Morning Brew Daily - Mailbag Episode! Morning Routines, Best Career Advice, and More

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Episode 748: Neal and Toby take your questions on this special New Year’s Day edition of Morning Brew Daily. They share their morning routines, where they get their news, best career advice, and more. Happy 2026! Check out https://www.rubrik.com 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

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Good morning bird daily. Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, you've got questions and we've got answers. A special Q&A edition of the pod where things are going to get spicy. It's Thursday, January 1st. Let's ride. Happy New Year and welcome to 2026. Did you know that now we are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza? It's true. And it has been for 500 years. Either way, we're very excited. begin this new chapter with you all this year. And what better way to kick it off than by getting a little vulnerable?

We are in the hot seats today and answering questions that you all submitted to us a few weeks ago. Some of them were too personal, like are we tidy witty or briefs guys, but everything else was on the table. We'll run through some business and market focus questions you had before diving into some lore about the show and ourselves. And I tell you what, we got some young Barbara Walters on our hands because you guys ask some great questions and some horrible ones like the tidy-wighty one.

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To our first question, this one was from Golden Boy Brawl Stars on Instagram. They asked us, what was the most significant moment of 2025? Toby, I'm tossing it to you first. My mind immediately went to Liberation Day when Trump rolled out those tariffs and was holding up the big poster board. It looked like a cheesecake factory menu. But that moment felt like it defined a better part of the year. We said tariffs an ungodly amount of times on the podcast after that day. It definitely spooked the markets. It spooked the markets continually over the next few months as well.

And I had my quote unquote normie friends asking me about it, which to me shows that something penetrated the general consciousness saying like, hey, is everything going to get more expensive? Like, what's going on with tariffs? So to me, I think that moment where he's holding the board in the, you know, the Rose Garden, that sums up 2025.

And everyone's going through looking at each of the names and each of the percentages that are associated with those particular countries. And we also got the story of the herd and McDonald Islands, which are home to no humans at all, but they got a tariff for the penguins and the polar bears that live there. my most significant moment of 2025 came all the way back in February when the Eagles won the Super Bowl.

They crushed the Chiefs. Yeah. So that was a great moment of 2025. Actually, it's true. It's not my most significant moment. One of those moments was the Pope's election. That was pretty cool when we got the first American Pope. And there was a lot of hoopla around that particular election and the process behind it.

And I thought it was a cool marriage of something ancient, truly, that's been going on for more than a thousand years and something modern having this dialogue with each other. And it was also another moment we saw the rise of prediction markets, which was a huge narrative and story this year. Yes, they were big during the election back in November 2024, but also, you know, everyone was kind of clued into the prediction markets. What was Kalshi and what was Polly Market saying about which Pope would take the lead or get or get elected? So I thought that was quite an interesting angle to it all. Which, by the way, the prediction markets got it totally wrong. I was all in on Pizza Bala because, come on, a Pope with the last name, Pizza Bala is pretty cool.

But first, American Pope is a pretty good consolation prize. If we're being honest, though, I think the most significant moment of 2025, in terms of its impact that we'll have 5, 10, 15 years down the road will probably be an advancement in an AI video generator like nanobanano or SORA or something like that from AI and OpenAI and Google. Because I don't know, I just think going down the line, those things, true. blur the line between reality and fiction and I think as they keep getting better and they're already so amazing. I just think the, you know, the risks, the opportunities and the risks are endless when it comes to those, when it comes to generating video that is fake but looks so real. Neil, you'd have a feeling great if this was an exam question because you just gave three completely different answers. You got to stick to your guns. I'm Liberation Day all the way. And I'm Eagles.

