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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
00:31:22
DOGE pitches cuts to the federal government on capital hill and why there could be a Guinness shortage
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- [00:00]
Toby Howell
Hey, Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose.
- [00:07]
Neal Freyman
A schedule and set up recurring investments.
- [00:10]
Toby Howell
In stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this?
- [00:15]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, I do.
- [00:17]
Toby Howell
Now, where did I put my keys?
- [00:19]
Neal Freyman
You will find them where you left them.
- [00:23]
Toby Howell
Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.
- [00:25]
Neal Freyman
Fidelity Brokerage Services, llc.
- [00:27]
Toby Howell
Member nyse, SIPC.
- [00:31]
Neal Freyman
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
- [00:34]
Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:35]
Neal Freyman
Today, Doge comes to Washington as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy kick off their cost cutting project.
- [00:42]
Toby Howell
Ben White Guinness is suddenly the hottest drink in America this holiday season. It's Friday, December 6th. Let's ride.
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Neal Freyman
One thing that we always appreciate about you is that whenever Toby and I mispronounce a word, you are quick to correct us. And this kind of reinfor enforcement learning is working. I haven't said Nvidia in over a year, just in video, but everyone struggles to say some words, especially if they're new. And the language learning platform Babel just released its list of the most mispronounced words of 2024 in the US and the UK. Toby, I know you've been practicing all week for this performance, so please impress our listeners by pronouncing the words that trip people up the most and explain what they are.
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Toby Howell
Here is the top 10. First is Kamala, as in Kamala Harris. Then there's Keoghan, as in Barry Keoghan, as in the freaky guy from Saltburn, as in Sabrina Carpenter's now ex boyfriend. Then there's Koiker Hunch, which is a Dutch breed of dog that Shohei Ohtani owns. So people are looking that up. Buttigieg, as in Pete Buttigieg, she and the fast fashion company. Then speculoss3b, a new exoplanet that was discovered this year. There's Frise, which was the Olympics mascot. Semaglutide, as in Ozempic, as in Novo Nordisk, Zendaya in Chapel Roan. I think I went 10 for 10 there.
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Neal Freyman
Well, you did practice, but you did when, you know, when the spotlight shone on you, you executed well. So that was the US list. In the uk, the top word that people mispronounced was Espresso, Sabrina Carpenter's song. And I guess the most common mispronunciation there was Expresso.
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Toby Howell
It's actually a very nice snapshot of the year in news, news, politics, science. If you go down the list, it does show what people were talking about. So I like talking about wrongly. Yeah, talking about wrongly. Let's revisit this in 2025. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo. Finance. Neal, was it a fast week or a slow week for you this week?
- [02:43]
Neal Freyman
Slow week for sure. Coming back from a break is always tough.
- [02:46]
Toby Howell
I agree it is slow week for me too. But fast week when it comes to the market, once again, that is something I found. The market waits for no man. There are constantly news stories to be read and data to parse through. It's a runaway train that you can lose track of pretty quickly.
- [02:59]
Neal Freyman
Yahoo. Finance can help tame the beast, though. It makes each fast week in the market feel a little slower, a little more manageable.
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Toby Howell
Real time market data, research reports, stock screeners, news updates you can trust. Yahoo. Finance speeds you up so you can stay ahead of the curve.
- [03:13]
Neal Freyman
If you want your slow weeks to feel faster and your fast weeks to feel slower, head to Yahoo. Finance.com today. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy traveled to Washington, D.C. yesterday to soft launch their Department of Government Efficiency, or doge. The two entrepreneurs met with lawmakers behind closed doors to kick off their much hyped initiative to overhaul the federal government's bureaucracy, slash regulations, and trim wasteful spending. The exact mandate of DOGE is still murky, particularly because it won't be an official government agency, just an advisory body staffed by unpaid volunteers. Plus, there's plenty of skepticism that it will be able to achieve its leaders goals. Elon Musk has pledged to slash $2 trillion from the federal budget, but the math gets tricky. Slash impossible once you realize that the number represents about 30% of all federal spending. And two thirds of the budget funds programs like Social Security and Medicare that are effectively mandatory. So finding $2 trillion to cut seems to be some magical thinking.
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Toby Howell
Still, there is a ton of energy behind DOGE in Washington, since pretty much everyone can agree that the federal government could use some pruning. And I mean everyone. Some Democrats and progressives have shown an eagerness to engage with Musk and Ramaswamy, including Bernie Sanders, who said this week that Musk is right about proposed cuts to military spending. Neal, can DOGE make a dent?
