Morning Brew Daily - WNBA Quintuples Players’ Salaries & Energy Prices Spike as Fed Holds Rates Steady

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Episode 803: Neal and Toby chat about the Fed’s decision to keep rates unchanged as it monitors the risks from the Iran War. Then, the WNBA and its players’ union reach a historic deal that reflec...ts the growth of value for women’s basketball. Plus, the company behind the ‘steroid Olympics’ is breaking into the consumer market as it will begin selling injectable peptides. Meanwhile, it’s Neal’s Numbers on Poland’s economy, radioactive mice and rats, and the most requested song at a piano bar.  Learn more at linkedin.com/MBD Join our March Madness bracket! Join our March Madness bracket!  Mens: https://fantasy.espn.com/games/tournament-challenge-bracket-2026/group?id=4f3dc815-5efe-4a5f-ab31-1479c99af85d&joining=true Womens: https://fantasy.espn.com/tc/sharer?challengeId=278&from=espn&context=GROUP_INVITE&edition=espn-en&groupId=bf3953cf-e486-4a98-9925-9f56ef480bfa 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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Starting point is 00:00:28 Good morning brew. Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, energy prices are spiking and Jerome Powell's hands are tied. Then what's the deal with peptides? It's Thursday, March 19th. Let's ride. Good morning on what is for many American sports fans, the most exciting day of the year. The men's college basketball tournament, aka March Madness, tips off with a 16-game feast, running from 1215 Eastern to whenever the 10-10 game ends. Brackets will be on heralded stars will be born, and you've Venmoed five of your friends 20 bucks that you will never see back.
Starting point is 00:01:09 Toby, how many brackets did you fill out this year? I'm about 15 deep at this point, Neil. It's all I've been doing. My hand has been cramping, honestly. It's about 14 brackets too many. I only recommend doing one, but I totally forgot to promote this on prior shows. I did make an MBD bracket group for all of our listeners to, you know, submit their brackets. We put it in the show description, forgot to tell anyone about it.
Starting point is 00:01:35 So feel free to sign up. We have a men's bracket and a women's bracket. And the winner will get a shout out on the pod. It's going to be very fun when I get to shout my own name out on my own podcast. All right. Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Toby, have you ever tried to find the best version of something? Yes.
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Starting point is 00:02:23 Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions may apply. In Jerome Powell's penultimate meeting as Fed chair, Central bankers voted 11 to 1 to hold the benchmark interest rate steady as she goes. It was the second consecutive meeting with no change as the Fed brought out its oars to try and steer the economy through a war,
Starting point is 00:02:52 rising oil prices, and stubborn inflation. Powell addressed the war in his press conference, but didn't say a whole lot. The implications of events in the Middle East for the U.S. economy are uncertain, he said. In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation, but it is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy. In general, the Fed tends to look past oil shocks since they tend to be temporary, though it certainly muddies the near-term future.
