How The Writers and Studios Finally Struck A Deal & Tinder Goes Bougie

0:00Stocks? ETFs? Or what about mutual funds? Choosing your investments is easier with Fidelity. Our step-by-step experience can help you pick out the right investments for you. Plus, with recurring investments, you can decide how much and how often to invest. Lastly, there's 24-7 help if and when you need it. To find your next investment, head to fidelity.com slash trading. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSC SIPC. Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life.

0:40They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Kyle Heggie. On today's pod, at long last, the rider strike may be coming to a conclusion after the two sides reached a tentative agreement, which means we can finally watch the Drew Barrymore show again.

1:16Yes, Drew Barrymore is back. We're also going to be talking about, if you're single, get ready to dole out a little more cash. It's Monday, September 25th. Let's ride.

1:29Kyle, as always, good to have you back on the show again. Great to be here. But before we jump in the news, we have to talk about what went down last night. Taylor Swift was officially spotted in the Kelsey's box at the Chiefs game. The rumors of their budding romance are true. Now, there is a small but vocal contingent of listeners to this podcast that say, maybe we over-index on our T-Swift coverage. But come on, she's everywhere these days. We can't not talk about it. I don't think it's possible to over-index on T-Swift. I was a little heartbroken. and I thought me and Taylor had a chance, but she's gone with the beautiful NFL player.

2:04It's tough. But it's incredible. She's filling stadiums with her tours to her, or her eras to her, and then she's also like, I'm just going to fill a stadium by attending. Like, every cut scene was Taylor Swift. They were all there to see her. The memes were flowing, but the funniest reaction I actually saw was our associate producer, Sam, came in this morning, and she said that this was her version of the Roman Empire. That's how much she's been thinking about it, so the jokes were flowing. She's got our whole mind unlocked. Absolutely. All right, Kyle, enough to you, Swift Talk. Let's jump into our top story of the day, where after 146 days, hours of negotiations, and lots of think pieces later, it appears the Ryder strike is in its final innings.

2:44According to multiple reports, the Ryder's Guild of America and the labor group representing studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement that could signal the end of the historic strike. This was a whirlwind of the last seven days, Kyle. All the big studio names were present at a Thursday talk last week, including Disney's Bob Iger, Netflix's Ted Sarandos, and Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav that reportedly went on for 10 hours. But even after that marathon session, reports emerged that AI was the major hang-up before the deal could get done, before the breakthrough was reached last night.

3:18Now remember, even though the union leaders have agreed to terms with the studios, the contract still needs to be ratified by WGA members to take effect. But the union's negotiating committee called the deal exceptional and said it provided meaningful gains and protections for writers, so it seems likely that it will be approved. And also, I just want to call out that this deal only involves the Writers Guild, not SAG-AFTRA, which includes all the actors. That strike is still going on. But Kyle, it remains to be seen what exactly is in this deal. But I can't believe this thing is almost over. 14 weeks.

3:51It's been a long time. There is some unfortunate news in this deal, which is Jimmy Kimmel will be back on air. Just kidding, Jimmy. Yes, I mean, the strike began on May 2nd. It was actually days away from being the longest work stoppage in the history of the WGA. WGA has over 11 ,000 members. And it's really interesting. You mentioned AI being a big deal here. We don't know the details, but emerging versions of this tech have already been used in films. And so they really wanted to get this kind of legally set, the constraints set before this continues to go on. They like D.H. Harrison Ford. They've been using Anthony Bourdain's voice in documentaries.

4:28Obviously, he's no longer with us. So the tech is actually being rolled out and they definitely wanted to get in front of that. Yeah, it is kind of crazy that AI we weren't even really talking about before this year. And then this was the last thing that was hanging up this massive kind of deal between the writers and the streamers. This strike, though, definitely has left its mark. Filming in Los Angeles declined 29 % between April and June 2023 compared to the previous period last year. And then so many projects were put on hold from, I mean, Venom 3, Gladiator 2, Deadpool 3. These are all the height of filmography right there.

5:02We were like weeks away from more reality TV thrown on us. So I'm glad they could reach a deal. Yeah, you mentioned Jimmy Kimmel, though. So it does look like the late night show hosts are probably going to be the ones to quickly come back the fastest just because their operations can get back up to speed. Unlike scripted television shows, which also is relying on the actor strike ending. You can't have a TV show if you don't have any actors. And so that's why it looks like, yeah, that five of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers will all return probably on the same night, actually.