- [04:36]
Neal Freyman
Well, let's take a look at one of their most hyped initiatives, according to them, which is to gut the federal workforce. And maybe that's illustrative of how this is going to work. So the federal government employs 2.3 million people. That accounts for 1.4% of the entire U.S. workforce. In 2022, taxpayers spent $271 billion on payroll for these federal employees, how much of the overall budget does that account for? 4%. So say we were to cut. Say they were to fire half of the federal workforce. And, you know, 60% of everyone in the federal workforce works for three things. The Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. So you would absolutely gut those particular agencies, services giving or people giving services to people like veterans. And you would reduce the deficit. If you cut half of the federal workforce, you would reduce the federal deficit by less than 10%. So this is just some of the math that they're working against. When you want to. When you say you want to cut something like $2 trillion.
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Toby Howell
And that's the math aspect of. Just do a thought experiment real quick. Say we fired a bunch of DMV workers. People are still going to need their driver's license. They still need to register their vehicles. And yet now you're going to go into a DMV that has less workers there. They're handling two, three, four, five people. Does that actually make the government more efficient? And then the other aspect of government waste that they want to go after Doge does is fraudulent payments, which, again, is understandable. You don't want money going towards fraud. You don't want it being misappropriated. And yet, if you think about the way you push back against fraud is usually to add in more layers of maybe bureaucracy, more paperwork, more hoops to jump through and to ensure that the money is going the places you want it to go. And again, that doesn't really achieve your goal of efficiency as well. So they almost have an impossible task in front of them. It's a catch 22. Whenever you go after trying to cut places, unless you make cuts in precisely the right ways, it might lead to inefficiencies.
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Neal Freyman
Yeah, there's a great anecdote about what you were talking about, where trying to cut bureaucracy leads to even more paperwork. So there was a government conference in 2010 that was held in Las Vegas. It featured a clown and a mind reader, and that caused an absolute scandal. Why is the government spending our taxpayer funds on clowns and mind readers to entertain government employees. But that led to an insane amount of paperwork and documentation and even more inefficiency now that every single time there's a government conference or any government employee travels everywhere, they have to fill out an insane amount of paperwork. So that just created even more, you know, red tape, essentially. That said, you did mention that, you know, I mean, a lot of Republicans are on board with this and even some Democrats. Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna in California, they are aligned with Musk and Ramaswamy on at least a few of the issues. One of the ones where I think there is common ground between Democrats and Doge is military spending, which does, which is a major, major line item in the federal budget. Bernie Sanders said, I would love to talk with Musk about, you know, these bloated government contracts for, for military contractors. Ro Khan said the same thing. He was like, you know, Elon Musk sees this from the inside because he at Space X is a big government contractor for four for the Pentagon budget. So maybe that is an area where that we do spend a ton of money that, where they could find common ground.
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Toby Howell
I do think that the main takeaway here is one, the task is gargantuan. It will be difficult. But on the other hand, lawmakers are willing to play ball. Senator Susan Collins, who actually leads the Appropriations Committee, did have a hour long one on one meeting with Elon Musk. He didn't make a presentation. They were just chatting through ideas. But clearly there is some momentum here. Whether they can pull it off, that is remains to be seen.
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Neal Freyman
And it's not the first time there's been a government efficiency agency that, you know, trying to clean this up. Reagan did in 1982. So this is, you know, every decade they try to do something this. We'll see whether they can get anything done.
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Toby Howell
For this next story, we're going to do a little role playing exercise. If you are at a holiday happy hour and a young person walks up to you and hands you a Guinness, do you, A, politely decline, B, take a small sip, or C, tactically chug it so that the line marking the barrier between the dark stout and the creamy foam on top lands between the G and the harp logo on the outside of the glass? Good job, everyone. The correct answer is C. Splitting the G, as it's called, has found its way into online culture, propelling Guinness out of old Irish pubs filled with old Irish men and into the glasses and gullets of younger Americans. One Boston pub owner told the New York Times that they had to purchase 63% more Guinness this year to keep up with skyrocketing demand. Some reasons why the drink might be having a moment outside the popularity of splitting the G, Guinness is best enjoyed straight from the tap. So a return to more social drinking after the pandemic could be providing a boost. Also, from Paul Mescal on the big screen to Sally Rooney on bookshelves, Irish culture in general is just in right now. Neal. These tailwinds Guinness is experiencing means that the biggest issue it's facing ahead of the holiday season is will there be enough of it.
