Morning Brew Daily - Markets Cheer for TACO Trade Return & Ryanair vs. Musk is Good for Biz

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Episode 763: Neal and Toby dive into the markets’ reaction to Trump walking back his threats of European tariffs over Greenland during his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Then, Ryanair’s spat with Elon Musk over Starlink has actually been good for Ryanair. Also, Amazon is building its largest physical retail store as it flirts with the big box. Meanwhile, Neal shares his favorite numbers (from Davos) on chimney sweeping, the Golden Gate bridge, and how to market time.  Grab your desktop calendar with games now! https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/2026-daily-games-desk-calendar  Explore Indeed’s full findings at https://www.indeed.com/2026hiringtrends Learn more about Lightspeed at https://www.lsvp.com 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 This special episode is produced in partnership with Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed holds the largest early-stage AI portfolio in the world both number of companies and capital deployed, investing in 165 AI companies and deploying over $5.5 billion in AI investments. Lightspeed's invested in some of the most valuable AI companies globally, including Anthropic, Mistral AI, Glean, Reflection AI and more. Learn more about Lightspeed's recent investments in Skild AI here, and stay tuned for more exciting AI coverage on the show this week: https://www.skild.ai/blogs/series-c Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tech can make a tangible difference. Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at

pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewaI. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today it's tacos for breakfast as Trump backs off Greenland tariff threats. Ben, is Elon Musk really going to buy Ryanair? It's Thursday, January 22nd.

Let's ride. This winter, America is turning into a nation of monks. Not only is dried January in full swing, but a new even more hardcore test of discipline has surged in popularity, no by January. The Wall Street Journal notes that many younger people, inspired by social media, have taken a pledge to avoid purchasing anything that's not essential, things like clothes or electronics, for the 31 days of January. It's not necessarily new, but it is far more mainstream than before. Google searches for no by January hit a five-year high this December, according to PWC, and a survey by NerdWallet found more than

one quarter have tried no spend January with 12% hopping on the trend in 2026. Toby, what do you think is easy for you? Dry January or no buy January? See, I'm more of a financially crippling February kind of guy, a multi-buy March, an affluent April, a massive debt-may kind of guy. In reality, I do love any January challenge. So for the last eight or nine days of the year, I'm not buying anything either in solidarity with my no-by brother. Of the month. Of the month. So I can buy, I can not buy something for eight days, I think. And now a word from our sponsor, Indeed. Neil, I'm finally adopting AI.

Sudden change of heart around technology? Nope. AI is the name of a very mean kitten I found outside my apartment. Well, in less bitey news, we're here at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, and Indeed is here too diving into things like how AI is transforming jobs, skills, and employer adoption. Indeed, we'll be sharing real-time insights like that into the global labor market and how leaders can navigate the workforce challenges and opportunities ahead. Indeed's helping business leaders and hiring professionals dive into these perspectives

through Indeed's Global Labor Market and Workforce Trends Report. This report also includes where job opportunities are growing, where skill shortages and mismatches could impact business performance and how immigration patterns are shaping workforce capacity. Together, these insights help leaders prepare for what's next and make better workforce decisions grounded in real-time data. Learn more at Indeed.com slash. That's indeed.com slash Davos.

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Best Network based on Route Metrics, Best Overall Mobile Network Performance, U.S. Second Half 2025, all rights reserved. I've received a recent consumer mobile bill. My name of the person, regained me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. There's something about some fresh alpine air

that makes cooler heads prevail. Trump's aspirations to acquire Greenland took a chill pill in Davos as he announced that he had reached a framework of a future deal for Greenland with NATO's head at the World Economic Forum. That sound you hear is Wall Street breathing a huge sigh of relief because tacos are back on the menu.

