Morning Brew Daily - Saudi Arabia Takes Over EA and Scientists Created a Dog You Won’t Be Allergic to

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

EA misses quarterly bookings estimates ahead of Saudi-backed buyout. Disney agrees to let TikTokers use its characters in videos, and gene-edited puppies will melt your heart... but won’t give you a...llergies. Helicopter parenting is extending into the workplace, with employers reporting that more parents are helping manage their adult children's careers. Hollywood’s entering its AI era & for the first time in Billboard Hot 100 history, country songs occupy all five of the chart's top five spots. Submit your password guess! https://forms.gle/4EdBi3X8N4eMnBd56 Come to our August trivia! https://mbdtrivianight-august2026.splashthat.com/ Grab tickets to our Performance Revue show! https://www.morningbrew.com/events/brew-performance-revue-2026?utm_campaign=performance_revue_2026&utm_source=mbd 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Good morning for your daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, would you bring your parent to a job interview? Then Saudi Arabia is officially the new owner of EA. It's Thursday, August 6th. Let's ride. We've all watched football games where your team's coach draws up a stinker of a play
Starting point is 00:00:55 and you think to yourself, gosh, I could do better than that. Well, you might just have your shot. In a viral promotion, the Akron Zips college football team announced it'll randomly select one fan, any season ticket holder to call the team's first drive in its season opener on September 12th. It's been a massive success. The initial post drew more than 16 million views in the first 24 hours, which is translated to a ticket sales bonanza. Akron sold out its sweet inventory for the first time in history and already beat its ticket sales targets weeks before the season begins.
Starting point is 00:01:30 Toby, genius idea. I would absolutely go three and out. That's going to only go one of two ways. One is the three in and out way. Awful play calls and we forget all about this. Or two, the person leads a touchdown drive, gets offered a full-time coaching job, and we get the offensive coordinator version of Rudy. I hope we get the second one. And it got me thinking, too, should we run a similar promo, Neil? If you buy tickets to our next event that you'll be entered for a chance to win the opportunity to say,
Starting point is 00:01:59 let's ride. I actually don't want that because I feel like there's better let's rides out there. Not a bad idea for everyone other than the 4 a.m. wake up. Saudi Arabia has been trying to buy up global influence via sports for decades now. Now it's moving on to sports in video games. A consortium led by Saudi Arabia's public investment fund completed its takeover of the video game developer electronic arts yesterday, valuing the company at $55 billion for what is officially the largest leveraged buyout in history.
Starting point is 00:02:31 The investment firm led by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also participated in the deal. The maker of iconic games like Madden, the Sims Battlefield in the franchise formerly known as FIFA, now embarks on life as a private company, a life that comes along with a lot of debt. The deal is being financed with a $20 billion loan from J.P. Morgan, which puts the leveraged in largest leverage buyout ever. All that debt now hits EA's balance sheet, which analyst's fear could lead to a much more conservative strategy going forward. When you have IOUs that large, there is usually less willingness to take a risk on a new game or IP, which means Madden 36 and Battlefield 15. Here we come. We've seen a lot of video game mergers and deals over the last few years, which have not aged well.
Starting point is 00:03:14 Specifically, Microsoft's $68 billion deal for activism Blizzard has curdled in hindsight, but the Saudis are making a bet that EA still has the juice. Neil, EA Sports. It's in Riyadh. It's not just EA sports in Riyadh. It's the entire video. game world. So far, the public investment fund has invested about $30 billion into video games. They own the publisher of Pokemon Go. They own the publisher of Monopoly Go. They own stakes in Nintendo, take two interactive, some of the biggest video game publishers, and now they're taking all of EA. I mean, they have an entire city devoted to gaming and e-sports. It's called the Kadea E-Sports and Gaming District. It has four different gaming arenas. They want
Starting point is 00:04:00 10 million visitors a year by the end of this decade to visit their e-sports city. So this is a kingdom. This is an MBS ruler who is all in on video games. So Saudi Arabia has been accused of sports washing where you use investments in sports in gaming, entertainment to try to improve the country's global image. And a lot of video game fans fear that they might use these iconic properties to kind of push an agenda because they've done that before. one game that they own is Fatal Furiousity of the Wolves.