- [09:47]
Neal Freyman
That's true. This week Diageo, that is, which is the big beverage conglomerate that owns Guinness, actually limited pubs in the UK from sourcing Guinness each week leading up to Christmas because they just haven't made enough to, to fulfill booming demand in the year to end. In the year to June, worldwide sales of Guinness were up 15%. Meanwhile, you know, the overall beer industry is in decline. It was sales were basically fat flat between July and October for the global industry, but volume of Guinness consumed from kegs was up more than a fifth. So even as the overall industry stagnates, Guinness is, you know, skyrocketing.
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Toby Howell
I do think it is fascinating all the different aspects that have thrusted Guinness into a, you know, kind of being the leader really in a, in a semi dying category. Another one is, is that Guinness has been working very hard to shed its reputation as a heavy beer. I mean anyone who's seen a pint of Guinness, it looks like a meal in a glass. It is so heavy, the foam on top themes seem so thick. But really they've been on this marketing campaign to show that we're actually not that heavy of a beer. It's 4.2% alcohol by volume. That's about the same strength as a Bud light. There's only 125 calories per a 12 ounce glass. That's the same as Modelo Especial. So despite what looks would show it's not as heavy as people think. And as, as the beer industry kind of shifts away from these heavier craft beers, people are saying, wait a second, Guinness, despite what it looks like, is a much lighter beverage.
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Neal Freyman
Okay, what the people actually want to know is have you split the G? How hard is it to walk us through this process?
- [11:21]
Toby Howell
Well, there's a little bit of controversy actually as to what the target is when you're splitting the G I, I. The way I've done it is between the bottom of the G and the harp logo. But some people try to split the actual middle of the G itself. So depending on which pub you're in, depending on if you're in Ireland or America, there is a little bit of controversy. But there is this rise in so called gin influencers. That's a real term that's been social flying around on social media where this, this tradition, whatever you want to call it, started way back like 2015 era, 2017 era in Ireland in the UK and it slowly made its way across the pond. You had never heard I never this, this show.
- [12:02]
Neal Freyman
So I don't know what that says.
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Toby Howell
We got to take you to a pub.
- [12:05]
Neal Freyman
Yeah. Hartley's. And another part of the Guinness boom is that there is some sort of craftsmanship involved in, you know, pouring it from the keg. There's a right way to do it that takes minutes to do. And there's an Instagram account that ranks all of the bars based on how they pour Guinness. And the best one is Hartley's in Brooklyn. So if you're looking for the best pint of Guinness, that is your best bet. We should go there this weekend. On April 15, 2019, the world watched in horror as Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral was engulfed in flames. The 12th century Gothic masterpiece, a French national monument, suffered major damage to its upper walls and vaults, while its roof and iconic spire were destroyed. But out of the ashes, a phoenix rises. This weekend, Notre Dame is reopening to the public once more and what experts are calling one of the history's most remarkable restorations. The church has been rebuilt in a colossal effort involving more than 1,000 artisans and 250 companies from all over the world. Even more remarkable, the restoration took just over five years since the fire and came in under budget. The restoration project had raised over $900 million, but spent an estimated 737 million on the rebuild. TOBY Even as the church was still burning that April, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to reopen it in five years. It took a Herculean effort, but they pretty much did it.
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Toby Howell
They pretty much did it because there was so much support from really French's elite class to get this thing back up because it is just a symbol of national pride. In the days and even the hours after the fire, you saw these almost like one upmanship coming in from a lot of these billionaires where the richest families in France, like I'm talking about the caring family, they said that they would from luxury good fame, would give 113 million. Then LVMH is CEO Bernard Arnault pledged $226 million. The L'Oreal foundation gave $226 million. So it really became this big game of like, we want to get this back on board. But it was also almost like this public display of like, who can support it? And then, yeah, Macron played a big role as well. He said, five years we're going to open. And he put this very hard deadline with the sheer amount of work they had to do. But they came in under. It's wild that they came in under budget when you take consider just how much went into restoring this building.
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Neal Freyman
Yeah, I mean let's talk about some of those restoration, you know, processes because this thing was built originally in the 1100s. And what they did to repair some of this was just go back to the way those craftsmen did it back then, 800 years ago because they were like, man, this is really good. This stood, this withstood the test of time for the most part. So they did things like take the organ down to south, the south of France and just repair it with the same materials that it was originally built with, like sheepskin and animal glue. One of the most impressive rebuilds of this entire thing was the roof, which is this incredible lattice work of wood. They went into the surrounding countryside just like they did when or building the original Notre Dame and took down 2,000 oak trees, brought them back and put made the roof again. So just incredible craftsmanship work. I would love to, I can't wait for this documentary to come out to see how they built this. But you know, it also reminds me of the fact that cathedral something, something that's like 900 years old is constantly getting destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt again. So you know, a cathedral is not necessarily just a finished piece from when it's originally started. It's like a work of constant motion.