The taco trade, aka Trump always chickens out, roared back to life. The announcement of the Handshake Agreement helped markets climb out of the dip they experienced earlier in the week that was fueled by fears of growing EU and U.S. tension and the threat of new tariffs on seven European countries. Think back to Tuesday. Europe was redding its so-called tariff bazooka for the retaliatory punch of blocking U.S. goods and services from the lucrative EU market, while U.S. bonds were spiking and the dollar was falling. But post-Greland announcement, the 10-year U.S. bond yield chilled out a little, the dollar index jumped and stocks made a nice recovery. Neal, zooming out a little bit, Greenland was certainly a major theme at Davos this year, but far from the only one, we also had Mark Carney, Canada's PM, talking about the end of

rules-based order, BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, warning of AI's power to increase wealth inequality, and Jamie Diamond railing against a proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates. But let's start back at this handshake deal. What details do we even have about it? Yeah, we have very few details. It's certainly a concept of a framework of a deal that will be negotiated in the future. That said, there are a few rumors that have filtered out of these officials, as reported by the New York Times. It seems like these discussions will center around Denmark, potentially giving the U.S. sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland where the U.S. could build military bases. There's a model for this. The U.K. has some bases in Cyprus that are regarded

as British territory. So look out for that. I should mention that Space Force already has a base in Greenland. There also is discussion is going to be about Greenland's mineral resources because in addition to the national security implications of this region of the Arctic, Trump also wants access to the rare earths minerals that are potentially untapped in Greenland. We just don't know a lot about them because it's very inhospitable territory, but potentially these negotiations could include the U.S. receiving a right of first refusal on investments in Greenland's mineral resources. Trump said he's going to release the details soon. So, of course, you know, who knows what the actual details would be, but I want to zoom out to broader U.S. EU tensions here. And it still seems

like they are quite high. That's been the theme at Davos. Howard Lutnik, who's the Commerce Secretary, was giving a speech at the USA House, which has been the hot spot here in Davos this week. And Christine Lagarde, who's the European Central Bank president, was there. And Howard Lutnik just starts bashing Europe's economic policies and just going in on Europe. And apparently, she just got up and left. And so that's maybe the distillation about things are going between the United States and Europe this week. That's an awkward dinner. I can't remember the last dinner I got up and left from. But perhaps the most talked about speech at Davis wasn't even Trump's speech yesterday. It was PM Canadians, PM Mark Carney, who overall kind of was the topic de jure outside of Trump.

The overall vibe that we're living through right now, according to Carney, is an end of an era, the end of American hegemony. He called the current phase a. rupture and went on to say every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must. The allusion to this great power rivalry is a U.S. China feud. And Carney also inserted Canada into the middle of that recently. Canada and China struck an initial deal back on Friday that will slash tariffs on electric vehicles as both of the countries promised to tear down their trade barriers. So Canada is cozying up to China right as the world is rupturing from the U.S.

So amongst everything else going on here, it looks like Carney has found a way to make probably the second most headlines after Trump. Yeah, he said the middle powers must act together because if we're not on the table, we're on the menu. Maybe that's not a dinner you get up from. Let's talk about Jamie Diamond. Jamie Diamond is the JP Morgan CEO, biggest bank in the United States. He gave a talk.

He was on a panel and said some very newsy things. He was asked particularly about this 10% interest rate. cap on credit cards that Trump has proposed and diamonds pretty much refrained from criticizing Trump, but he did call this 10% cap on interest rates, an economic disaster. He said that the cap would potentially strip credit from 80% of Americans. He said, my bank is going to be doing just fine, like we'll weather the storm. We have a ton of money. Same with other Wall Street banks. But it really will hit Main Street restaurants, retailers, travel companies and municipalities. He said people will miss their water payments. He did suggest the idea.

kind of tongue and cheek that they should try out this experiment in Vermont and Massachusetts and see how it goes. Those two states are helmed at the senator position by you have Bernie Sanders in Vermont and Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. Those are the two senators that have really floated this idea. It shows that the progressive wing and President Trump have similar populist economic policies. And then finally returning to America for a second, another thing that may be boosting some market confidence is the fact that the Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared likely to block Trump's from immediately firing the Democrat appointed Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. That's been something that's been percolating in the background here because basically

people are afraid that this shows Trump is exerting a greater influence over the central bank that guides the economy. And the fact that the Supreme Court justices were pretty unanimously skeptical of this gave markets another little boost coming into this morning because it does look like central bank integrity is being upheld at the highest court. Lisa Cook will keep her job for now. Moving on to more prosaic matters. We've got a good old CEO beef, the corporate bosses in question, Elon Musk and Michael O'Leary, the Irishman who leads Ryanair at Europe's largest budget airline.