5:35So that's going to be a fun one. And they've been hosting a podcast during the strike called Strike Force 5. It's really six episodes so far. I don't know where they are on the charts compared to us, but I hope we're above them. But then, yes, also the daytime talk shows like Drew Barrymore's show will be able to come back as well. So all those tearful apology videos on Instagram, if she had just waited a week, none of this would have happened. Yeah, tough timing. I think the world probably heard Strike Force 5, and they were like, we got to finish this. We got to wrap this up. Yeah, we'll move on to our next story.

6:08And I have some advice. If you're in a relationship, I need you to stay where you are because the price of dating just went up. No, I'm not talking about inflation, making your coffee date latte a tad more expensive. I'm actually talking about Tinder, which is rolling out an ultra premium subscription tier called Tinder Select, which is going to charge users$499 a month for access to features like exclusive searching and matching. Now, this has already begun rolling out. It's only been offered to less than 1 % of Tinder users who are among the app's most active. So if you did get this notification, your screen time on Tinder must be through the roof.

6:45Maybe check in with yourself first, but their current power users, the top 10 % of users by time spent on the app, contribute to an average of 53 % of total time spent this past year on Tinder. And the company has actually seen declining subscriber numbers in each of the last three quarters, but it has managed to grow average revenue per user. Obviously, this new tier is going to help them continue to do that. Wall Street really likes this move, not just because they can now swipe right after getting off of work at 11 p.m., but analysts at JPMorgan and Chase actually raised their price target because of this new tier.

7:20So, Toby, are you dropping$500 a month to keep getting ghosted? I'm certainly not. Luckily, I am in a committed relationship, so I don't know if I will be testing out this feature, Celia. But I do think that revenue per user statistic is very interesting because, yeah, it does seem like coming out of the pandemic where, again, we've seen this theme a lot where people are spending less time on their phone. That means less time swiping. And so how do you make money more off your users? And you look to the power users. Also, expensive and exclusive dating apps are definitely on the rise. I mean, in 2022, Matt's group who owns Tinder bought The League, which was this invite-only dating app that targets ambitious career-oriented singles.

8:02And they have a VIP plan that costs$1 ,000 per week, not even per month, per week. So it's crazy how it is interesting, too, to see that this per-week pricing plan is now becoming more and more of a thing. Usually, software's priced in month cycles, but for some reason, I think it's because people just oscillate back and forth between deleting - Wanting the app, deleting the it, wanting it, deleting it. And so maybe you want that weekly plan instead of a monthly plan. And so Hinge just rolled out a premium$60 a week plan as well. So we're seeing this shift into monetizing like the more week to week proclivities of people.

8:41I also like this because Tinder Select apparently was originally rolled out as invite only for quote hotties and celebrities. Maybe if you did get the notification, it means you're either hot or you're famous. So that's good. I feel like they had to spin it because calling just your power users who just swipe constantly, it's much better to brand them as hotties than celebrities. Yeah, so they got the branding down. And, yeah, Match Group, I mean, they own Tinder, I think, Hinge, the league, like you mentioned. So they're really kind of controlling the dating experience for this generation. So be on the lookout for Tinder,$499 premium feature set.

9:16Next story, Toby, let's make this international. We're going to go to the town of Billund, Denmark, not for its fantastic biking or great Nordic cuisine, but because it is the HQ of the Lego group, which I do want to say Lego. The name is derived from the Danish words leg got meaning play well. So that's a fun fact for the audience. But why are we actually talking about Lego? Well, like many companies, it's really sought to reduce its overall carbon footprint. Consumers want companies to be more sustainable and the earth is literally on fire. So they've tried to do this. However, they actually just abandoned their highest profile effort to ditch oil-based plastics from their bricks.

9:55Basically, after finding that if you can count the entire manufacturing process, the carbon footprint would actually be higher. It really demonstrates like the complex trade-offs you have to make to reach these sustainability goals. And it's not as simple as just subbing out one material for another because it has so many knock-on effects. It doesn't mean that LEGO is making no efforts. I want to commend them. they're on track to eliminate single-use plastic bags used in packaging its bricks by 2025 which is very exciting and they had a great quote from neil christensen who's their chief executive basically saying quote in the early days the belief was that it was easier to find this magic material or this new material that would solve all our problems and lego now realizes it's not going to come down to one material you have to look at this holistically what stood out to you toby this is such an interesting story to me because the material lego uses is just so specific and there's this couple of elements that they look for they needed to be hard scratch resistant they needed to provide that color stability that lego bix are known for so they can't be fading they can't be uh yeah changing colors if you store them in heat or cold and then it's also all about clutch power which is how the bricks stay together like the friction the the the mu constant actually that allows them to be pulled apart in the right, like you apply the right amount of force to pull them apart, but they don't come across.