- [15:38]
Toby Howell
And I can't help but contrast Notre Dame reopening with the vote of no confidence as the French government just went through where parliament is still trying to figure out how to run the country. And then Macron is definitely going to use this reopening as a chance to kind of bolster his political standing because he's on unstable footing right now. So that is another undertone to this great victory for France. But still they have some things going on behind the scenes that they have to figure out. Up next, it's stock of the week, dog of the week time. Cybersecurity isn't just a hot topic on the news. It's a real growing threat. Specifically encryption cracking quantum computers.
- [16:15]
Neal Freyman
Quantum computing is the next generation of hacking technology and cyber warfare. As hacks and attacks rise, so does the need for cybersecurity. That's up for this complex challenge.
- [16:25]
Toby Howell
Enter Scope Technologies. SCOPE has developed a best in class scalable solution and quantum proof cloud storage to combat these growing threats and is positioned in a rapidly expanding sector that's seeing trillion dollar growth with solutions equipped.
- [16:38]
Neal Freyman
For companies and governments to implement. Right now, Scope appears poised to deliver early investors with potentially sizable returns.
- [16:45]
Toby Howell
Learn more about Scope and this investment opportunity at the investment journal.com Morning Brew that's the investment journal.com Morning Brew Innovation is at the heart of any businesses forward movement, but once teams move from.
- [17:01]
Neal Freyman
Ideation into the product development phase, outdated process management tools, team alignment constant changes continually slow the process to snail speed.
- [17:10]
Toby Howell
That's why Miro's Innovation Workspace comes loaded with AI enabled tools designed to help teams get from idea to output faster and more seamlessly.
- [17:18]
Neal Freyman
These tools include two way sync technology, a text to diagram function, AI summaries, customer journey mapping, and AI sidekicks in design, growth, analytics and more. Toby, you work across multiple teams here at the Brew. How valuable is something like Mira?
- [17:33]
Toby Howell
Listen, if anything can speed up your workflows and make collaboration across teams easier, it is worth the investment. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, ux, Agile or it. Bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary Innovation Workspace and be faster. From idea to outcome. Go to miro.com to find out how. That's mirror.com welcome to Stock of the Week Dog of the Week where we pick one stock from the week's news that knows There are still 25 days left in the year and is making use of each and every one of them. And one stock who is already looking ahead to 2025 whilst forgetting the gift that is the present. Neil, I won the pre show Grammar competition. You did good, but I did well. So I'm up first and my Stock of the Week is Robinhood. The brokerage firm has quietly been staging a nice comeback over the past weeks, months and year to climb back over its IPO price. It's now up 217% year to date, is worth about $35 billion and just hosted its first investor day event this past Wednesday. CEO Vlad Tenev laid out a future where Robinhood has its hands in everything from stock and crypto trading to maybe sports betting. One interesting tidbit from the Investor day was that Robinhood sees desktops as a pillar of growth over the next few years, as the Wall Street Journal put it. According to the company, about 50% of overall retail trading takes place away from mobile devices, but only makes up about 10% of Robinhood's volume. It's an interesting strategy. Robinhood first caught on for offering zero fee trading, attracting a more casual crowd of investors to its app, but now, Neal, it's looking to go deeper with more serious, more sophisticated traders.
- [19:12]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, it doesn't want the people like you or me that you know Just buy random stocks on our phone and want. People who have the three monitors set up are very serious traders. They also bought a company called Trade PMR, which caters to a registered investment advisors for $300 million. That's a planned acquisition. So that. And so those registered investment advisors, you know, trade stocks and own and have custody of clients money. So they bring a huge portfolio of business with them. So these all. All of these initiatives right here speak to Robinhood going after a more, you know, a more intentional investor rather than the amateur one that, you know, maybe propelled them to fame a few years ago.