These two started going at it last week when O'Leary said that his airline would not install Elon Starlink Wi-Fi on its fleet of planes because the antenna you need to beam Wi-Fi to passengers would increase drag and cost Ryanair an extra $250 million in fuel costs a year. Elon could not let this go, saying O'Leary was misinformed. Then O'Leary went all in, saying that Musk knows nothing about flight or drag and called his ex-platform a cesspit. The floodgates were open. Musk called O'Leary an utter idiot and urged for his firing. After a few more barbs of each of these guys calling each other idiots, Musk pulled his Twitter followers,

whether he should buy Ryanair so that he could sack O'Leary. TBD on whether a takeover offer will come. Toby, we're talking about two of the most outspoken brash CEOs in the game. right now, Elon and O'Leary, who once floated the idea of selling standing seats on his planes. Their social media spat may seem a little silly, but ever the marketer, O'Leary has managed to turn this free publicity into business gold. Yeah, one thing here to note is that Ryanair's strategy kind of revolves around trolling. They are in extremely discount European air. They sell tickets for $20 one way. Their flights are

about an hour on average sometimes. And so the customer base kind of understands this gimmick that they don't really care about their customers and they have this very tongue-in-cheek nature on social media. I'm not sure if Elon actually knows that. Some people are saying, no, he's totally in on the joke. Other people are saying absolutely not. He's taking this very seriously. Either way, it has been good for business. That's been the underlying thing here for O'Leary. He said at a press conference on Wednesday that it is very good for our bookings. They rolled out this big idiot seat sale in recent days. And he says, we love these PR spath that drive bookings on Ryanair. So the bottom line is getting a boost from these barbs flying back and

forth on X. Yeah, they launched this big idiot seed sale. They're offering 100,000 seats at about $20 a pop. And in the same press conference, he said that bookings have risen 2% to 3% in the aftermath of the social media spat between he and Elon Musk. So he said, O'Leary said, I'm very happy to continue the controversy. If it helps to boost Ryanair sales, you can insult me all day any day. Here's the deal, though. It's a big deal for shareholders again because they've been through this rodeo before where Elon allegedly is joking about buying something on Twitter. In that case, it was literally about joking that he was going to buy Twitter itself. And then he actually did follow through on it. So I think people are getting

like PTSD flashbacks. Tesla shareholders are going not again, not another side quest of him joking about buying a company and then maybe actually following through on it. There are some rules about who can actually buy a European airline, though. They have to, airlines based in the EU must be majority owned by someone from EU countries or some other European countries. So there might be some regulatory hurdles to Elon actually following through on his joking polls. But if I'm a Tesla shareholder, I'm going, gosh, dang it again. Can you just focus in, lock in for a little bit, don't joke about buying any other airlines.

Moving on, despite pioneering the very concept of e-commerce, Amazon wants to to turn back the clock to the days of brick and mortar retail. And its latest bet to find a winning store format is its biggest one yet. The Everything store is bringing a massive big box store to Orlin Park, Illinois, after convincing the city's board of trustees and evoke this past week. But just calling this a big box store feels like a gross understatement, this place is going to be gargantuan. The site sprawls over 35 acres.

The store itself will be 230,000 square feet. That dwarfs competitors in the space, with the average Walmart store clocking in at just 173,000 square feet. It is big enough to fit nearly two average Costco size stores inside. Now, much like what your ex told you, size doesn't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts. And inside of those giant walls, Amazon is creating a Frankenstein's monster. The space will be 50% retail and 50% fulfillment. The front half will contain your groceries, general merch, like diapers and paper towels,

even some prepared food made on site. The back half will be what Amazon does best, fulfillment for online and in-store orders. It hopes that by smoohing together retail and fulfillment and dotting the aisle with in-store kiosk for online ordering, it will be able to combine its digital prowess and normal shopping in a way that other brands can't pull off. Neil, this feels like a very Amazon-e store.