Starting point is 00:03:19 The Fed's dot plot, which shows central banker's projections for future rate decisions, was a little all over the place, but still forecast one more. more rate cut this year. Though keep in mind, members don't have any data from after the war with Iran broke out. This week's meeting was also Powell's second to last as chair until Trump's nominee Kevin Warsh takes over the reins pending his confirmation in June. Powell, who is currently the subject of an investigation tied to renovations of the Fed's HQ, is pulling a Jordan Belford and isn't going anywhere, folks. Fed chairs are allowed to stay on as governors, which Powell says he intends to do until the DOJ investigation is, quote, well and truly over with transparency and
Starting point is 00:03:59 finality. Should Warsh not be confirmed in time, Powell also said he will keep serving as head of the central bank going forward. Neil, this is all happening as oil and natural gas prices are soaring, falling attacks on two critical facilities in Qatar and Iran, stoking fears of a global supply crunch. Yeah, if you're not sure how this is all going to shake out for the economy, Do not worry. Even the top economic policymaker in the world has no clue. Jerome Powell went up to the microphone yesterday for his press conference and said, the thing I really want to emphasize is that nobody knows the economic effects could be bigger. They could be smaller. They could be much smaller or much bigger. We just don't know. And the traditional playbook for the Federal Reserve when you see a supply chalk like this is to just stand pat because the hit to growth and the boost to inflation basically cancel each other out. So Jerome Powell is just going to be sitting there on the couch like the rest of. of us monitoring the situation. Yes, he has a lot of tabs open right now. If the war with Iran hadn't broken out, I feel like we'd be talking a lot more about the labor market right now than we are currently because the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. Job growth has
Starting point is 00:05:05 essentially flatline. Unemployment is rising gently. That's mainly because the labor force itself is shrinking. Officials actually dropped language from their January statement that described the labor market as showing, quote, signs of stabilization because it was just no longer accurate. So if you zoom out and you take into account recent revisions to, the private sector has added basically zero jobs over the last year. So this labor market certainly doesn't have its sea legs under it. And the other thing that the Fed considers is inflation. And that is also rising. Keep in mind, this is before the war in Iran broke out. The producer price index for February came out yesterday. It rose 0.7% after a 0.5% gain in the prior month.
Starting point is 00:05:47 So those are wholesale prices that industrial companies are paying for their inputs. Now that it has gone skyward as oil and gas prices have gone up. So inflation was ticking up, worryingly, a little higher even before the war broke out. And Powell at his press conference said inflation continued to be, quote, frustrating. And what is going on with the war in Iran right now? Qatar confirmed that Iranian missiles called extensive damage at the Ross-Lafin Industrial City. that is home to the largest liquefied natural gas producer in the world. They are account for nearly 20% of global LNG exports.
Starting point is 00:06:25 This came after Israel struck facilities in Iran that handle gas coming from the South Pars gas field. South Pars is part of the world's largest gas field. So those are two critical pieces of energy infrastructure that were struck back to back. It looks like some of the worst-case fears about this war are materialized. Yeah, back on February 27th, February 28th, As soon as this war was going, getting started, we talked on this podcast about what are the worst case scenarios for the global economy? And it was number one, straight of Hormuz's clothes, blocking off 20% of oils and gas supply. And the next worst case scenario was that energy infrastructure like these gas fields that send gas, that produce gas that fuels basically the entire global economy will be attacked and damage.
Starting point is 00:07:10 And now Qatar is reporting that there is extensive damage on the world's largest natural gas facility. this is the worst case scenario. Yeah, and how is that materializing in the prices of oil in natural gas? Brent crude prices surged to nearly $120 a barrel as of this morning. And then European natural gas prices have jumped over 32% higher following the attacks. And you're starting to hear people say the R word recession. Every time oil prices search 50% above their trend, which they have done now, a recession followed. This has happened six times since the 1970s every single time.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Moving on, yesterday was a historic one for women's pro basketball. Just after 2 a.m. in New York on Wednesday, the WMBA and its players union announced a verbal agreement on a new collective bargaining deal that both sides hailed as transformational, not just for the WMBA, but for all girls and women who play sports. While the specifics need to be ironed out and officially approved, ESPN got its hands on the framework and it shows a dramatic pay raise for WMBA players. The average annual salary will be $600,000 up from $125K last year. The minimum salary comes to $300,000 up from $66,000 last year. And some players on the Supermax salary will make more than $1 million. And maybe the biggest update to player wages, their salaries will be tied to a substantial portion of league revenue for the first time in history.