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Toby Howell
Yeah, just look at the inroads they've made with people who do have more sophisticated financial needs. According to their investor day, 45% of recent users earn six figures or more. People who are at least 44 years old now make up a quarter of recent users, and about 60% of recent users are married or living with a partner. So it's not those kids in the basement. It's not the people who maybe propelled the meme stock mania of COVID of 2020. It is just normal people with normal and increasingly more sophisticated financial needs. So you can see kind of that Robinhood saying, we're in the next phase of our iteration and we want to go bigger here.
- [20:26]
Neal Freyman
What do you make of their. Their push potentially into sports betting?
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Toby Howell
I mean, it's not sports betting as like, you traditionally think about it, is they're trying to create these, like, these markets, essentially prediction. Prediction markets, which they rolled out ahead of the presidential election. So that was, I think, a test run for them. So they're thinking like, hey, this is clearly something where people are interested in, why would we not skate where the puck is going? So I do think that there's nothing planned on the books right now, but they're definitely looking down that path.
- [20:55]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, I think bottom line for Robinhood is it's in growth mode. Once again, my dog of the week is the hock to a meme coin. This launched Wednesday night to quite a bit of hype, but plummeted in value on Thursday, causing many people to lose money on that thing. For everyone asking, Neil, are you serious right now? Yes, I am. And here's what happened. Haley Welch, the girl who went viral for an interview in the summer and has stayed in the Internet limelight, launched a meme coin to, in her words, unite her community. Right after launch, the coin shot up to a market cap of $490 million before plunging more than 91% in the span of a few hours yesterday. Down to a value of less than 30 million. Welch and her team were immediately accused of executing a rug pull, a scam in which insiders hype up a crypto before selling it at a profit, disappearing and leaving regular investors holding the bag with nothing. Welch defended herself yesterday, denying any insider sales or activity. Either way, the reason we're even sharing this story is that it showcases the boom in meme coins since the election last month. Bitcoin may have just hit 100k, but the smaller meme coins have been snagging even more momentum and attention, to the point where the hock to a girl is now at the center of a crypto controversy. Toby, is this the top?
- [22:09]
Toby Howell
I don't know. I mean, Hayley Welch is absolutely speedrunning the Internet at this point. She got the viral video, she launched the podcast. Of course, the next thing to do is launch a meme coin, but it does speak to kind of the current iteration of the crypto market that we're in right now. I mean, you go back, we had the NFT craze. Now we're in the meme coin craze. Dogecoin, which is the original meme coin, if that's what you want to call it, named after the Shiba Inu meme that a lot of people know. It's outperformed bitcoin over the last month. I mean, we were just talking about. The Department of Government Efficiency is literally called. It does show. Clearly, memes are driving culture right now. And just to be clear for everyone listening, the point of these coins is that they don't have a point. There is no business model. There is no cash flow. There's no underlying asset that you're buying. You are truly just buying into the fact that there's a shared understanding of an inside joke on the Internet. So whether you think that has real value or not, clearly it does, based off of the market valuations of these meme coins. But these are these highly volatile tokens. They're not something that your finance one on one professor ever talked about, but they're clearly hot right now.
- [23:13]
Neal Freyman
And let's run some through some of these meme coins, and maybe, Toby, you can explain to us millennials what these are. But there's one that's called Mudang, which is. Which is that pygmy hippo that was born in Thailand and has become a meme.
- [23:27]
Toby Howell
That's probably the easiest one for people to wrap their heads around. Mudang is just a meme. Like, you saw her go viral on social media. Now there's a coin that is tied to her value. It is worth a lot of money, but that is probably the easiest one to kind of wrap your head around.
- [23:40]
Neal Freyman
And then there's Peanut, which is named after the orphan squirrel who was euthanized by New York authorities and became a right wing talking point ahead of the election. And then another one is called Chill Guy, which is the meme of just the Arthur looking dog.
- [23:54]
Toby Howell
Yeah, Chill Guy. Hands in pockets. Going viral on TikTok, going viral on X. It has reached a market cap of $466 million. Peanut has hit $1.2 billion. There is a lot of money pouring into these things, unfortunately.
- [24:10]
Neal Freyman
And in the long enough timeline, they all go to zero. Unless, not necessarily, I guess, Doge Dogecoin.
- [24:16]
Toby Howell
Is worth $60 billion. It's worth more than Target right now. So it depends on the enduring character of the mean. Maybe these more.
- [24:23]
Neal Freyman
I'd say the vast majority go to zero, but the ones that endure and become part of the culture, like Dogecoin, do seem to have some legs.
- [24:30]
Toby Howell
I think that is investor beware.
- [24:32]
Neal Freyman
Absolutely.
