India for buying Russian oil, which the U.S. says is funding Putin's war machine in Ukraine. The steep rate came as a huge shock since the U.S. and India are close allies, and Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi share a close relationship. India's number one trade destination is the United States. But with tariffs in place, India's major export industries could get wiped out. I'm talking southern India's shrimp farms, which is where most of the frozen shrimp you buy at the grocery store comes from, or the diamond workers of Gujarat, home to the world's largest diamond cutting and polishing center. Not all of India's $90 billion in exports to the U.S. will be subject to the new tariffs.

Electronics are exempt, a big win for Apple, which increasingly makes its iPhones there, and so are pharmaceutical products. Still, about two-thirds of India's goods exports to the U.S. will be tariffed, which could lead to an estimated 70% drop in. and shipments, or in other words, a near trade embargo. A jewelry industry leader called it an earthquake. It is an earthquake because once those U.S. buyers go to a different competitor, it's very hard to win that market share back. So even if this is just a brief moment in time and the tariff tension eventually settles down a little bit, you have lost some of your business, which will have long-term effects. Let's talk about Russian oil, because if that's at the heart of this issue, can India wean itself off Russian oil? And it looks tough because, one,

India is the number three biggest oil consumer in the world. And since the Ukraine war broke out, they have gone from sourcing less than 1% of their oil from Russia to 40% of their oil from Russia today. So it's become a much bigger part. And one of the reasons is because Russia allows them to buy the oil in the rupees, which is their native currency, instead of the U.S. dollar. So that is one reason why it's definitely a favorable situation for India. and then the Indian refiners have saved around $17 billion on buying Russian crude oil since 2022. So, again, these are big numbers that we're talking about here. It's not going to be easy for them to just immediately find a fungible source to sub in for the Russian oil that they've been consuming.

Yeah, and the problem isn't just 50% tariffs. It's their tariffs related to their competitors. So that 50% tariff is 16 percentage points above China, 31 percentage points higher than Southeast Asia. 35 percentage points higher than South Korea. So if you are making the same type of goods, think textiles, right? India definitely competes with Bangladesh in terms of textiles. Well, now they're at a 30% price disadvantage to Bangladesh, which is why you have textiles industry in India saying, well, we're going to lose millions of jobs here.

And the industries, I mentioned, it's not all the industries that are going to be subject to the tariffs, just two thirds of them. But those industries are the ones that are mass employment. the ones that employ so many people. It's not the tech industry which has less employment. It's textiles and farming and things like that, which, you know, are very labor intensive. And that's why India is in crisis mode right now and trying to figure out how it will respond to this prime minister, Modi actually traveled to Japan today where, you know, he's trying to get Japan to buy more stuff from India. Basically, the goal now for Modi is saying, well, if the U.S.

market is closed off, well, I got to find some other markets for my exporters or else we're going to lose a ton of jobs here. Tomorrow is week one of the new college football season, so don't be surprised if you see a drunk 19-year-old yelling something like Roll Tide, Hookham, or We Are Unprompted. The marquee matchup tomorrow, and it's extremely juicy, is the number one Texas Longhorns visiting the third-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus. But outside of the horseshoe, before the noon kickoff,

is another duel we're keeping our eye on, Fox versus ESPN. Both networks will be outside Ohio Stadium for their pregame shows, a media rivalry that escalated this offseason with an emphasis on online creators. Fox's Big Noon kickoff will bring on Barstool Sports's Dave Portnoy to join its panel as part of a broader partnership with the company. That was seen as a counterpunch to ESPN, which hired sports personality Pat McAfee

for its own college pregame show, College Game Day. ESPN currently has the upper hand with Game Day entering its 39th season compared to Fox Big Noon kickoff, which was launched in 2019. But Fox is hoping Portnoy's big personality and his University of Michigan homerism will tilt the playing field. Toby, they're calling it the Frat Boy takeover of sports media. There are so many layers to this because also Fox has the rights to air Big Ten games, while ESPN has the rights to air SEC games.

So everywhere you look, it's Fox versus ESPN on the personality front, on the game front itself. And we haven't even really mentioned the fact that Texas versus Ohio State is just a banger of a game to start the year off with. But yeah, this competitive conference realignment has made its way all the way up to the broadcasters themselves. Right now it looks like game day does have the upper hand. Last season, game day averaged 2.2 million viewers, while Big Noon averaged just under 1 million viewers. Obviously, some new faces in play this year, so we'll see if Fox can close the gap there.

But it is funny that maybe the biggest rivalry isn't even taking place on the field. It's taking place before the game and during the broadcast itself. The other aspect of the college football season we should call out is sideshow Bill, as in Bill Belichick, as in Bill Belichick and his girlfriend, 24-year-old Jordan Hudson, who just can't stop making headlines. Somehow, Belichick's college coaching debut has been overshadowed by the pair's business ventures and morning show appearances. First, there was the awkward moment on CBS Sunday morning where Hudson interjected when Belichick

was asked how the pair met. Then Hudson allegedly interfered with UNC getting a season of HBO's hard knocks, which cost the university millions in exposure. And just yesterday, it was revealed that Hudson had used Belichick's company to file for the trademark for the term gold digger alongside 17 other filings earlier this year. Needless to say, Neil, somehow the greatest football coach of all time making his college football debut for the University of North Carolina has gone under the radar thanks to the other noise from the two's relationship.