Well, Amazon has just tried just about everything when it comes to brick-and-mortar retail. They've launched physical bookstores. They've launched shopping mall kiosk. done apparel stores. They've done convenience stores. They even had their own Amazon supermarket chain. None of it has worked. Amazon Go convenience stores. There's still a few of them left. There's 14 locations nationwide, but that's less than half of the amount that they had in 23. So this is just another attempt. They're saying, okay, we've tried everything. Why don't we just

do the biggest concept yet? And maybe that would be the best opportunity because, look, we are a mass market retailer on our website. We sell everything. These other stores have been, maybe a little more niche or catered to a particular clientele, why don't we just basically build our own Walmart and see what happens? I'm very interested about this digital and physical integration that they're trying to do here because these in-store kiosks allow you to basically access Amazon's e-commerce platform while you're walking around. So maybe you see this lovely sweater in front of you, but you don't really like the color that's on display in the physical store. The one I'm wearing right now? It looks great on you, Neil. It really brings out the color of your eyes. But if you

wanted a different sweater, you can go to the kios, you order a different one. And then someone from the back brings it out and fulfills it right then. Also, maybe you're looking at dog food bags. I don't really want to lug this big bag to my car. You can have someone do curbside fulfillment from the back half of the store again. So it's very fascinating how they are trying to maximize convenience at every level, both the convenience of the delivery platform that everyone loves and the fact that they can have that convenience happen in a physical retail location now. That's why I called it an Amazon-y product because I don't know if any other stores are kind of combining them in the same way that they are. My question is, why is Amazon keep trying this? They felt so many times. Why do they care so much about

getting into physical retail? And even though a lot of us all shop online all the time, in-store purchases account for still more than 80% of retail sales in the United States. So that's so much money being left on the table for Amazon as just being an e-commerce player. And then secondly, Amazon's customers regularly shop at competing big. box retailer. So if they can convert those customers from Walmart, Costco, Target into shop going to an Amazon store, then that's a huge opportunity as well. Consumer intelligence research partners found that 83% of Amazon customers have shopped at Walmart and then basically all of Amazon customers buy groceries elsewhere. So there's going to be a huge grocery component.

There's going to be a huge general merchandise component. And they're hoping, you know, somehow, I'm not exactly sure. It's all going to come down to execution is that they're trying to get, there's Walmart right down the road here in suburban Chicago. And then, there's a Trader Joe's, there's all these other big box stores. They're going to have to have to try to get those customers to go to Amazon for some reason. And we'll see the design of the store and see sort of what compelling things that they can do. They're obviously going to leverage data from Amazon Prime and try to do all these deals for prime numbers. But I really think it's going to come all down to execution.

Field trip to Orland Park in our future, perhaps. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neal's numbers right after this. Time for our morning brew daily Davos Update with Lightspeed. we are joined by Lightspeed co-founder and partner Ravi Mata. Ravi, we've spoken to a number of founders in the Lightspeed portfolio. When you're looking at a startup to invest in, what's the fastest way you separate signal from noise? We look for founders who think about what we call the super cycle or the trend line and not the state of the technology today. AI intelligence is evolving and improving so rapidly, and that relates to some of the underlying

exponential trends in the drop of cost of compute. Inference costs has gone down by something like 100x in last year, the performance of AI computing, the ability at one-third of the cost this year versus last year to produce the same level of intelligence. These things really mean that founders have to be focused on where the intelligence technology is going and not where it is today in the context of their idea. And if that doesn't compile in a way that we think is robust, we will not proceed. Thank you, Ravi. Supercycle. I'm going to steal that.

Morning Brew Daily is live from Davos all week in partnership with Lightspeed. And be sure to head to our YouTube channel for special interviews with Lightspeed founders all week. We just posted one with the co-founder and CEO of K2 Space, Karan Khunjar, who is trying to build the biggest space satellites in history. Pretty crazy. Keep an eye out, as we'll be posting more throughout the World Economic Forum. Head to the coast in Abercrombie's latest summer drop. It's short season, and their new C-Fade shorts add the perfect wash look to your fit.

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that will keep you warm and cozy ahead of this winter storm. For my first number, there's an industry experiencing a shocking revival And trust me, there's no way you're going to guess what it is. Chimney Sweeps. I'm so glad Dick Van Dyke is still alive to see this. According to the New York Times, England's National Association of Chimney Sweeps has grown its membership to about 750 today

from about 595 years ago. Multiple people are booking training courses per day, and there's 40 women members as well. The reason why chimney sweeps are in demand is that people are having more open fires in their home, and the British government recommends chimneys be professionally swept once a year to limit air pollution. The reason why people are having more open fires are varied.