Starting point is 00:08:30 The deal is a breakthrough for the WMBA athletes and Commissioner Kathy Engelbert, who were negotiating the collective bargaining agreement for 16 months in a long-running dispute that sometimes turned public and nasty, players opted out of their last pay deal, frustrated that their pay was shockingly low at a time when the league's business fortunes were booming. With a new deal nearly across the finish line, the WMBA and its players will turn their sights on the new season,
Starting point is 00:08:54 the league's 30th, which begins in just over 50 days. Toby, this was a grueling negotiation, but ultimately the players now feel like they're getting paid what they deserve. Yes, this is a free agency period to remember as well, because 80% of the league right now are free agents because a lot of these athletes wisely negotiated their contracts. So they were set to expire right as this new collective bargaining deal would come into place because it is just such a substantial jump in salaries. I mean, we're talking about quintupling the average salary. So of course, if you are an agent, you go, hey, we're eye in this new CBA deal.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Let's make sure that you're negotiating for a new deal at this time. But it also risks. I mean, I'm glad they got this deal across the finish line because the big fear was that, We built up so much momentum over the last couple of years. The league is at its best position ever. A work stoppage would have been the worst possible outcome. So just the fact that they got the deal done, not even to mention that it is a much better deal than they previously were under,
Starting point is 00:09:51 is a massive win for the league. Yeah, a lot of the public first learned about WMBA salaries. When Caitlin Clark joined the WMBA, she's the most markable women's basketball player, perhaps, ever. And when she joined the Indiana Fever after coming from Iowa, she was paid $76,000 in 2024, her first year, and then $78,000 last year. Under the new CBA, her $2026 salary will jump to over $400,000, which is more than the highest paid players in the Dumbo NBA. Jackie Young of Las Vegas makes $252,000 now.
Starting point is 00:10:26 So it's much more than the top players are making now. The fact that that was Caitlin Clark salary entering, that seems unfathomable, but it was just the reality for many. years. I do empathize with the scouting departments of these WMBA teams, though, because the expansion draft, because we haven't even mentioned, there's two new teams debuting it this year, they have to kind of figure out how they're going to build their rosters. That falls at the exact same time as the Final Four for college. So you have to be in four places at once, basically, trying to figure out what players I want to build my roster with. So everything has just been compressed and smushed into a much quicker timeline than a lot of people, especially in scouting departments around the league,
Starting point is 00:11:07 probably were hoping for. All right, moving on, the enhanced games, the self-proclaimed Steroid Olympics backed by Peter Teal and Donald Trump Jr., announced this week that it's getting into the drug dealing business. The company is selling injectable peptides directly to consumers to an online health service, initially offering five with plans to sell more pending regulatory approval. What are peptides? On a scientific level, there are just chains of amino acids. Your body has millions of them already
Starting point is 00:11:36 that do stuff like regulate your immune system and control your hormones. Insulin is a peptide. The active ingredient in OZempic is a peptide. The P and GLP1 literally stands for peptide. So these aren't inherently fringe. There are over 100 FDA approved drugs that are peptide base. But the ones blowing up on Discord, TikTok, and in Silicon Valley are a different story. Gray market injectables with names that sound like Wi-Fi passwords. BPC-157, TB-500, are being used more frequently with claims that they can do everything from heal your injuries to make your skin glow. RFK Jr. went on Joe Rogan's podcast last month and said he's a big fan of peptides and tease that the FDA would make about 14 of them more accessible, which takes us back to the enhanced
Starting point is 00:12:24 games. With the prospect of regulatory tailwinds at their back, the company wants to get into the health sector with eyes on a public debut sometime later this year. Neil, the only peptide I've taken is peptobismal. Very pink. I'm glad to do finally doing something about that, Toby. One main driver of peptides is the, and one main community that's embraced it is the looks maxing community whose spiritual leader is clavicular, which we talked about a few weeks ago on Toby's trends. These are people who try to optimize their physical beauty by doing really, really crazy things like hammering their chins and jaws and things like that. They have really been promoting peptides and so has Joe Rogan. I mean, a lot of the peptide discourse has taken place
Starting point is 00:13:09 on his particular podcast when he was interviewing Ben Affleck and Ment Damon about their movie coming out on Netflix. He encouraged them to take the peptides BPC 157 and TB 500 together, which is known as the Wolverine stack. And that's because it gives you regenerative properties supposedly like Wolverine. If you're putting anything in your body that makes you look more like Wolverine, then maybe it is a good thing. But in addition to the looks maxing,
Starting point is 00:13:37 in addition to the Joe Rogan universe, Silicon Valley has really embraced this almost as a status symbol. It's very big in the Bay Area. There are founders of certain startups that have vials of peptides literally stored in their office fridge for convenient lunchtime injections.