Starting point is 00:04:32 It's this Saudi-owned fighting game. They added Cristiano Ronaldo to the game, which a lot of fans were like, oh, it's kind of fun, but also they're clearly trying to, you know, push an agenda here. They're trying to put a player who plays in the Saudi Football League in a game, and gamers are like,
Starting point is 00:04:48 this doesn't respect the history of the game. You're trying to showcase Saudi relationships more so than the actual franchise itself. So that's one thing. thing that, you know, pure hardcore gamers are maybe worried about is that it could become a mouthpiece for Saudi Arabian talking points. And you hear a lot of fans of the Sims, which is part of this deal, especially have an outcry because they have long championed, inclusivity, LGBTQ relationships. That is not something that the Saudi government likes. Some of it is punishable
Starting point is 00:05:20 by death there. So we've heard a lot of outrage and fear among video game players who love EA games, especially the Sims, say we don't know what's going to happen to our favorite games, but it looks like Saudi will, or the new ownership, whether it's Saudi or Jared Kushner's investment fund, will put their stamp on EA because this is a leveraged buyout. As you mentioned, there's a ton of debt. They're going to have to make changes. When a private equity firm takes over a company, they don't just let it sit there. I mean, the one example that we talked about recently was Jersey mics, which is perhaps the exception to the rule of them saying, okay, you guys are doing well. But usually when a private equity company does a huge leverage buyout, they are going
Starting point is 00:06:00 to cut jobs. They are going to shake up management. They're going to put their print on the company, because why are you buying this if you're not going to shake up management? You're going to shake up a lot of the operations and the strategy at EA. So it looks like those changes will be coming. There's not only fears of layoffs, but there's also fears that you took on so much debt that you might have to sell off some intellectual property, which again, these are iconic properties that we are talking about. Saudi Arabia, too, has been a lot. Saudi Arabia too, has been a a little bit of a mercurial investor when it comes to entertainment. I'm thinking of Live Golf, actually, because this was their foray, again, into the sports world
Starting point is 00:06:34 where they tried to create a golf league to compete against the PGA Tour. It recently cut off funding to Live Golf. It's kind of left it in the lurch. They recently sold one of its soccer teams as well. So just because they go down the path doesn't mean they aren't afraid to cut ties to they feel like it's not working. So they think EA is a still good, albeit very excited. expensive property. It's 35 years old. Maybe they think 35 years in the future people are still going to want to play Madden. They're still going to want to play FIFA, which is now called
Starting point is 00:07:04 FC, which I hate. But that's the bet is that this franchise has longevity. Yeah, don't be surprised if you open up FIFA or EA Sports FC. And the default teams that are playing is Newcastle United, which is another one of the English Premier Team League teams that they owned against Al Nasser, which is Rinaldo's club. Usually it's Arsenal Tondam, which has led to, you know, you arsenal fan base here in the United States. But yeah, don't be surprised if that happens. Okay, Disney knows you're watching TikTok instead of Disney, so it's putting Disney on TikTok. Ahead of its earnings report yesterday morning, Disney announced that it would allow certain
Starting point is 00:07:40 TikTok creators to use its characters and scenes on the platform, remixing them as they see fit. It shows that in the entertainment industry these days, all roads lead to short form video. And if you don't have a game plan for bite-sized phone clips, you're as relevant as Woody in an iPad world. Under the partnership, a pilot for now in the United States, Disney said that creators will be handed the keys to quote an expansive collection of thoughtfully curated content
Starting point is 00:08:03 from characters and stories in Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars films. If you know Disney, you know this is the equivalent of breaching Helms Deep, the final fortress. The House of Mouse is more protective of its children than Phil Dunphy, fiercely defending its IP with an army of lawyers. But recently, it's changed its tune. It has to, in this age of user-generated content competing with its own, Last year, it inked a $1 billion deal with OpenAI's SORA that allowed certain characters to be used in the AI video generation app.
Starting point is 00:08:33 That deal fell through when OpenAI shut down SORA earlier this year, but it's clear that Disney is resigned to letting its prize possessions out of their cage in the name of exposure. Of course, it also has its own short form video feature now because, who doesn't? VERT's located in the Disney Plus app and TikTok content using its IP will be cross-posted in VIRT. Toby, get ready to get ready with Moana. Let's break down the two strategies that Disney is going after here. One, I love that instead of just relying on professionally produced content from their own studios, they want fans creating content themselves. That is skating where the puck is going. That is, you know, going with the times.