Well, I don't know if you would know that if you were on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill because the Belichick merch is going crazy. They're playing Monday night. UNC already sold out football tickets faster than it ever has, hoping to get this. return that it spent a ton of money on Bill Belichick, $10 billion a year, putting him in the top 10 college coaches across the board. They're expecting a $750,000 bump in merch and concessions. So, you know, this has been a financial windfall for UNC, and Belichick and Hudson are hoping that it's a financial windfall for them as well. But yeah, everyone's going to be watching

Monday night to see Bill Belichick, an eight-time Super Bowl winner in the pros who has passed up for a bunch of professional jobs making his college debut in Chapel Hill. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. A historic legal battle over the future of the Federal Reserve has officially kicked off. Yesterday, Fed Governor Lisa Cook sued President Trump to prevent him from firing her over allegations of mortgage fraud. The upcoming battle is, yep, I'll use the word, unprecedented. We've never seen anything like this before in the U.S.

and could have massive ramifications for the central bank's independence, which is seen as a bedrock of the global financial system. They write, quote, the unsubstantiated and unproven allegation that Governor Cook potentially erred in filing out a mortgage form prior to her filling out. They write, quote, the unsubstantiated and unproven allegation that Governor Cook potentially erred in filling out a mortgage form prior to her Senate confirmation does not amount to cause, asserting it is unsupported by case law. Legal experts expect this case to make its way to the Supreme Court. If Trump successfully removes Cook, he could install a majority of loyalists on the Fed board who would lower interest rates according to. his wishes, but not necessarily in the best interests of long-term economic health. Yeah, the Cook situation is heating up. Pardon, my pun. But Lisa Cook isn't the only government

official Trump's been targeting this week either. While she was fighting back, another official Robert Premis from the Surface Transportation Board, says he came home from the Amtrak ribbon cutting ceremony and found that his phone was locked and realized that he'd just been fired. He said he didn't get any warning or any explanation. He's known as a little bit cautious on these big rail consolidations, he actually dissented between this merger between Kansas City Southern and Canadian, or a different merger back in 2023 between two rail operators. And the White House's official position on his firing was that he did not align with an America first agenda. But we'll see potentially it was tied to this big rail merger that is pending. Finally, it looks like more people

are turning to the comfort of a fluffy teddy bear dress as a firefighter in these trying times because build a bear stock is on a tear post-earnings. After reporting better than expected results yesterday where they opened 14 new stores in the second quarter and raised their sales forecast, the stock jumped 14%. The picture gets even rosier, though, if you zoom out. Build a bear has outperformed nearly every stock over the last five years, including Palantir and Invidia. Seriously, if you had invested $10,000 into Build a Bear workshop five years ago, you would now be sitting on over $270,000. Its CEO called out its direct-to-consumer segment, and and its double-digit revenue growth in its commercial segment as drivers of its strong financial performance.

Neil, who needs AI? When you have custom stuffed animals, you can put funny little outfits on. It is remarkable looking at these numbers. Bill DeBare over the past five years is up 2,300 percent compared to Nvidia's 1,200% gain. Just crazy growth. And that is because of this adult craze where adults are now buying plushy toys, in greater numbers than ever before. Back in 2022, less than 20% of Bill DeBear total sales were teens and adults.

And just three years later, it's 40% of their total sales. The CEO also called out social media ad targeting has been as a huge windfall for Build DeBear because they can find these micro communities on social media and then hit them with ads that didn't exist before. So now you can find people who are obsessed with, say, Harry Potter and Bill DeBer at the same time and say, hey, look, we actually have this new collab between Bill DeBer and Harry. Potter. Well, here you go, and that leads to a lot of sales. Did you ever have one growing up? I had a tiger. I don't know why I went to Build the Bear and made a tiger, but I made a tiger

with a little soccer player outfit on, and I lost that thing immediately. Okay, well, it's been a long week, but thankfully there's a three-day weekend coming up for Labor Day. Hope you have something a little special plan for the unofficial bookend to summer. Toby and I each pick something we're looking forward to this weekend. For me, after barnstorming the UK and Ireland in the past few months, Oasis is bringing their wonder wall of sound to the U.S. the British rock band played their first U.S. show since 2008 in Chicago on Thursday and will hit MetLife Stadium in New Jersey for three nights beginning on Sunday before heading to the Rose Bowl in L.A.

The group broke up 16 years ago amid a feud between the two leading brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher. But those two shockingly made up for a summer tour that's been obsessed over in England. While mega popular in their home country, Oasis never made a huge splash in the U.S., so their upcoming stadium shows will be a test of their popularity in America. I'm not planning on going as of now, but you never know, FOMO is a powerful thing. Well, OASIS is coming here, and I'm going the other way. I'm actually looking forward to traveling to England, where I'm the best man at a wedding.

So I will wave to the Gallagher's as we pass in the air. But yes, very excited for the wedding. My fiancé has introduced me to the concept of fascinators. Do you know what those are? I do not. Fascinators. F-A-S-C-I-T-O-R-S. They are like these tiny formal headpieces that you attach via a band or a clip.

Just think about what Kate Middleton wears all the time. But yes, right now our apartment is littered with fascinators as she decides which one to wear. So fascinating if you ask me. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. If you have any thoughts or feedback on today's show, send a note to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits.

Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Loo is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair makeup isn't in Kansas anymore. Devin Emery is our president. and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show to Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow. Mom, can you tell me a story?

Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired, mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did you have to find a dragon? Nope, she bought it 100% online, from her bed, actually. Was it scary?

Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on... Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.