Starting point is 00:13:54 There's been peptide rays. in San Francisco, where, you know, you just fully embrace this kind of fringe community. So it certainly is one of those things that I think a lot of people have heard percolating around, you know, certain subcultures but are now becoming a little bit, I don't know, more mainstream. I mean, we're talking about it right now. Yeah. But the health community is viewing this rise with extreme skepticism.
Starting point is 00:14:19 They say, we do not have enough data at all. We have not done enough research to know what peptides, especially ones on the great market, are going to do for your body. They are not FDA. Most are not FDA approved, and many are coming from China. US customs data showed that imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China increased from 164 million in the first nine months of 2024 to $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025.
Starting point is 00:14:46 So these are coming from shady online dealers from China where you don't know what's going into your body. And health experts say we clearly do not know enough. about we've done some testing on animals, but we have not done sufficiently testing on humans to know what you're putting in your body. Yeah, right now, the claims of, you know, injury recovery, of better sleep, of cognitive boosts, that is outweighing the potential risks that people are kind of ignoring because these just are not extensively lab tested. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this. Neil, I know you don't take
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Starting point is 00:15:58 Paid for by public investing, full disclosure, and podcast description. We're officially in the AI era. Sort of has a ring to it. Or a cha-ching when it's bringing in that covenant ROI. Like with Twilio, the platform enables businesses to personalize customer experiences across any channel with always on virtual agents. According to Twilio, companies that invest in best-in-class customer experiences have seen revenue increased by 5.7x.
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Starting point is 00:16:59 anywhere. They keep HR payroll and IT aligned in one platform, so growth doesn't turn into tools sprawl. It can even make the hard parts of global work disappear, so scaling worldwide feels easier than it should. Head to D-E-E-L.com slash morning brew to book a demo. That's deal.com slash morning brew. Welcome to Neal's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give your brain a bigger boost than any peptide. For my first number, there's a lot of economic doom and gloom out there. So here is a success story, Poland. Poland's economy has now topped Switzerland to become the 20th largest in the world, according to the Associated Press. It's a stunning come up for the once communist country
Starting point is 00:17:43 where citizens were rationing sugar and flour just one generation ago. Those days are a distant memory. Over the last 35 years, Poland's per capita GDP rose from less than $7,000, or 38% of the EU average, to over $55,000, 85% of the EU average and about in line with Japan's. Meanwhile, since joining the EU in 2004, Poland's economy has grown at a pace of 3.8% a year, more than double the blocks average of 1.8%. There's no single catalyst behind Poland's success, but the AP points to a couple of factors. One is that Poland in the post-communism years built strong institutions like independent courts and anti-monopoly agencies that foster investment and competition. Another is a highly educated population where half of young people have degrees.