All right. Let's move on. This question is from Liz, also on Instagram. What do you predict the hottest jobs will be in 2035. Okay, I hope we're not. I hope we're graded on a curve here because that is a long time from now and things can change pretty fast. But I guess from an overall trend perspective, with AI coming for white collar jobs, and I do think that it will be a significant blow to accountants, lawyers, people just doing desk work. I think that the jobs that will rise in status to become, quote unquote, hotter are things you do with your hands like the trades, electricians and plumbers, we're already seeing that in 2024 and 2025, those companies, those types of jobs, really commanding a premium. And then in the same vein of people who do

stuff with their hands and feet, athletes, I think athletes is going to be an even bigger job, because right now we have AI that can code AI that can write AI, can search the web for you, but we don't yet have AI that we'd watch play soccer, football on the TV. To that, I say humanoid robots. Neil. I'm saying we don't have them yet. They can barely, you know, fold laundry. They're not going to start kicking field goal. I know. I was actually more thinking about the trades. Like, I feel like eventually we're going to have AI enabled humanoid robot electricians and plumbers, although maybe that does take a little bit more. 2035, not 2035. Yeah, 2040.

2035 is a long way away, which makes my answer feel a little bit more short term dated. But my answer was cultural strategists or just like experiential marketers because it kind of messes with the same theme that you described. where as AI slot becomes more prevalent, IRL is so back. We have said that so many times throughout the year that people are craving in real life connection with each other. And so people who can create those moments,

I'm thinking of the Marty Supreme, you know, marketing campaign, when there was a blimp, and there was just these clothing pop-ups, and it felt very energetic in real life. I think the people who can tap into those feelings and tell those stories for brands are going to become even more important. So I don't know what the action. name of it is. I'm calling it cultural stratus, but people who have a finger on the

pulse are going to become more important. I love that. Okay, let's move on to Alex who asked, curious, what's one thing you now pay much more attention to in business or markets than you did when you first started Morning Brew and why? All right, this might be a hot take because as I've started to pay attention

to more business news as a whole, you realize that there's not as much going on as you think. And I want you to tell me if you agree with this, but as we are going through the news of the day, there's only a few stories that are really dominating the narratives in the market for that day. Yes, there's a lot of peripheral things going on, but the main core things that are of importance is not that high. You can usually count them on one hand. Our show only has,

you know, five or six stories a day. So when you are not paying attention to the market, it feels like all this crazy stuff is going on all the time. You don't know what's happening and you just feel like there's this tsunami of information coming on. Once you start honing in and focusing. It almost feels like there is less going on than I actually anticipated. Well, the news is a business, and they need to generate stories and narratives and things that are supposedly going on because they need people to watch that. I mean, CNBC is, I don't know if it's a 24-hour network, but they are going for many hours of the day, and there certainly is not enough things to talk about. And same with sports or any other news outlet that has something going

24 hours a day. I mean, if you actually watch that all the way through, there's, you know, 90% of it, they're talking about absolutely nothing. So that's why I like what we do is we know that there's a lot going on that may be important, but that also may not be important. Then we just make a 25-minute show about what actually is important. I think that's maybe why people listen to the show. So wait, are you agreeing with me or disagree with me that there's not as much going on as you think? I agree. Okay, perfect. Do you have an answer? But I'm saying that That's because of the industry of the news business. My answer is, well, I didn't pay attention to business or markets at all before I started

at Morning Brew. I was a history major, and I didn't even know why Warren Buffett was famous. I didn't know what IPO stood for. So it's all new to me. And actually, I've been doing this since 2017, so now it's not new. But before then, yeah, I did not know anything about business. I was very much a liberal arts person. So before and after morning brew is completely 180 for me.

But I also have talked to a lot of other business journalists and people doing business reporting and things like that. They're very similar to me in that they didn't set out. Many of them did not set out to be business reporters. They set out to do something else and then somehow backed in to business and the economy and markets. And we're like, well, this is just super interesting. And I've really thought about this before. But because I'm a curious person, I can get into it. And obviously it's so important and drives pretty much everything.

we do. Let's move on to Matt's question. Can I get a prediction on stock of the year, dog of the year for 2026? Let's have a caveat here. Oh yeah, you can do the, I'll do the caveat. This is not financial advice. Do not take anything we say as financial advice. And with that said, Neil, go ahead. Well, I'm going to do maybe broader trends. And so what is going to be the stock of the year for 2026? I think things kind of even out and even Stevens where if something's down the year before. Maybe it'll go back up the next year. So I think I look at slop bowls like Kava and Chipotle and Sweet Green. They had a really bad year in 2025. People did not go to slop bowl places at all. Maybe that was inflation or maybe that people were turning to sandwiches for

more texture. I don't really know what was going on. But those companies had a really bad 2025. So maybe we could see a comeback in 2026. And this is actually backed up by a company called Citrini Research, which releases a bunch of trends that they see going on in the stock market. market in 2026. And they say something like this that back of the house automation would allow these firms to reduce labor costs and boost profit margins. So when you're looking at a, you know, X's and O's perspective, not just vibes, which my stock analysis is based completely on vibes as like this company, these companies did bad the year before and there's going to be some sort of cultural rebound back to Sloppels. They're talking about actual profits and the fact that Sweet