The Times says that higher energy prices, the increasing use of wood burning stoves, and concerns around a hostile state like Russia, taking out the electric grid, have all juiced their popularity. And business is booming if you're in the chimney suite business. For H. Furkins and Sons, which has been sweeping chimneys since the 19th century, they get about 70 to 80 calls a day in the winter months. Toby, I'm not sure how to say this. Super califragilistic, expialadocious.

Chim, chim, chri, indeed. This is not the chimney sweeping of old, though. You're probably imagining someone very soot cover, you're climbing up, or maybe even like the young orphan boys that used to do this back in the day. That is not what chimney sweeping looks like in the modern era. They use tools. Like they have CCTV cameras.

They have drones that can help with the chimney sweeping. They have industrial vacuum cleaners these days. Like, it's not just using a duster and just hoping for the best. that is part of the reason, too, why maybe this industry is seeking to revival is because it's a lot easier than it was back in the day. I would want to be a chimney sweep, though, for the crazy discoveries that happened, because chimneys are not a place that you are often cleaning or looking into. And so sometimes these sweeps report finding some very juicy stuff, love letters between people, Star Cross lovers, they found human remains in some cases, revolvers' guns are stashed up there.

So just from that perspective, a curiosity perspective, I would want to get nosy and see what people are stashed in their chimneys. All right, for my next number, I'll introduce you to a piece of infrastructure that saved countless lives, netting alongside the Golden Gate Bridge. As the New York Times reported, for decades, there had been an average of 30 suicides each year from people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In the second half of 2025, there were zero, almost certainly a record low for a bridge that was constructed nearly 100 years. ago. For this stunning decrease, there's only one thing to think, a miles long series of nets, or really stainless steel cables, that sit 20 feet below public walkways on both sides of the Golden Gate. The project traces back to 2006 when family members of people who jumped from the bridge began brainstorming methods about ways to limit suicides. They eventually landed on the net

concept, which was borrowed from Bern, Switzerland. This being San Francisco, the netting was not built in a day, or even five years. According to the Times, construction took seven years from 2018 to 2025, meaning that it took longer to rig up the netting than the bridge itself, which was built in about four years. Cost balloon two from an initial estimate of $76 million to $224 million. Now that it's finally up, though, the netting appears to be working as intended. Yeah, there's this also invisible effect that happens when you install netting too, which is people who maybe arrive at the bridge, see their nets, and then change their mind. And that changing of the mind in the moment does massive amounts for people's

expectancy going, life expectancy going forward. There's this 1978 study from a UC Berkeley professor that followed 515 people who were going to the bridge to intend to jump, decided not to, or were persuaded not to, and 94 were still alive or died of natural causes many years later. So if you can do something to deter that initial moment, it does lead to a much longer lifespan. So absolutely a successful infrastructure project when it comes to saving lives and keeping people, people alive for many years after. For my final number, I'm going to ask you a question. What feels further back in time to you?

30 years ago or 1996? The answer for most of you, according to new research, is 30 years ago, known as the year-length effect. And there are big implications for marketers and even policymakers. A new study from the UBC Souter School of Business sought to determine whether people perceive time differently when expressed as a length or as a calendar year. And the answer is, yes, very much. very much. Where age is valued, people have more favorable attitudes when time is described by length.

Take whiskey, for example, the older, the better. In whiskey auctions observed by the researchers, bottles described by length of time, a 10-year-old whiskey sold for about 9% higher prices. On the other hand, if you're trying to minimize how old something feels, say, for an item of clothing, then you're better off describing it from X year. Sellers on Craigslist earned about 17% more when they describe their items in terms of a year rather than how old it was. The study says that marketers could use this insight into our easily manipulated brains to become better at their jobs. At the same time, governments and policymakers could use these insights to also drive better outcomes for things like saving for retirement or the

consequences of climate change. Toby, this is one of the most interesting things I've heard since like 2003, I mean, three years ago. Yeah, when did we start this podcast? Was it three years ago or 2023, I'm trying to figure out which applies better to make us seem older and wiser than we are. The reason why this works is because humans perceive numbers differently than you would expect. We actually perceive numbers logarithmically, not linearly. So the jump between higher numbers feels bigger than the jump between smaller numbers. So for instance, the difference between 11 and 12 feels bigger than the difference between 2 and 3. So that weird kind of time warping effect that occurs is why marketers should plug into this idea.