Starting point is 00:18:29 And finally, joining the EU in 2004 did change the game as it opened up a massive single market for Polish companies. Toby, I could see you dropping these facts while watching a Poland World Cup game in the summer. It's a pretty amazing growth story. Yeah, all I knew about Poland's economy was Lewandowski, which is a soccer player. But yeah, it is a massive comeback story. They'd the foundation very well. I do think that arbitraise between their human capital is like an underappreciated edge that they have because when you have such an educated population but are still earning a little bit less than maybe neighbors around the EU, that is a big, you know, flashing green light for investors who say this is a place that I want to put money into because
Starting point is 00:19:09 they have smart people. We were talking though. We were not super familiar with any global Polish companies, the one that we came up with was CD Project, which is a video game designer that is behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk. So that is probably the next step for Poland as it kind of makes its way onto the world stage to have some global champions that are beyond just the small and medium-sized businesses in the country. Yeah, they want to move up the value chain because they've been a source of foreign investment where companies put factories there and they put a lot of IT workers there. Poland's actually the second most popular destination globally for companies to establish service centers behind only India. So they want to move up the value chain, increase those
Starting point is 00:19:55 wages even more and develop, yes, international champions. So next time we're sitting here, we can name a lot more Polish companies. My next number might blow your mind. Rats and mice that were blasted with intense radio frequency radiation lived longer and were healthier than those that weren't. This was discovered by Informatics PhD student Zane Koch, who re-analysis the raw data from a $30 million government study and posted a viral thread on X with his surprising insights. It all started because Zane said he had a slight fear that the Bluetooth technology from his AirPods was frying his brain. So we dove into this study in which hundreds of mice and rats were exposed to radiation nine hours a day for two years at an intensity of about 100 times
Starting point is 00:20:35 more powerful than that emitted by AirPods and about 10 times a cell phones. After crunching the numbers, Zane said that the radiated mice lived significantly longer. showing a 53% lower risk of death than mice exposed with no radiation. Same with rats. The rats that got the highest dose of cell phone radiation lived the longest. So how is this possible? Zane guessed it could be a sort of hormesis effect, which is when exposure to a stressor actually leads to health benefits.
Starting point is 00:21:03 For example, putting wear on tear on your muscles when exercising. Toby, this is not what you'd expect. Definitely not. I love hormesis, by the way. I think everything in life is hormesis. You know, do a little bit of a hard thing to get benefits. for a longer term. This doesn't necessarily mean R&F radiation is inherently good. It doesn't mean it's inherently bad either. The mixed results that this did spit out is that cancer signals
Starting point is 00:21:27 were split because in rats, heart tumors actually went up, but liver tumors went down. So there are knock-on effects from being blasted with just this amount of radiation. And I do feel like that is emphasizing once again, like this is a lot more radiation than your AirPods are ever getting near you than your cell phone is ever getting near you. Fascinating and counterintuitive result overall, though, because you just wouldn't expect that radiation would be so helpful in a lot of ways. For my final number, here's a question. What is the most requested song at piano bars? Think on it for a second or pause the podcast, then I'll tell you. It's Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rhone, and it's not even close. After vanquishing Piano Man from the top spot recently,
Starting point is 00:22:09 Pink Pony Club gets more than three times as many requests as the second most requested song, Mr. Brightside by The Killers, followed by Take Me Home, Country Roads, a bar song by Shibuzi, Dixieland Delight by Alabama, and All Too Well by Taylor Swift. This data comes from Jesse Rifkin, who headlines a piano bar every weekend in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Rifkin paired up with music analyst Chris Dolariva to analyze all 2,272 digital song requests made to Rifkin in 2025. To their knowledge, the first time anyone had to be able to.
Starting point is 00:22:39 has compiled piano bar request into a data set, and it's revealing the top artists for piano bar requests are Chapel Rhone, Billy Joel, Taylor Swift, and Ellen John, after which there's a steep drop-off for Abba and the Beatles. What's interesting about the Beatles is that they're the six most requested artists, but have no single track on the top 50 showing how dispersed their song requests are. Another finding, there is very little piano bar representation from the late 1960s considered the best couple of years in music history or the 2010s. The writer's that those eras didn't produce music that lends itself to piano bar sing-alongs. The 60s was guitar heavy while the 2010s featured a lot of electronics.
Starting point is 00:23:17 Toby, people just want to be on the stage in their heels. Yeah, what is the piano bar reward if you look through this whole list? It definitely rewards sing-along value songs that you can just, you know, belt out together in a shared room. It obviously rewards songs that have a good piano translation. Like, as you said, if it's guitar heavy, it doesn't translate very well. there needs to be some cultural memory attached to it as well. And also, a lot of these songs got like a second life through movies or through covers
Starting point is 00:23:44 or through social media. And then you just need good room energy in general, too. It's all, you know, intuitive stuff. I don't think if I knew all of those data points, I would have picked Pink Pony Club because it just feels a little too recent, even though it did debut back in 2020, which is wild to think about. When you asked me this question, when you quizzed me before, I said, piano man, that's all I could come up with.