Starting point is 00:09:11 Edits are the thing that bring cultural relevance to a show or a movie long after it actually premieres. I mean, I am still seeing obsession edits and obsession fan theories much later after the movie actually came out. So they're like, this is the lifeblood of the current entertainment landscape. Let's insert ourselves into that in a way that we still have some control. And then the other reason is they want to give people a reason to open Disney Plus every day and check out this new VIRG strategy. That I'm a little dubious about because why would you go to Disney Plus when you can go to TikTok? TikTok serves you up all the Disney content you want. Plus everything else that you are algorithmically showing a kindred liking.
Starting point is 00:09:54 too. So I don't know why you would want to go to this very closed garden of just Disney Plus. HBO Max recently did something similar. I'm very skeptical. It sounds good on the service. Like, look at all this engagement. We're going to drive on the app. But no one really wants to go to this siloed off version when they have the entire buffet of TikTok. And especially because TikTok is obsessed with entertainment clips. The platform, this statistic, I didn't believe, TikTok said it has an average of 6.5 million posts relating to film and TV per day last. year. But previously, at least for Disney properties, if you clipped one of their shows or movies, they would force you to take it down because that's their IP they're protecting. And I remember
Starting point is 00:10:35 that sports leagues had this exact same problem, whether it was MLB or NFL, people would want to post clips on social media because they'd want to show highlights or something really cool that they saw and edit them and manipulate them. And the sports leagues were like, well, you have to take that down. But then they realized that actually this is insane exposure for us. So it's probably worth letting our IP out of this Waldgarden and into social media where, you know, millions and millions of people can see it every day. So they just made that calculation. Disney for a long time has protected its IP and you can understand that it has some of the most iconic characters that they don't want fans messing with. But now they, yeah, they just have to. It's a, they're from,
Starting point is 00:11:16 it's from a position of defense. I have watched multiple shows in bite size clips. Across Instagram Reels or across YouTube TV. I think I've said that on the show before, but the mentalist for some reason showed up on my Instagram feed one day and has never left. And the way they get around it is they put the same sort of like music behind or they have some sort of weird thing that allows it to skirt copyright filters. So I do think Disney is aware this is happening. And they're like, again, you might as well flow with the tide instead of trying to fight it. Moving on, one of the cruelest twists of fate in life is the person who absolutely loves dogs,
Starting point is 00:11:54 but is extremely allergic to them. My fiance is in that boat and is forced to direct her awes towards TikTok videos instead of a real-life pet. But one company, Kindred Companion Sciences, might have figured out a way around the sneezes and congestion, gene-edited puppies. It sounds a little science fiction-y, but Harvard grad Matt Walker founded Kindred Companion to see if he could eliminate human dog allergies. which he and 15% of the world's population suffer from at the source instead of relying on so-called hypoallergenic breeds. The protein responsible for your sniffles is called can F1, which is found in the hair and saliva of dogs. Walker and his team of researchers used the gene editing technology called CRISPR to eliminate the problematic protein producer,
Starting point is 00:12:39 cloned the edited cells to create embryos, then implanted them in surrogate beagles. Two developed successfully in Bailey and Alfie, the non-allergenic dogs were born. While DNA sequencing of Bailey and Alfie's genome showed the edit was there, there was only one way to truly test if the adjustment worked. Take someone who was super allergic before and make them live with a dog which Walker took upon himself. He's happy to report that he's made it a year and a half with Bailey and is no worse for the wear. Neil, gene editing is still in the early innings and is a controversial practice. but an easy way to get people on board with the technology is to, one, make some cute beagles that, two, don't make your head fill up with snot. I love the origin story of this because Matt Walker was like, well, I've been allergic to dogs my whole life.
Starting point is 00:13:23 I've never been able to have one. I could get a golden doodle after I graduated from college. Those are hypoallergenic. But still, like, I was sneezing. I was scratching. This stinks. And then he goes, oh, wait, I am a geneticist with a PhD. Maybe I can actually do something about it. So he founded this company along with this other guy and took it upon himself and published this happened a couple of years ago and monitored the results, brought this Beagle home with him and said, I am perfectly fine. And it's just a shocking amount of people that are allergic to dogs. About one in seven, 15% of the world's population has the same experience as Walker.
Starting point is 00:14:01 They are allergic to dogs. So this seems like a breakthrough. Obviously, it's just a very, you know, just small sample size, two dogs for now, but they'll be looking to commercialize this, bring it to other dog breeds in the future. Yeah, what's the big picture here? One, there's more dog allergies than just can F1. Two, actually, I thought this was an interesting use case, creating hypoallergenic service dogs because some people need these companions and yet they can't have them because they are allergic. My other big question was, does this work for other animals? I am allergic to cats. Specifically for cats, because again, there's some cat owners out there.