Green and Chpola are doing a lot of automation. We got this auto Cotto from Chipotle. which they're going to cut out some workers and have robots do a lot of the avocado slicing and mashing sweet green has been huge into automation. So those are ways to cut costs. And maybe it won't necessarily drive traffic back to these places, but at least they'll be more profitable. I never got off the slop bowl train. So I've been a ardent slap bowl supporter. What's your dog of the week?

Or dog of the year, sorry. My dog of the year could be meta. And I don't know whether the stock will go up or down, obviously. but when you look at all these companies that are investing tens of billions of dollars into AI, there seems to be a pretty obvious use case for AI when it comes to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. But when you look at meta investing $70 billion into AI infrastructure, that's a lot, obviously. Like, what are they going to use AI for to make ads better on Instagram? Like, how are they going to actually make money from AI?

I literally just think you answer that question. Okay, maybe I did. But I do think 2026 is going to be a year of like, show me the money for investors looking to these AI hyperscalers and saying, can you show me a return on your investment? It feels like from Google, Microsoft, Amazon's perspective, might be easier to show that progress than META. And META's most recent earnings report last quarter or the third quarter of 2025 was really bad. They said they were going to spend a lot more than they were expected and their stock tanked because of it. So I think they're just maybe more. questions around meta's social media use case of it than these other ones that are focused more on enterprise. I'm going in a totally different direction for stock the week than slot bowls. I'm going in metals and uranium. I don't think people realize how much copper wire a data center uses, just a single data center. We're talking like football fields worth of copper wire.

And we're, when the same thing goes for uranium as nuclear, you know, comes online and gets more and more support behind it. I'm just pretty bullish on finite resources that are pretty crucial to the infrastructure and energy plays over the next few years. And then for Dog of the Week, this one is also a little vibes base. I'm going with Ticketmaster because I don't think there's a more hated company out there today in terms of their customer base, but then also in terms of regulators. There's so many lawsuits floating around the ticketing industry in general right now, especially as the World Cup and all these mega events come online, tickets conversation and ticket prices conversations,

just become back in the zeitgeist. So I'm thinking Ticketmaster is just going to get a lot of that negative energy and it's not going to have the best year going forward. Very vibes based, very vibes based. And that's fun. All right, let's go on to some Morning Brew Daily questions. This one's from Daniel and we really could have picked anyone because a lot of people wanted to know about our daily routine.

So this is just what Danny wrote. What do you guys do if you want to go out with friends? That's an assumption, okay? And have some drinks on any given night. Do you ever stroll into the studio at 4 a.m. Healthy hungover? What happens if there's some breaking news that you have to incorporate into tomorrow's show while you're out on the town?

There was a lot to unpack there. I think in general, I call it a school night whenever we have a show the next day. So like we're not doing anything. We're not club rats. We're not club rats. The latest we stay up is usually for trivia, like a bar trivia that we're either hosting or attending. So, you know, we're adults.

Like we have work in the morning, so we're not going to do anything crazy. So that's first and foremost. If something late in breaking happens, we are in the office at 4.30 in the morning. And so we usually have a little bit of time before we actually record. We typically sit down and record around 6 a.m. So that hour, hour and a half before we start recording is one last chance to do a headline sweep. If something big happened overnight, we just quickly prepare for it in the morning. That's kind of the reason why we do it in the morning.

so we can be as up to date as possible. So that's a big reason that, one, we're not out parting at night on the town. And two, that we're in the office so morning so we can bring in the most up-to-date show as possible. Yeah, usually we just have to decide. We come in Monday morning. We have to decide whether the Sunday night football game is going to be the top story or the second story. But yeah, there's a lot of talk because we do love sports and, you know, other stuff that happens late at night, but we do usually go to bed before those finish.

