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You could create the best advertisement known to man, but if you're not getting it in front of the right audiences or tapping into meaningful scale, it'll sort of be a tree falls in a forest situation. Enter Disney Campaign Manager. It has simplified streaming TV ad buying, allowing you to set up, launch and optimize campaigns all from a single easy to use platform. Your ads can then appear alongside iconic content on Disney, ESPN and Hulu streaming platforms. So so in translation, massive reach, all with one partner. Learn more and get started at Disney campaignmanager.com that's Disney campaignmanager.com.
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Good Morning Brew Daily Show I'm Yel Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today, how a weight loss drug helped Eli Lilly make history.
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Then how Google went from afterthought to Alpha in the AI race. It's Monday, November 24th. Let's ride.
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Good morning and welcome back to the week, a short week for Thanksgiving. Random acts of kindness, holding the door for someone, leaving a kind note on a stranger's car. They give you this warm fuzzy feeling. But what drives people to do them? According to new research, Batman psychologists in Milan ran an experiment on the city's subway systems to study pro social behavior or the act of helping others. In one scenario, they had a woman appearing pregnant enter a subway car alongside an observer and and counted how many people gave up their train seat for this woman. In the second scenario, they added a dark night twist. As the woman came on board the train, a man dressed as Batman entered from another door. The difference was stark. In the presence of Batman, 67% of passengers offered up their seats, but only 38% did in the control experiment. Toby, what is going on here?
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It makes me think Batman needs to be in our podcast studio and just looming over us, prompting us to actually act and behave better. It's tempting to think that people were afraid that Batman will beat them up in the and pursue justice if they didn't give up their seats. But in reality just shows the power of introducing something weird into people's daily lives. If you jolt people from their routines, they will engage in more pro social behavior where you're more likely to help those around you due to the presence of an unexpected event. Case in point, 44% of people who offered their seats didn't even notice Batman was there. Showing it can often just be a subconscious thing. However, I do want to give Batman some credit. People associate superheroes with things like gender roles and chivalrous help, so got to give some credit to the Dark Knight, where credit is due. And now a word from our sponsor U.S. bank. For anything Like Neil and me, you've created a detailed color coded budget to keep you on track this holiday shopping season. After putting in all of that work, the last thing you want is to have to pay for an unexpected bill out of pocket.
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Learn@usbank.com splitcard that's usbank.com/split card for years, the narrative surrounding Google was that it was a slow moving incumbent blindsided by Open Air, a classic tale of a big tech giant getting outmaneuvered by a brilliant and nimble startup. Well, how the turntables have turned with the release of Gemini 3 last week. America hasn't been this excited by a Next Top Model since Tyra Banks was telling girls to remember to smize. The new Gemini jumped past OpenAI's chat CBD5 to become the consensus best performing chat bot on the market. Then on Thursday it launched an updated version of its image generation tool Nano Banana, which the VP of Google Labs told CNBC is incredible at infographics. It still lags OpenAI in terms of usage. Gemini has 650 million monthly users compared to Chat CBT's 800 million weekly users, but it's making up ground quickly. Google is on a roll outside of AI to its self driving subsidiary. Waymo continues to expand its territory and recently started driving on highways for the first time. And YouTube just flexed its muscles in a carriage dispute with Disney, showing the integral role it plays as a powerful new content distributor. Investors have certainly taken notice. Shares of Alphabet are up more than 77% since the summer, pushing its market cap to $3.6 trillion, surpassing Microsoft for the first time in seven. Neil if you go back to just a few years ago, Google seemed lost, uninspired and caught flat footed. Now it's got its swagger back.
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Yeah, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, knows a thing or two about software, tweeted about Gemini 3. Holy bleep. I've used ChatGPT every day for 3 years, just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I'm not going back. The leap is insane. Reasoning, speed, images, video, everything is sharper and faster. It feels like the world just changed again. How is this all playing at OpenAI? Not too well. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told coworkers, we know we have some work to do, but we're catching up fast. I expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit and that Google's leapfrogging of them in terms of chat bot capabilities could, quote, create some temporary economic headwinds for our company. So the narrative has completely shifted here. You're right. Over the past few years because Google is just releasing. Google just released the best chat bot out there, period.
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I would be nervous if I was OpenAI, too, because not only are you being out outperform, you're also just behind the eight ball when it comes to economics. OpenAI projects to burn $100 billion as it pushes towards superintelligence. Right now, it's on Track to make $13 billion in revenue this year. So even right there, the math ain't mathing. Then you look at Google. Google has generated free cash flow of $70 billion over the past four quarters. And part of that revenue is derived from providing cloud services to competitors like OpenAI. So not only does it make more money, it's making money off of OpenAI's push for super intelligence as well. So if you just wanted to compare those two companies, now Google is ahead of it on performance, and the economics has always been in its favor.