Starting point is 00:14:37 And dog allergies and cat allergies are caused by different proteins. So you need your own Matt Walker cat lovers to come in and try to remove some of those allergens, which Matt Walker might be located in Korea if you are a cat lover. South Korean scientists reportedly produced the first gene-edited hypoallergenic cats back in 2024. So you can have pet lovers alike. You can have your hyperallergenic pets. even if you're a dog or a cat person.
Starting point is 00:15:05 And he mentioned CRISPR is controversial, and I was looking at some expert commentary on this to say, like, is there any backlash? Like, what do they think? What do ethicists think? And most said, yeah, this is great. Like, we're solving a problem here. The slippery slope is when you try to get into designer dogs. And we've heard about this with designer babies.
Starting point is 00:15:24 We have some scientists at a company called Embryo Corporation, which is located in Texas. They're trying to make glow in the dark rabbits, actual unicorns. those things are enhancements rather than fixing a problem. So this is a Pandora's box here. It looks like Matt Walker is all above board. This is kosher. Everyone endorses what he's doing. But there are other companies out there that are want to make, you know, glow in the dark rabbits, glow in the dark dogs.
Starting point is 00:15:50 Who knows what's going on using CRISPR technology, which is very powerful. So watch the space. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this. Neil, have you ever been late to a trend? Yes, jelly shoes. My feet are still recovering. Well, every day you're late to AI, you fall two days behind. NetSuite Next from Oracle helps you catch up.
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Starting point is 00:16:52 In just a few clicks, you can have a say on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com slash investor choice to learn more. It's your shares, it's your voice, it's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of their index funds, and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Welcome to Neal's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have you feeling like an unstoppable offensive coordinator. Up first, a shocking number of parents are inserting themselves in their kids' job application process, with many even inviting themselves to attend interviews.
Starting point is 00:17:29 In a Zeti survey of over 1,000 Gen Ziers, 20% had a parent-com. to a job interview with them. Sounds extreme, but it's part of a real phenomenon of helicopter parents taking an unusually active role in their children's professional prospects, alarming hiring, and career experts who warn of career copilating. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the trend has become so widespread that it made the agenda of an HR organization's national conference earlier this summer. The speaker asked the room if a parent had either called them to vouch for their child
Starting point is 00:17:59 or attend an interview, and of the 250 human resources pros in its time, attendants, more than half raised their hands. Many evented on social media about overbearing parents. The problem they told the journal is that this kind of obsessive parenting just hurts their kids' chances in the job market. A, it signals a lack of independence from the applicant, and B, it shows the company that this parent is going to be all up in their business, even after the kid is hired. No one wants to get a call from an angry mom that their perfect angel of a child wasn't selected as employee of the month. Sobie, just like their kids, their helicopter parents have graduated. There are horror stories around this. Stephen Clark, he's the CEO of an Alaska staffing firm. He told the Wall Street Journal that he had to fire a 24-year-old construction worker after he was late or absent four times during his first week. In a literally hours later, the employee's mother called him up asking it to reconsider. He said the first time this happened, I was appalled. Since then, it's become more of a here we go again situation. I can't believe it's as common as this article made it seem like it was. But then I thought,
Starting point is 00:19:02 back to my career in youth sports and the tendencies those helicopter parents kind of developed. And I'm not surprised at all that it's spilled over into the workforce. The things that I've seen parents do to coaches that they are now probably doing to bosses and hiring managers, that connected the dots for me. Thanks for giving me PTSD to Little League when we're all 10 years old and the parents are taking it, you know, the most serious thing on earth. But you can understand that, okay, they're doing it in Little League for 10 to 12 year olds. Now they're doing it for their kids getting a job. I'm trying to think that me, myself, when I become a parent, won't do the same thing, but I'm going to say some stuff to coaches. I just know it's going to happen. The cycle is
Starting point is 00:19:42 going to continue. For my next number, Hollywood may say it's against AI, but secretly it may be in love with it. Just look at job openings. The LA Times found that as of late June, more than one in 10 postings in the entertainment industry was probably related to artificial intelligence. Amazon, MGM, Studios wants to find a principal AI executive. Netflix is hiring for a manager-generative workflows, and Disney is seeking a production innovative technologist. You won't hear them hype it up because AI is a third rail topic in showbiz. Actors, writers, and other creatives are worried it's coming for their livelihoods and ultimately could degrade art altogether. James Cameron called AI actors horrifying. And yet, companies believe that AI is the future of their industry, enabling more
Starting point is 00:20:28 efficient production to lower costs. To be clear, none of these job postings reviewed by the LA Times were AI scriptwriters or actors, but instead for the more nitty-gritty aspects of movie making like dubbing, visual effects, and sound. Some film icons have endorsed AI too much backlash.