So there's a lot of talk of like, hey, did you see that this happened? there's a lot of like recapping what happened from the hours of nine to midnight in the world, usually when, usually in the sports and entertainment sphere. This question is from Brendan. Which CEO would you want to interview the most and why? Great question. I just heard an interview from this guy and I thought he was really interesting and I would love to interview him. It is Blake Scholl who is the CEO of Boom Supersonic.

Boom Supersonic is a company that makes planes or is trying to, trying to make planes that go supersonic speeds that go really fast. So basically another iteration of the Concord, but trying to rectify the mistakes that made Concord not a great business proposition. So this guy was pretty thoughtful on things from like just how do we improve airports from when the moment you get out of your car at the gate to boarding the actual plane. So he has a lot of, you know, thoughts of revamping security and the airport experience to when you actually get on a plane and you can travel from New York to London. in three hours. He was really happy that this administration removed restrictions on overland supersonic travel. So that was a big regulation that limited supersonic aviation over the United States and that limited this industry was that we, because of the sonic boom that happens

past Mach 1, there were restrictions on how fast you could fly over the United States. And those restrictions are not there anymore. So maybe we'll see a boom. in supersonic travel led by this company called Boom, and it would be really interesting to hear his thoughts. I'm going way more mainstream, Sam Altman. I just want to get a read on the guy. He's going to shape the course of humanity over the next decade or so. So it would just be nice to see how he is.

We get to talk to our guests a little bit before we actually go on air with them. And, you know, that five-minute period can go a long way to just figuring out, hey, would I like want to hang out with this guy or not? So I really, like, I don't know if anyone that will forward this to Sam Altman, but he is one of the more influential people in our modern times right now. So, of course, that's someone who I want to sit down with. And yeah, quite mysterious. Very mysterious.

Hey, he doesn't do a lot. And he mostly does interviews, you know, in very controlled environments with, like, people from the industry. So maybe we could bring him to more of the normy masses. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back right after this. Okay, Toby, this question is from Brendan, who asked our previous question. So he was kind of on fire. What product would you advertise on the show that does not sponsor you?

why something you use day-to-day or you believe in. Okay, I am big into fitness tracking right now. So whoop and eight sleep are the big ones, although whoop actually already sponsored the show. Whoop is just something that you wear on your wrist every day and it tells you how you slept, you know, how is your resting heart rate, how's your heart rate variability?

And I've gotten really into the data side of health recently. So any health tracker from aura ring to eight sleep to whoop would be something that I personally do use and would like to, you know, sponsor on the show. It's just fun. Even though you're not a big fan of it because sometimes you have a bad night sleep and you're like, I don't need the data to tell me already that I had another night's sleep that was that was poor. So that's something that I've just started nerding out on. So any fitness trackers, one that I'd love to have. What are the other fitness trackers that are? Well, or Orr rings. Actually, the only one I haven't tried,

it's just like a different form factor. So, and just any heart rate monitor when you're doing exercise. I just like the data portion of it is something that fascinates me because you see how, you know, if I eat this close to my bedtime, it actually makes me sleep worse. And you can start figuring out how to dial those things. And I don't let it govern my life because, you know, life is for living still. But it's still, it's just fun to say like, oh, this is how my body reacts to these things. All right. I took this question in a different direction because I don't know. I just thought about what stuff I used. I just reflected on what products I use every single day. Number one is this rubber spatula. So I hope rubber spatula accompanies. I think it's just Amazon basics. But it's just this blue rubber spatula. And you can use it on literally anything you cook from eggs to soups to literally anything. And it's something I pretty much use every day or at least five days out of the week. The other one is the New York Times games app or the New York Times crossword.

I do that pretty religiously every single day. The full crossword, not the mini. And now I've been getting into Spelling Bee a little bit more. So that is another product that I use quite literally every single day. The other is the New York City Subway. I'm on it every single day. You can sponsor us. Zoran, you are the mayor now.