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Yeah, Google reported record revenue last quarter of $102 billion. That means Google makes, in one quarter, eight times what OpenAI will make this year. So it has a lot of money to spend on resources. You might be wondering, we're saying, oh, this is the best chat bot. It beat all of these benchmarks. It crushed rivals. How do they test chat bots? Well, one of these tests I think is very fascinating. It's called the vending bench, and it asks a model to simulate how to operate a vending machine. So you got to track inventory, place orders, set prices. You have to make money in this simulation of running a vending machine. And apparently, Gemini 3 is just a vending machine beast and can make so much money operating vending machines. They're very impressed with how Gemini 3 can do this. That's just one of the possible benchmarks where they say, okay, chat, CBT, run a vending machine. Gemini 3, run a vending machine, and apparently it crushes it.
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You need both the anecdotes and the testing data as well. Because there is obviously there's this thing called LM arena where you pit all these models against each other and you can make your models do really well on the tests that all these benchmarks use. So that's why Marc Benioff's quote is important too, because it's clear that Google made something that is good for people to actually use, not just something that does super well on the testing in the arena benchmark. So that qualitative as well as quantitative approach shows that Gemini 3 is in a really good spot.
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And you're right, Google is exceeding outside of the AI race to Waymo just got a license to operate across across a vast swath of California. Previously it just been in the cities. Now it's got the entire Bay Area, Sacramento, almost all of Southern California up to the Mexican border. It's not currently operating there, but if it wants to, it could drive you from North Los Angeles in the Valley down all the way to Tijuana in the Mexican border. So the red eye Waymo drives are about to come.
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I did see people tweeting out, so Waymo tweeted out their new expanded territory and they did it like it's colored like a empire basically. And so people are putting it next to the Roman Empire and saying like, hey, this is how it starts. But this is where it's going to get. It is expanding rapidly. And then the final note I'll make on Google is we haven't even talked about YouTube that much. YouTube is absolutely killing it. According to a new report from Pew Research center on America's social media usage last year, YouTube is the most widely used online platform for both US adults and the teens. 84% of US adults say they've used used YouTube. That's compared to Facebook in second at just 71%. So it is the de facto. I mean, I don't even know if you call it social media at this point, but just it is tv, it is entertainment, it is everything. People are spending more and more of their time on YouTube.
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All right, everything's coming up. Google moving, kvetching about high prices can bring anyone together. Just ask President Trump and the next mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, who held a surprisingly chummy meeting on Friday as they touted plans to address the affordability crisis. A beaming Trump, who's called Mamdani a communist, said he would be cheering Mamdani on as he takes charge of the largest American city, while Mamdani, who considers Trump a fascist, said their chat was productive. In his come from nowhere campaign for mayor, Mamdani was like a thoroughbred with blinders on as he focused relentlessly on on New Yorkers high cost of living. He returned to the topic again and again during his meeting with Trump, saying, we're in the wealthiest city in the history of the world and yet one in five can't afford $2.90 for a metro card. Trump and other policymakers have seized on the popularity of this message and turned their attention to bringing down costs for Americans. Because right now, Americans do believe that life's necessities are getting out of reach, stretching their budgets for things like groceries, health care, childcare, energy and housing. Recent surveys show the extent of the pain Consumer sentiment fell to nearly a record low in November, tumbling to a score of 51 out of 100 from 71.8 a year ago. A new Fox News poll found that 76% of respondents held a negative view of the state of the economy, down 9% since just July. Toby Affordability is making a late surge for word of the year.
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It is, and it's not a very easily to define thing because if you actually zoom out to the macro data landscape, right now real personal income is up 2.3% year over year. Real hourly wages are up nearly a percent year over year. Right now people are making more money, but they still feel this affordability crunch because affordability is just an amalgamation of a lot of very small micro instances. When you go to the grocery store, do eggs cost more than they did a year ago? Do does your electricity bill go up a few dollars from a year ago? These things all combine together to say, all right, we are in affordability crisis right now. And that is why there is such political heft to targeting affordability. Because something is always going up in prices and you can always say, hey, I will come in and make things cheaper. Which is why we're just seeing a flurry of attention on it. Because one it's harder to find, two, it is a crisis like things are always going up in price and the three, you're always going to score political points when you are talking about it.