Starting point is 00:20:44 George Lucas of Star Wars fame said rejecting AI is like choosing a horse and buggy over a car. Quote, artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies. There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress. It's the future. I thought it was interesting that a lot of filmmakers see it as a fundraising strategy, actually, because financing is difficult to come by,
Starting point is 00:21:04 but they have found that if you attach AI to a studio or a project, all of a sudden, venture capitalists come knocking at your door. And that is very helpful to, you know, some struggling filmmakers. Roger Avery, who is a Pulp Fiction co-writer, said that traditional financing had become almost impossible. But then once he branded his company as AI Focus, investors came pouring in. Now he says he's producing three films. So maybe it's kind of like you're making a deal with the devil for a lot of these creative types.
Starting point is 00:21:33 But if you want your movies made and this is what you have to do is embrace this new technology, some of them are saying, yeah, I'll take a bite of that apple. I will go down that path because I want to make movies. And money is absolutely flowing into this sector. Investment in AI video and media startups is up 43% year over year. For my final number, quick story, I went for a run the other day and shuffle the playlist of the Billboard Top 100 to see what the kids were listening to. and I noticed that pretty much every other song was a country track. I wasn't hallucinating.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Country is the dominant music genre in America right now. For the first time in history, country songs claim all top five spots on the charts. They are Choosin Texas by Ella Langley, which has been at number one for 16 weeks now. Been by Now by Morgan Wallin. I knew it. I knew you by Taylor Swift. I can't love you anymore, a Langley-Walland duet. And Boston by Newcomer Lefty, Country's rise to dominance has been years.
Starting point is 00:22:28 in the making back in 2023. Last night by Wallin and Luke Combs fast car went one and two. The first time country songs had done that since 1981. The next year, Shabuzzi's bar song logged 19 weeks at number one. But until those breakthroughs, it had been decades since country conquered the airwaves. Before last night in 2003, the last country song to go number one was amazed by Lone Star all the way back in 2000. Toby, it's a country music world.
Starting point is 00:22:53 We're just living in it. I think part of the reason why country is more accepted now, too, is because it's because it's just broadened out. Now you see lots of artists from different parts of the musical canon, pop artists, hip hop artists, kind of diving into country as well, which has just made it more widespread. So if more people are embracing it,
Starting point is 00:23:11 it's obviously going to fill up the charts more. But it got me thinking back, too, to Old Town Road and how that was, you know, extremely genre, genre blending at the time. And also I got this wedding coming up, and we were having this debate, too, is Old Town Road an acceptable wedding song You were pretty pro.
Starting point is 00:23:29 I think it's, you know, you want something that people will sing along to. And I think once you hear those banjo twings come in in the intro, I think people would sing along. But I think it's not on your playlist. Yeah, the argument was from my feelings, not very chic, but also it's not quite, you know, nostalgic enough. It needs another five more years. And then I think it will be a wedding playlist mainstay. But yeah, it's cool to see country kind of accepted like this. The big question mark too is if the Grammys are going to embrace it because it has, it has,
Starting point is 00:23:57 tons of commercial success, but the critics have never quite embraced it. But now, if you have the biggest song in the year, multiple top 10 hits, is Ella Langley going to win, you know, country music in one of the major categories? Is she going to be rewarded? That remains to be seen. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. It's hard for corporate shakeups to really get the blood moving, but what just went down at Google yesterday was seismic. First, four of the architects behind modern AI left the company at the same time. Among them was chief scientist Jeff Dean who had been at Google since 1999. The quartet are leaving the Google to launch a new startup called Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation focused on machine learning. Simultaneously,
Starting point is 00:24:44 the head of Google's deep-mind AI unit, Demis Hasibis, is stepping away from day-to-day leadership and into that chief scientist role, marking one of the biggest leadership shake-up days in Google's AI history. For an industry already obsessed with talent, where top researchers can fetch eight to nine figure pay packages, this was a blockbuster move. One engineer I follow on X called it probably the biggest startup announcement of the year's last decade in terms of the caliber of founders. If I had to name the top 10 engineers at Google in terms of impact, it would be the two co-founders, Larry and Sergey, and all four of these folks. Neal, investors sent alphabet shares down 4% because it's not good when you lose the Avengers of
Starting point is 00:25:25 You really have to get into these guys' minds to understand why they're leaving and starting their own thing. They don't care about enterprise workflows getting Google Gemini onto your work computer. They care about Nobel Prizes. They care about artificial general intelligence. They care about these huge, big picture, historical narratives about artificial intelligence and the philosophy around that and the ethics around that. They want to solve these really thorny problems in a lab. The problem is Google wants to make money from AI by putting it on your work laptop. So there's an incongruence there.