- [24:32]
Toby Howell
Investor beware. Now let's sprint to the finish of the week with some headlines you should know. Up first, the net appears to be closing around the shooter who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. Earlier this week, police released images of a suspected gunman taken from a surveillance camera at an Upper west side Hostel on 103rd Street. Authorities obtained a search warrant for the building and are working to identify him. Other loose ends investigators have tracked down. They believe the suspect may have caught a ride from Atlanta to New York last month on a bus. They also found a water bottle in a protein bar wrapper in a nearby trash can that authorities say the gunman purchased from Starbucks just before the shooting. Despite all the leads, though, Neil, he still remains at large.
- [25:15]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, really stood out to me was the reaction on media. Tens of thousands of people expressed support for the killing and even praised the killing. I know it maybe was a minority, but it certainly was on many of our feeds. I mean, I think one good example of this is on the official Facebook post about his death from United Health Group, the parent company of the company that he was the CEO of. Most, the vast majority of people reacted with the laughter emoji. There were 40,000 reactions on that particular post. 35,000 use the haha emoji and just 2200 use the sad emoji. So, I mean, take that what you want, but there's a lot of hatred towards the health insurance industry.
- [25:58]
Toby Howell
Evocative and soft, warming and rich, appealing to a desire for comfort that is not a script for a sensual phone line operator. Those are just some of the ways that Pantone is describing its color of the year. For 2025. The color curator named mocha mousse a mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth as the color it thinks will define the next 12 months. Neal this past year's color was a warm and fruity peach fuzz. So a shift to a new giddy brown that evokes everything from luxury knitwear to swamp water is quite the 180.
- [26:31]
Neal Freyman
It's the first time in the 25 year history of Pantone's color of the year that they've chosen a shade of brown. And I guess my question is how much can Pantone put its imprint on culture going forward? Will something will a color organically appear and drive, you know, general aesthetics? Or how much influence does Pantone actually have? Because they feels like they want to have influence and one way they actually do is because when they announce the color of the year, they launch a thousand different collaborations with brands. So they do sell start selling stuff in this particular color where they wouldn't before. But it is kind of interesting especially for coming after a summer and a year where, you know, brat green really drove a lot of online culture. How much of, you know, what color stands out is organic and how much is a function of what the, you know, the color elite say?
- [27:23]
Toby Howell
It is a good question. It's both predictive because they are predicting the color of the year and prescriptive because they are almost speaking it into existence. But I don't know if you go back through the history, I think we're coming off of peach fuzz and Viva Magenta to to have a brown. Maybe it is just time to settle down a little bit and have a little bit more of a mellow color of the year.
- [27:41]
Neal Freyman
Calling all aspiring Dolly Parton's, your role of a lifetime has arrived. The Dolly Parton musical is coming to Broadway in 2026 and yesterday the queen of country music herself put out a casting call to play her at different stages of her life. Anyone, whether you're a musical theater pro or a mainstay on the karaoke circuit, is encouraged to try out by filling out an application and posting a one minute video of themselves singing their favorite Dolly song on social media. Toby this could be the most applied to job in history.
- [28:11]
Toby Howell
Yeah, I don't think I have a shot for this one. Neil. Obviously the first thing your mind goes to, though, is who would be a good Dolly. Some names that come to mind, at least vocally speaking. Miley Cyrus, her version of Jolene might be even better than Dolly's. Sabrina Carpenter could be good as well. But also it's this is the way that they're going about. This opens up the world to a lot of undiscovered talent. So I do think they're also looking for performers of all ages of Dolly's life. So I think we're going to see some, like, really cool videos emerge. Some, I don't know, maybe your grandmother all the way down to like your young daughter might be nailing their Dolly impression. So I don't know. I wish I had a chance at this, but I don't think I got the pipes for it.
- [28:49]
Neal Freyman
Neal, that is a wrap on our shows for the week. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments or feedback, send an email to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom. And if you learned something today, share that fact and the podcast with a friend or coworker who would find it interesting. Y'all are key to helping us grow this thing to be bigger than Rogan. For even more specific sharing idea, Toby's got you covered.
- [29:14]
Toby Howell
I mean, on the Dolly Parton kick, I want you to share the podcast with youth, with someone you think has a shot at playing Dolly. Young, old, blonde, blonde, not blonde. If you think they have what it takes, send them this episode.
- [29:27]
Neal Freyman
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Lonnie Fiskus is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is going to start dressing us in mocha mousse, and that's okay. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [29:45]
Toby Howell
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. Bell.