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Let's talk about the affordability crisis as it pertains to these various buckets that I mentioned, like the things people spend their money on to just live their lives on a daily basis. First thing is housing. Homebuyer today needs to earn $121,000 a year to afford a typical home and the average American earns about $84,000 a year. So right there you see a 25% increase in housing prices since 2019 levels. When you say, when you ask the average person what's become affordable, the first thing they'll say is housing. Then you move to Child Care. In 2024, according to Child Care Aware America, the average annual cost of care for one child around the US topped $13,000, which is up 30% from 2020. So childcare is extremely expensive. Health care is also getting even more expensive. There are 165 million people who are on their employers health insurance plans that are expected to see their premiums spike by up to 7% next year come January 1st. That's going to be the largest jump in health costs in 15 years. Finally, let's round it out with electricity costs. This has become a very salient political issue with data centers going around and gobbling up a lot of energy usage. Americans pay $265 per month in utility costs. Currently that is a rise of 12% since last year was alone. And overall 124 million Americans are expected to see some sort of rate increase in their energy bill, according to a new report from Powerline. So you just go across the board, what do I, what are my monthly bills? Child care, health care, food, groceries, electricity, Everything's going up. And that is feeding this sense that, you know, I'm just an average American, I can't really afford life.
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That's the issue though is how do you lower prices? And it almost never actually happens outside periods of recession or depression. So that is the issue. And again why I say that it will always be a talking point because if you want prices to actually fall, not just moderate and how much they are rising, which is what most people talk about when they say about, you know, taming inflation. Inflation still means prices are going up. If you want prices to actually fall, the only times it normally happens is during periods of economic turmoil. So it's kind of a catch 22. If you want price to go down, you're going to have a lot of economic pain that comes along with it.
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Welcome to Winners of the weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things that have a lot to be thankful for. I won the pre show wordle race so I get to go first. And my winner is Eli Lilly because on Friday it became the first health care company in the world to reach a market cap of $1 trillion. Lilly's stock has been a rocket ship in the past few years because it makes the best selling drug in the world, an injectable known as zepbound or Manjaro that helps people lose loads of weight.
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For.
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For a while, it was in a tight battle for GLP1 supremacy with Danish rival Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy. But recently it's left Novo in the dust, thanks to more effective treatments and a savvier sales strategy. Lilly was not an overnight success. In fact, it was all the way back in 1876 when Civil War veteran Eli Lilly himself opened a drugstore in Indianapolis that would later become a globe spanning pharma giant with 50,000 employees worldwide. Lilly has hit pay dirt with blockbuster drugs in the past, including the earliest polio vaccine, Insul and Prozac. But growth has gone into overdrive as it's dominated the weight loss revolution. A lot of credit has to go to CEO Dave Ricks, who President Trump called one of the hottest people in the world of business. Not about his looks, but about his ability to create shareholder value. When rick's joined in 2017, the company's market cap was $81 billion. It surged by more than 900 billion in value since then. Toby Lilly might be the most successful Hoosier since Larry Bird.
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Dave Ricks is crushing it. And also Eli Lilly is kind of becoming a cultural touch point as well. I mean they sponsor the Indiana Fever. They have this huge president in Indianapolis, so it makes sense. So they're on Caitlin Clark's jersey. He was recently spoofed on snl, which is kind of a cultural marker. He's been on a podcast tour. So all of a sudden this very non sexy industry of pharma is going to the White House, like in getting meetings with President Trump, like you know, tech CEOs to they they are a $1 trillion company after starting south of $100 billion when he first took over. So pretty remarkable rise. One of the interesting things about elia's journey to $1 trillion is that they didn't do Covid vaccines either during the pandemic. Lilly kind of missed the boat when it came to it. Companies like Pfizer's, Modern Pfizer and Moderna doubled down on it and absolutely ripped during the pandemic. They have been mired in a post Covid slump ever since then. Eli Lilly mined the fertile waters of, you know, the GLP wine, that craze. And they have done much better long term. So what looked like a misstep at the time has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
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Well, it was interesting also about Eli Lilly is if you thought of them in the past decade or so, the thing that came to mind was insulin prices because over two decades, Lilly raised the sticker price of Humalog, which is its popular insulin, by more than 1,000%. And this drew a ton of backlash. In 2023, after this huge public outcry, they cut their sticker price of Humalog. But it was this whole drama that this was what Eli Lilly was known for was, you know, gouging people with their insulin. And now it's become something different. It's helping people lose a lot of weight because they just happened upon this. I mean, of course it was years in development, but they happen upon Tertia peptide with Manjaro and set down and Zepbound. So, you know, they're absolutely crushing.