So just to reiterate what the general rule is, when age adds value, you use length framing like years old. When age reduces value when you're selling clothes online, use the year framing. And you might be able to make a few extra bucks here and there. Like if I want to seem older, I would say I'm 34 years old. If I wanted to seem younger, I would say I was born in 1991. You seem perfect just the way you are, Neil. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. If you've been itching for a way to work cattywampus into your daily life more frequently,

boy, do I have the game for you. Yesterday marks the debut of the New York Times' newest game, crossplay. Crossplay is Scrabble. Let's just get that out of the way quickly. When the Times Games Division announced a new game in an Instagram post, every single comment was, so it's Scrabble. The actual board and rules have some slight tweaks, but TechCrunch writer Amanda Sieberling noted that these must have been

done for legal reasons and hardly notice them as she played. Despite copying Scrabble, this game does make history for the New York Times because, believe it or not, it's the first game you can play against a friend within their ecosystem. That ecosystem is thriving too. Wordle was played 4.2 billion times last year, and users spent more time in the games app than the actual news app, according to investor data. Neil, I am hitting you with insolubrious as soon as I challenge you. I do not like playing Scrabble with you. It is not fun. You don't. Don't do the long words, you do the two-word, the two-letter words that start with X and Q, and it's just frankly, not so fun.

But let's talk about the New York Times. It's time to start calling them a mobile games giant. This is their 11th game. They have 12.33 million subscribers to the New York Times more broadly as of September, but half of them do the $30 month package that includes all of their products, not just the journalism, but the games and the cooking, too. I mean, this is an absolute behemoth on the games front. And every single person I know personally plays at least one New York Times game, whether it's the crossword, the mini spelling B and now crossplay, there's connections.

Everybody's got wordle. Everybody's got their own one. And then buying wordle for $1 million a couple years ago or 2021, it depends on how long you want to perceive it. It seems to be a stroke of genius. And what basically does is subsidize their journalism. Times now is about 3,000 journalists on staff. It's most ever, more than twice what they'd add a decade ago. So just an incredible business.

I don't know how intentional it was at the beginning. I mean, they've had crossroads for forever. But once they put it on this app, it just absolutely skyrocketed. And, you know, every media company is now trying to copy this. Morning Brew has a big game. Just plug in our games as well. We do a bunch of fun games here at Morning Brew. Finally, have you been in a hotel room recently and thought,

gee, this toilet could use a little more of a barrier with the rest of the room? It's not just you. Hotel bathroom doors are becoming somewhat of an endangered species. According to the Wall Street Journal, a good chunk of mid-priced hotels have been scrapping their bathroom doors in a bid to cut costs, replacing the sealed-off variety with sliding barn doors strategically placed walls, curtains, or sometimes nothing at all. It's got many customers frustrated in airing their grievances on social media. As one viral post put it, this door is designed to either move your relationship forward or end it. Some are fighting back.

Digital marketer Sadie Lowell started the Bring Back Doors campaign surveying hundreds of hotels, about their bathroom door setup. She listed more than 500 hotels in the no bathroom door camp. Toby, is this the end of Western civilization? It is horrible in every way that you think about. No one wants to see that. No one wants to hear that. And it's just if someone wakes up earlier to go to the bathroom,

like the light pops on, it's awful for consumers. So why are hotels doing it? It saves them money. In the eyes of a hotel chain, a door can be a money pit because sometimes if you close a door, you forget that you left the light on, that leads to higher electricity bills. You got to replace the light bulbs.

Concrete and wood are expensive. Like every single part of a door costs money when you multiply it by how many rooms are in a hotel chain. So it's just horrific to think about it. I recently went to a hotel that was like that. Wait, what did it have? It had nothing. It literally had nothing.

And I'm literally just like, look away. Like, please look away. No one needs to see anything that's going on here. But you're still getting married. The wedding's still on. The wedding is still on. All right. That is all the time we have.

Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. If you want to get in touch, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Big shout out to our AV team here in Switzerland, mood studios.

Hair and makeup is doing no show up to work January. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.