So if you're listening to this, would love to be sponsored by the F train. That is so fun. Neil's mind immediately goes, you can pick any product in the world, rubber spatula, a crossword, and a train. I'm telling you, I'm just saying this is what I use every day. It was just like a very interesting thought exercise.

It might be something for people out there too. And then the other, this is a little more sincere, but like media outlets and newspapers, because that is something we use. every single day. And we definitely cannot do our job without it. And they require payments because this is a business after all. So yeah, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Associated Press, Reuters, business insider, NPR, like all of the news websites. Keep going. Keep going. More, more, more. No. Are we competitors?

I think there's a symbiotic relationship between them and us. And especially with the newsletter, for many years, the newsletter would, is we were, us too. We are aggregators, the podcast and the newsletter. We take what's out there that other people have published, and we put it into this pint-sized, more fun, light-hearted format for audiences who feel a little overwhelmed with all of the news out there, as we discussed earlier. And at the same time, the newsletter drives a ton of traffic back to these publishers that hopefully gets them more customers and more paying customers that feeds their business.

So I've talked to these guys over my eight years at Morning Brew, and they love us, we love them. There's a great relationship between us and legacy media, and I know they've gotten a bad rap. Trust in news media is at an all-time low right now, but in terms of a product that I use every day and find a lot of value in, it's legacy media. It's newspapers. You absolutely failed. They do great work. Failed the question again. You're not allowed to have 14 answers to every single one of these, okay?

I prepared one answer. You got 17 of them. All right. let's move on to some more questions that are more Toby and Neil focus. I love this one from Morgan on Instagram. If there was a museum dedicated to you, Neil, what would be in the gift shop? International food court. Oh. I'm not into like material things that much. Spatulas, not included. Yeah, just the necessities. And I know my brother's listening to just being like, you buy so many clothes, which is true, but I don't want that in my gift shop. I think that something that would,

something that most exemplifies me would be an international food court with incredible regional food from all over the world who doesn't like eating after you go to a museum and you get all hungry. And I know you're saying, oh, maybe there's a restaurant in the museum as well in addition to a food court, but I'm just abolishing the gift shop in general and we're moving the food court. And we're doing a bazaar of everywhere in the world and we're getting some really good dishes. I like this question because I love things and trinkets. I love board games particularly. So, Mahjong sets galore, scrabble boards, you know,

Dominion card game, lots of sporting goods. There would just be an entire section devoted to like a Dick's Sporting Goods-S thing where you'd have a golf simulator where you can hit balls. You know, try out some pickle balls, some tennis rackets. And then just some cool posters. You know, I'm a big poster guy when I go to museums. I just went to Denmark, went to a museum, the Louisiana Museum over there. They have so many posters, and I love just flipping through all of them.

That, admittedly, is an art museum, so it's not a museum about me. But you can't go wrong with just some good old-fashioned posters. I want people to weigh in. Well, you didn't even answer the question again. You can't just say I'm not putting a gift shop in. I'm putting a food court in. Like, obviously, okay, okay, fine. I won't put a gift shop in either.

I'm going to put an entire soccer stadium, and let's go do a soccer match. See? I love that. Perfect. Okay, perfect. Okay, here's Madison. I myself am a runner, and I'm returning full-time to a banking, position in New York City in summer of 2026. I was wondering how Toby balanced training for a

marathon with work. I know you guys have to wake up early to record, so I was curious as to how he fit it into his schedule. I'll take this one. No, you go, Toby. The hardest part is figuring out when to budget time to tell everyone that you are training for the marathon, which is the most important part of training for the marathon. Honestly, it's just about priorities. You know, the more that you do running, the less you can do other stuff, like, you know, go to a trivia night or hang out with your friends or something like that. It's basically just you got to sacrifice somewhere because the time has to come from somewhere. But I almost find it liberating. When you start training for a marathon and you just make it a non-negotiable in your life, like the run becomes

almost not that hard to fit into your daily schedule because you're like, it's going, it's much like this show. Like this show does not make or break my schedule because I know we're going to do a show every single morning. And taking away the choice, taking away the optionality, almost makes it easier to train for something. That's something I've found over the year. So, So as long as you kind of make it a non-negotiable and a priority in your life, I think you will find that the time will open up. So that's just my philosophy on it. And good luck, Madison.