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And their pipeline is full to the brim as well. I'm not actually going to try to pronounce there are two next drugs, but they have a daily pill that's coming down the pipeline. Slightly less powerful, but a lot easier to take than injection.
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Let me try. Or Forglipro.
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Yeah, there you go. I think you nailed it. Someone, someone will correct us in the comments. And then also they have another GLP1 injectable that is coming that is apparently the most effective yet, which again, I'll toss it over to you. I can see you trying to rehearse it right now.
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I am rehearsing my mind. Retro True Tide.
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I think you nailed it.
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Retta True Tide, both of those.
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So the pipeline is full, which is always big for pharma companies as well. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with my winner of the weekend. Neal, are you hitting your protein goals?
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Check out these guns. Do they not answer your question?
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They do not. So maybe try David protein bars. Nothing hits better after a gym says than their red velvet flavor. Seriously, how can a bar taste that good and have such good macros at the same time?
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B
They have 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, 0 grams of sugar, and taste great. It's a perfect snack for staying full and hitting your protein goals without excess calories or sugar. More protein and fewer calories help you increase muscle and decrease body fat.
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To celebrate them restocking on their website, they're offering our listeners a special deal. Buy four cartons, get the fifth three when you use david protein.com mbd that's davidprotein.com mbd if you prefer to shop in person, David is Now in over 5000 stores nationwide. Check out their store locator to find a location near you.
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B
Toby, do you have anything that's totally customized for you?
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Oh my goodness, yes. Here, let me show you my monogrammed bathrobe. I look amazing in it.
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B
Hard pass, but if you're looking for a customized online store and customer experience, look no further than WooCommerce. They're the open source commerce platform that helps you build a store as unique as your brand, from design to checkout to how you connect with customers.
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They help businesses create unique shopping experiences that align with their brand identity, helping them stand out in crowded markets and build stronger customer loyalty.
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With full control of your tech stack, you can rapidly respond to market changes, implement new features, or pivot your business model without waiting for a SaaS provider to roll out updates.
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Make your E commerce business yours truly. Visit woo.comgocustom to learn more. That's woo.com/go custom. My winner of the weekend is Wicked For Good because it did good at the box office. Remember the lofty projections we mentioned on Friday that if met would have made Wicked the biggest movie of the year? Well, it came within a witch's broomstick of doing just that, bringing in $150 million at the domestic box office, just 13 million shy of what a Minecraft movie managed. IMAX came in clutch Once more, with 30% of domestic screenings happening in large screen format theaters, up from 18% from the first movie, as people wanted to see Galinda's evolution from Asian mouthpiece to government rebel in extra large detail. Wicked's performance combined with a projected strong opening for Zootopia 2 has box office watchers feeling upbeat again after a dismal October last year. The first Wicked, Gladiator 2 and Moana 2 combined to bring in the most money ever for the Thanksgiving period. But should Wicked keep up the pace, there's hope that this year could sneakily surpass last year's record haul. Neal all this talk about movies led by movie stars flopping at the box office. Turns out all you need is some Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo harmonies to make some moolah.
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Thank goodness. Yeah, the box office is feast or famine right now. If you talk to industry people, they say what really gets people out to the movies is by creating a cultural event around it, by creating some sort of movement. We saw this with Barbie and Oppenheimer. We saw this with a Minecraft movie where people went for the memes essentially. And now, you know, Wicked created something special here and they didn't create it just once, they created it twice. And there was this very ambitious strategy to break up this. You know, one show into two different movies. They spent $300 million on it, not including marketing. And every last November it worked. And this November it worked even better. This is our earning the original by 35%. Although by all accounts it's worse.
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Wicked Part 3 coming soon. They're going to somehow continue the story. No, I think one of the reasons that they're also doing well is the fact that it's just a PG rated movie. PG rated movies have started to crush it at the box office. Last year PG movies accounted for 36% of box office receipts. That didn't always used to be the case. PG13 was seen as the messy middle. It was, you know, too risque for families to bring their kids to. That was for G rated movies. And then PG13 was for all of the cool kids and R rated movies for all the cool kids. But now PG movies are performing very well. You just go down the list. Most of the movies we've already mentioned a Minecraft movie that's pg. Then you go to Lilo and Stitch, how to Train youn Dragon. Those are two live action PG remakes. And then you go back to last year as well, Moana to sonic the hedgehog 3. Just pickle me For God. That's a lot of sequels right there. Those are all PG rated movies. So the sweet spot for the box office right now is what gets the families to come out, what gets the youths to come out, which is, you know, PG rated.