Starting point is 00:24:05 And I'm like something from the Beatles. Yeah, I was close. But it begins with that beautiful arpeggio, and it's just like everyone gets so hype. What's interesting is that the researchers say that only two prior songs held such dominance on piano bars, like Pink Pony Club. One was Hayah by Outcast,
Starting point is 00:24:22 which really isn't a piano song. But it was, I was going to Bar Mitzis back then. It was dominant. And then Call Me Maybe by Carly Ray Jepson in 2012. Different songs. Completely different songs. But the piano bar, you know, it's got a wide variety.
Starting point is 00:24:35 And then final note I want to touch on is the Creed Renaissance. Higher by Creed was on the top 50, but there was zero songs by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Presley. So Gen Z has rediscovered Creed in a big way. That's very funny. I also think that this mesh is very well with the wedding song, you know, Canon. Pink Pony Club is in there.
Starting point is 00:24:56 Like it is up there with Abel. I've gone to a lot of weddings. And like Pink Pony Club is the one that, you know, gets everyone going. It's been at every single wedding I've been at of, like, which you're right has been a lot. So I think that the Venn diagram between piano bar songs and wedding songs is basically a circle.
Starting point is 00:25:12 Now let's sprint to the finish with a final headline. The art world's worst kept secret is finally official. Banksy is a 55-year-old dude named Robin Gunningham from Bristol. Reuters confirmed the identity based on a police record the artist signed with his own name, which for a guy who spent decades dodging detection is a pretty mundane way to get outed. He certainly tried his best.
Starting point is 00:25:35 over the years to remain anonymous. After a British tabloid first connected him to Gunningham nearly two decades ago, Banksy legally changed his name to David Jones, one of the most common names in England, also David Bowie's birth name. You'd think losing the mystique would hurt the value of Banksy's art, but collectors are saying the opposite. One mega collector, Peter Brandt, told the Wall Street Journal that he never bought Banksy specifically because he didn't know who he was.
Starting point is 00:26:01 His take was that buying art from someone working that hard to stay anonymous, felt like buying folklore. Neil, now that it settled, the price of a Gunningham might start to climb. Yeah, maybe Banksy or Gunningham or Jones won't be too mad about this because his work is in a little bit of a slump recently. It was peaking in 2021 and 2022 when there's a lot of crypto cash in the art market. 14 of his top 20 pieces were sold during that time. And his record high price was $25 million in 2021. Well, nothing since then. has sold for over $10 million, and you talk to art dealers, and they say that, yes, clarity is really important. Remember, Beeple or Mike Winkle, what's his name, Mike Winkleman? The fact that he has
Starting point is 00:26:45 a name is very important because he is this digital artist who sold an NFT for over $60 million. And so he has a moniker, right? His name is Bebel, but he also has a real name, name Mike, and apparently that is of a lot of value to the art world. But you also have to remember, Banksy wasn't just being anonymous for the love of the game. A lot of it was to keep him from getting arrested because his art was, you know, spray painting government buildings. You know, he was doing things in very public places. So now that the world knows his face, that sector of his art just became a lot more difficult to pull off. And with Banksy being a mess, there are very few anonymous people left in the world. It's hard to stay anonymous in 2026. There's two I can think of. One is Elena
Starting point is 00:27:28 Ferranti, who is a very acclaimed author. We don't know who she has specifically, we don't have confirmation like this Reuters report. And the other is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, who still remains anonymous to this day. And I'm still trying to find myself, Neil, you know? I'm trying to dive deep and do some introspection. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. And if you'd like to reach us, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com
Starting point is 00:27:55 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 Lig. Hair and makeup is filling out a bracket or five. Devin Emery is our president
Starting point is 00:28:10 and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava theater stage on April 30th,
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