I love that you're training for a marathon. A lot of people ask me, like, how do you get up at four? How do you get up so early? And I'm like, well, if I don't, I'll get fired. So that's, like, pretty good incentive to do that. And I think that's what you're saying, too. It's just built it in. Right.

It's a non-negotiable. If you don't do it, then you will have failed catastrophically, which is what would happen if we don't wake up and don't do the show. So yeah, I love that answer. All right, it's me again. This is Andrew from Instagram. Toby, how did you get into market analysis and commentary with a degree in English? I actually think this question applies to both of us because, as you mentioned,

you were a history major as well. But I would reframe the question because we're actually not necessarily in the market analysis and commentary business. We're in the explaining and entertaining a business. Our job is to curate the news and find the most interesting way to present it to you guys. That, to me, is a skill that overlaps with English, that overlaps with a liberal arts education. So I think we've learned how to speak about the market and we've learned about what makes it tick. But we're by no means experts in that.

We're mostly experts in making sure that information gets to your ears as effectively as possible. Would you agree with that, Neil? Agreed. I see it. No notes. I see a nodding over there. Okay, this is from Logan. I was wondering what kind of advice you had for young careerists just entering the workforce who admire what you do. In less general terms, what kind of jobs or opportunities would you suggest they target when considering your position as a, quote, dream job? Well, we were just talking about this question with Emily earlier, who's our executive producer, and I hope she will just let me take her answer. But she said, be open to pivoting. podcast, being a podcast producer or a podcasting host was not a thing when we were entering the

workforce. So if there is a door open and it seems somewhat interesting to you, go through it. You know, a lot of us did not necessarily go into the workforce expecting to be in this position, but I was just sitting there one day scrolling through LinkedIn and said, oh, do you want to write for this newsletter that I've never heard of? And I read it and I was like, I think I could do that. Then it was something I had not planned for. So I guess prepare. for the unexpected. That would be something that Emily had talked about and I totally agree with. Yeah, I love that answer because you are so right. Like none of, you are from a position saying like, oh, what you guys do is my dream job right now. Like this wasn't our dream job because it just wasn't

even on our radar whatsoever. Neil wanted to be a sports center host. I wanted to be a professional soccer player. These are all things you want to do when you're young. But you do just let the doors open as they do. And as long as you're following something that genuinely interests you, I think follow your interest more so than your passion is good advice in a general. And then when you do see a door open, don't go through the front door per se. Like, don't just send your resume in and hope for the best. I do like a little, you know, creative side door thinking. Even, it's not even just message them on LinkedIn or something like that. Like someone at Morning Brew got their job because they put their resume on a typewriter and like hand delivered it. There's weird stuff you can do.

So once you do find something that interests you, look for the back door or the side door as a way in rather than just the front door. All right, this is from Leah. When you want to completely turn off the business brain, what are some go-to-guilty pleasure podcast or shows that have nothing to do with the economy or stock market? When I need a break from Market News, I watch industry, which is, I'm just joking. For people to know, industry is HBO show about traders and investing. but it's not really about that. It's about the people and the personal drama. And it's coming back season four in the winter, like in a few weeks.

So definitely catch up on seasons one through three. I love it. And Toby has never seen it. But per his tradition, he knows everything that's happening with it. I like to read about show. Because he finds out about it on social media. So he knows everything about it. But yes, I highly recommend industry.

Yes, it's about the economy and about finance and stuff like that. I read books. But also, um, I do watch some TV shows and when I or and movies. And when I do, I, I kind of need to have somebody that I, I listen to or talk to about it. And for that, I usually go to like recaps, TV show or movie recaps from The Ringer, whether it's the watch is a podcast or the big picture podcast. Like a few weeks ago, I watched Hamnet and I just needed to cry. I didn't cry.

Oh my God. I didn't, maybe a little tear. But I just needed to hear other, I always need to hear reviews or other opinions about it. So I usually go to those types of podcasts or articles to help me get my bearings around a particular work of art. Yeah, because you can't, just can't process it by yourself. Come on, Neil. You know, you're going to think through these things. No, I do that too.