11:15They don't come apart when you don't want them to. So it is so interesting that, yes, Lego is committed to being sustainable, but they tried to roll out this new, different type of plastic that was more sustainable, but it just wasn't performing the way they wanted it to. And yeah, and they found that revamping their entire factory system would actually cause it to be less carbon efficient than more. So, so interesting that like Lego and sustainability Venn diagram is so interesting to me. The fact you just said clutch power and mu constant. Your 10th grade science teacher is like, I did a great job.

11:49I also think they're doing a big focus on this replay program, which is basically letting people donate their old bricks. They're rolling them out to charities, but they do want to get the business model to where they can collect. Users or customers would actually get paid to bring their Legos back. and then they would resell them. And so their main goal, yes, they want to lower their carbon footprint. The best way to do that is to reuse and not just recycle. So I thought that was really interesting. So it seems Lego is doing a lot in this space. It's also a giant company that$8.7 billion of revenue in 2022.

12:20And so many large companies are kind of facing this sustainability conundrum. Yeah, I definitely do want to call out that Lego, props to Lego because so many other companies, they say like, oh, our goal is to be carbon neutral by, and then they just insert X date that is way out in the future. Yeah, the year 3000. Right, exactly. But Lego said by 2030 they were looking at it. And so for them to put that target that's within our lifetime and then also come out and say, hey, listen, it didn't work. Like our big bet on this new material didn't work. I give them props for that because, again, they have, as you said, they're on the hunt for this magic new material that relies less heavily on oil-based plastic.

12:59But it's tough, man. That Mew will get you. That Mew will get you. That's the big takeaway from today's pod. Absolutely. All right, Kyle, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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13:54See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe's. We help. You save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability. Install by independent contractors. See associate for details. Contiguous U.S. only. All right, Kyle. It's Monday, so let's do our winners of the weekend segment where we bring you two stories from the news that feature someone or something that had an especially good weekend. I won the pre-show game of who can do the best Neil impression. So I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Usher because he's hosting the Super Bowl halftime show.

14:32In a year where Beyonce and T-Swift made all the headlines, it was a man who's been in residency in Las Vegas for the past two years who has landed the primetime show. One nugget I found especially interesting about the Super Bowl halftime show in general is that Roc Nation, which is the management company founded by Jay-Z, is actually in charge of choosing who performs at the Super Bowl. They've been in a deal with the NFL since 2019, which means they've been behind the J-Lo, the weekend, that big Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick show from two years ago, and of course, Rihanna last year.

15:06Kyle, I for one am pretty excited about this. I feel like Usher has been in residency for the past few years, so people have stopped thinking about him a little bit. But all that means were people were coming to see him in Vegas rather than him coming to our cities. So are you excited about this choice? I'm very excited. I think about Usher every day, I will admit. No, I have a fun fact about Usher, and that is, it was my first ever concert. I went to, it was like in ninth grade. I think that gave him a lot of confidence when he saw me in the audience. And I'm glad that he's ridden that confidence to the Super Bowl show.

15:36All the way to the big stage. I do want to talk about how Jay-Z has kind of revamped the process of choosing who performs at the Super Bowl halftime. So one of the big things he did was come in and make those shows reflect the cities that the Super Bowl are hosted in. So remember, J-Lo brought out Shakira in Miami. So you can see kind of like the synergy there. Also, before Roc Nation, the show never led with a hip-hop musical act before. It was always maybe a supporting act. So that was obviously a big change. And then this is the big thing that Jay-Z came to the NFL and say, why are you guys doing it this way?

16:07The NFL used to reach out to three artists at the same time. And whoever responded first or could work it in their schedule, that's who they would choose to do the Super Bowl. But Jay-Z was saying, listen, doing it this way, you're alienating two other mega superstars. and there's only so many superstars in the world. So you guys are blowing through the amount of people who could perform. And so he said, let's reach out to one person at a time. If they say no, then we'll move on. So he's kind of changed the game in terms of relationships, in terms of scripting, and just terms of how they choose a show.