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B
Two sub winners from this Wicked umbrella winner. Number one sub winner is wizard of Oz. This IP is absolutely crushing it right now. You said what's going to come next with Wicked 3? Well, Wicked 2 goes for good, goes into the wizard of Oz. The movie. It's like the natural lead in. And that movie is crushing right now. It's at the sphere. It's. By some estimates it's making around $2 million a day. It's this. I reimagined, you know, larger than life screen adaptation of the original wizard of Oz from back in 1939. People love being in the Oz. And then my second sub winner is Ariana Grande. For becoming an established blockbuster actor from being a pop star. Many have tried to do this. Harry Styles, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, they have all failed to do it. So she might be the first pop star to make that leap from the stage to the big screen in a big way. I guess the only other person who might be in that consideration there is Gaga. But Ariana Grande has, has proven herself to be an actor. Who can get people out and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on her movies.
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I don't know. I liked Taylor Swift and Cats. I thought she was really, really excellent in that.
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All right, it's Monday. So here are the events you need to know about in the week ahead. One of the busiest travel seasons of the year has kicked off ahead of Thanksgiving on Thursday. According to AAA, almost 82 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles this holiday, making it a bigger holiday for travel than even Memorial Day or July 4th. If your flight is messed up, you probably can't blame the government shutdown. Airport operations have basically returned to normal now that air traffic controllers and TSA agents are getting paid again. Still, they're bracing for what's expected to break a record for the number of Thanksgiving flyers.
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I was looking at the weather forecast, Neil. It looks like we're getting some rain on Monday through Wednesday from Texas up towards Minnesota and moving east. But come Black Friday, things should warm up a bit just in time for you to buy a lot of stuff you probably don't need. But be wary of your flight back. A storm system is expected to develop over the weekend affecting some central and eastern parts of the US now back to you in the studio. Neal, thank you.
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B
Thanks for that weather report. All right, speaking of Black Friday, you know, it's a day of deep, deep discounts, but it's also a huge deal for the economy. And that's because given all the missed data reports from the shutdown, it's going to be closely watched as an indicator of consumer health, something that's been a bit shaky recently. The National Retail Federation expects holiday shopping to top $1 trillion for the first time this year. However, growth is expected to slow from 2024.
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C
I'm the worst Black Friday shopper of all time. Every year it comes around and goes, all right, I'm going to, you know, save some money here, buy stuff I need, and then I can't think of a single thing I need. So if you guys have some good Black Friday discounts, the air fryer, the socks, you know, something cool, please send it my way because I'm always drawn a blank.
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B
It wouldn't be a Thanksgiving without an over the top parade. And football. Macy's will be holding its 99th Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday. Buzz Lightyear and Pac man are among the new balloons, while new floats include Stranger Things and, of course, Labubu. As for football, you'll be treated to three Thanksgiving Day games. Packers, Lions, Chiefs, Cowboys and Bengals, Ravens. Then on Black Friday, because The NFL owns every holiday now the Bears are going to face the Eagles on Amazon.
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C
I hate the new inclusions. They always start off strong, then collapse and deflate halfway through as soon as the pressure hits. No one wants to see the Eagles play. Am I right, Neal?
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B
Okay, finally, the NFL may dominate Thanksgiving, but Netflix also wants a slice of the pumpkin pie. The final season of Stranger Things hits the streaming service on Wednesday, nine years after it debuted and what Netflix hopes will become one of the biggest pop culture moments of the year. The first four episodes will be released Thanksgiving Eve, then the remaining four episodes will be released on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, including a finale shown in movie theaters.
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C
Neal 9 years ago I was in middle school.
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B
So were those kids who were acting on the show.
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C
I wasn't actually, but it sounded right. Which shows how long this has been in the works. I don't know about the holiday release schedule either. Is that really something? Do you want Demogorgons, you know, involved in your Christmas year? I also am not even sure if Demogorgons are part of the show at this point. I stopped watching around season two, but it doesn't feel very Christmassy. But maybe they'll prove me wrong.
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B
As long as people are at home seated on the couch, then that's when they're going to release their most popular, popular TV show, which Stranger Things has become the biggest franchise that Netflix has homegrown in its HQ ever. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful start to the week. Holy cow. Our live show is next week on Thursday, December 4th. We're putting on the holiday party to end holiday parties and you're going to want to be there. Just head to the show description on our Instagram for the link to tickets and you won't regret it. If you want to get in touch about this episode, send a note to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at me Daily show let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake, hair and makeup. Got a head start on Thanksgiving travel. Very jealous. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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C
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.