I just go to YouTube. I'm a big YouTube guy. Like, I'm watching a lot of Catan strategy videos. I don't know why, but that is something that just before. bed. I like watching the high level people play. I've been watching Scrabble highlight videos, which I implore you to look into it because there's this guy Nigel Richards. He will blow your mind. Please, even if you're not interested in Scrabble, you got to watch these videos because these people are operating on another level. All right. Now for our lightning round, we got a few more

questions. Quickly now, Toby. Carolyn's asks, how are wedding preparations coming along? They're coming. You know, it is fun. My fiancee keeps saying, like, we're coming up on the wedding. I'm like, Isn't it eight months away? But in wedding, you know, years, that is not that long. So I'm very excited. Neil's actually going to be in my wedding. So it's going to be a fun time. They are coming along.

And you're not making us buy another tuxedo. No, I don't like making people buy tuxedos. You know, if you got one, wear it. If you got a rent one, do that. But, you know, just, you know, look good, get a haircut. And that's good enough for me. All right. This is from Brendan, again, favorite airplane ever made, Neil.

747. Queen of the skies. Queen of the skies. I mean, it's classic. It's the best. It's got the hump. It's beautiful. It's been around for 50 years.

And the problem is it's going away. Like there's very few passengers 747s in existence now. A lot of them are being converted to cargo. And everyone's just going to either the A380, not even the A380, which is Airbus, which is also the double decker, the huge one that you see, like do that Emirates and flies typically. But they're mostly going to 787s and 8350s for these really long flies. flights, but I will, the 747 is the plane that got me into aviation and maybe love planes because it is just the most elegant machine you've ever seen. So are you going to ask me? I love the 747. Toby, what is your favorite plane? Cessna. Is that the only one you know?

Yep. I think so, actually. What type of Cessna? The one with single prop. Single prop. I'm just saying all the words I know right here. All right. This one is also from Golden Boy Brawl stars. on Instagram. Favorite word, Neil? I was thinking about this. Well, it's funny. When I was applying to college, I think in 2008, the UVA, University of Virginia application, asked you what your favorite word

was, and you had to answer it. That's a heady question. Yeah. Or a heady question. How did you answer it? Do you remember? I said Nor Easter. I didn't get in. I didn't get into UVA. But I said I liked it because there was like an apostrophe in the middle and it didn't say Northeaster. That's a pretty good answer.

But I got a better one now. Rhythm. Oh, spell it. This is crazy. This is why I like it. This is how rhythm is spelled. R-H-Y-T-H-M. There's some nice rhythm. How beautiful is that? First of all, it's very onomatopoeic.

It kind of sounds like rhythm when you actually say it. And the fact that there's one vowel in the middle, there's a Y, and then the rest are just crazy consonants backed up against each other with an R than an H. And then you get a T-H-M to end a word. I mean, that is just beautiful. Great Scrabble word, too. Great Scrabble word. Mine's insolubrious.

Just because I got it in a spelling bee, by the way, you should host the spelling bee with your friends. Very fun thing to do. You will come to realize that no one is good at spelling, especially in front of people, like get the microphone, you know, no notes, you just have to do it straight from the dome. I got this word to get me into, you know, the final three.

Nailed it. I didn't really know what it meant. What does it mean? I did look it up. It's kind of like CD or rundown or sorted. so of that nature, but it just feels good coming off the tongue. All right, and this is our final question from Maddie's son on Instagram. 2025 was a doozy.

What are you guys looking forward to the most as we cruise into 2026? Well, to answer this question, I will say you will have to wait till tomorrow because we have an entire episode about this exact subject. We're previewing 2026. We're talking about the exciting things that are happening in business, culture, sports, everything and everything. So I'm sorry, you'll just have to wait for tomorrow. That is my teaser for tomorrow's episode.

Is Maddie's son your burner on Instagram, Neil? Because you seem like it set you up pretty well for that answer. And that's why we put it last. We could have put it first in this episode, but we put it last as we segue into this first day of 2026. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful year.

If you want to get in touch with us, you can set a note to Morning Brew Daily at morningbrew. or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lue is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup won't be answering any questions at this time.

Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.