Starting point is 00:26:04 And that's why you're seeing a big talent exodus from these guys who are like chess prodigies. You know, they want to think about huge big picture topics, not exactly what Google wants them to. So Google does have a talent exodus right now that it needs to fix. The fundraising deck for Discovery Loop was also going viral. It was essentially just a list of the names of the founders and the areas of expertise. And one quote tweet of it was funny from all garbled and ex-user. What if we built? Everything.
Starting point is 00:26:33 Who has worked for us? Everyone. How many citations do we have? Unaccountable. Because these dudes literally invented AI. And so the fact that they even put together a fundraising deck at all, everyone was saying, like, this is just like a cheeky nod from them because they literally wrote every foundational paper, have worked with everyone in the industry.
Starting point is 00:26:51 everyone knows who they are. So maybe it was just a flex because also awful formatting, not an ounce of design sensibility in there, which honestly adds aura to that pitch deck. They could raise a trillion dollars in the month. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating. All right. Finally, Jetstar, a budget Australian airline, found a solution to those overstuffed overhead bins charge for them. Jetstar announced that it would begin charging passengers for tossing carry-on bags in overhead bins beginning in February of next year. Price will vary, on the length of the flight, but we'll start at about $25 for the shortest routes. The company explained that the most stressful part of the airport experience for passengers and staff
Starting point is 00:27:30 is at the gate when travelers had to weigh their carry-ons, then either check them, if too big, or go full MMA when on the plane to secure a spot over the seat. The charging scheme aims to lower the confusion and temperature during the boarding process and expedite takeoff. Of course, it'll add a new revenue stream as well, which is what most critics of the plan zeroed in on following the announcement. One social media poster sarcastically wondered when they would be charged to use the bathroom. I kind of like it because you want to change consumer behavior because right now it's free. So passengers maximize their carry-on size. This might incentivize them to pack
Starting point is 00:28:06 lighter, bring one personal item or just check a bag and set. And that leads less competition, easier boarding process. But the case against is that you kind of ruin your reputation as an airline because customers don't want to feel like they're being nickeled and dined. You don't feel like you're having a premium service if you have to pay for this. So that frustration and that, you know, loss in image might not be worth it. But it's a very fascinating. I feel like it's going to be a Harvard business case study going forward because there are definitely rewards, but there's also risks as well. We should say it's not the only ultra-budget airline to roll this out.
Starting point is 00:28:43 EasyJet in Britain. Ryanair in Ireland also have similar. their policies. So they're just hopping on the bandwagon. We've seen a lot of outrage when airlines make a decision like this. And then, you know, a few months later, a few years later, everyone kind of forgets about it because it just becomes the norm. That's not to say that we endorse it or anything, but it's just like you make a decision, you get blasted on social media. If you stick to your guns, then people just accept it as just what happens going forward. I want to know who's going to be the airline that is brave enough to let check bags go on free
Starting point is 00:29:13 and let overhead bins charged. Because, again, Again, you want, check bags is easy for the boarding process. I would love someone to flip it. It's never going to happen because that's a major revenue stream for them, but someone do it. Southwest, I'm looking at you. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday.
Starting point is 00:29:34 You all ready to hear the next clue for password. To recap, this week, we are running a game where you have to guess a secret word from a series of clues. The first three clues were the password has to do with one of the five senses. the password begins with a chemical symbol, and the password has three syllables. Here is today's clue. The password begins with a car brand. The password begins with a car brand.
Starting point is 00:29:59 Shoot, I thought I had it. I thought Umami. It was a great guess, but... A lot of people submitted to Umami. I can't think of a car brand that starts with um. Um, so back to the drawing board. All right. So once you think you've figured out the answer, you can submit it through the form in
Starting point is 00:30:15 the show notes. If you still need more time, we'll reveal one more clue on Friday, but you'll get fewer tickets and return to the raffle to win the prize. Good luck. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, 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 supervising producer. Raymond Lute is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is just going to check their bag. Devin And Emory is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Great. Show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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