16:37Very cool. It's very cool. That seems like common sense. Like NFL emails you at 3 a.m. They're like, first to respond, get the Super Bowl. You up. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cold play. Yeah. So my winner of the weekend, we'll go to that, is actually Scorigami. and yesterday was Sunday, so that means everyone was glued to their TV for football. And one score in particular really stood out, and that was the Miami Dolphins beat the Denver Broncos 72-20. Yes, you heard that right. They scored 70 points. Now, there was a ton of records set in this game, which probably includes the most beer drank from depression in Denver, but the real winner from this weekend was Scorigami.

17:15So if you don't like NFL but you like puzzles, this is for you. If you're not familiar with Scorigami, There's an NFL Twitter account called NFL underscore Scorigami, which tracks these Scorigamis, which are unique final scores across all of NFL history. For example, let's say the score 21-7, that's very common. So if a team or a game would finish with that score, it would not be a Scorigami. But the score of 70 to 20 is pretty rare. So rare it has never happened in the NFL history before. Thus became a Scorigami. And it was the 1077th unique final score in NFL history. And so this season alone has already brought us two Scorigamis.

17:52It's pacing quite well because last year there was only four in the entire season. So my winner of the weekend was a Scorigami. Because Taylor Swift was also involved this weekend, I'm branding this as a Swift-agami. Thank you. That word has probably never been uttered in history, so congrats on being the first one. I got the trademark. This is a classic thing. If you are not, and I know we have a few people listening to this podcast who aren't sports fans, but if you want to be involved in the NFL without actually caring about the NFL, definitely follow this twitter account because it is so popular whenever so the way it works is that as the game progresses they give a percentage chance that the game finishes at scorigami so you can see the excitement build throughout the the game and so this one whenever a scorigami happens like the account just blows up gets retweeted like people are more excited for that to happen than anything actually happening in nfl so highly recommend following it uh it's a great account.

18:46And if you don't like the NFL, this is a way to like it. Exactly. It's very fun. So let's move on to our final story of the day. And Toby, you know, when your parents go on vacation and they bring you back like just the weirdest shirt or some odd trinket, there's like the worst gifts of all time. Well, NASA is not like our parents. In fact, when NASA sends something on vacation to space, it absolutely delivers when it comes to bringing home souvenirs. What I'm referencing is the seven-year OSIRIS-REx mission by NASA, which just ended on Sunday with the return of space rocks from the asteroid Bennu.

19:20Scientists who were working on this mission endured many twists and turns. It actually took seven years to get this project greenlit by NASA, but their perseverance paid off. This actually became the first American spacecraft to retrieve material from an asteroid, and it brought back just a staggering amount of matter from space. For scientists from around the world to study. This asteroid Bennu is really cool. It's currently a million miles away, but scientists think that there's some kind of hidden hints about how life formed on Earth in this asteroid. So they're going to study it and see maybe how like prebiotic life came to be on the planet.

19:55Toby, what's the best souvenir you've ever got and does it compete with a space rock? Yeah, it certainly wasn't asteroid dust. I think it was just one of those small baseball cups from a Tampa Bay Rays game that are shaped like a helmet. Not exactly space dust, but yeah, it's so interesting that one of the theories about where the elements of us came from is from asteroids crashing into the earth. So it's so interesting. We're looking for elements of ourself in this asteroid that is millions of miles away. One thing I thought was interesting too about the mission is that obviously it's super difficult to pull off logistically.

20:27You've got to meet an asteroid as it's orbiting through space, land on it, retrieve a sample and make it back to earth. And everything was going smoothly. But when the craft landed on the asteroid back in 2020, it was supposed to kind of punch into the surface and just test it. And it was, they described it as like a pogo-like stick where it's supposed to just hit and bounce off. But it turns out asteroids are a lot softer than scientists expected. And so it ended up penetrating the asteroid by about one and a half feet, which is deep. And it left a crater of around 30 feet big. Again, these asteroids, we thought it would be like a rock.

21:04Turns out it's kind of just a ball of dust held together by not a lot of gravity. And so that's one thing that you wouldn't expect is that we always imagine these asteroids just as these big rocks, but apparently they're coated with this fine surface and we penetrate way too deep. That's really interesting. I love this quote from Bill Nelson, who's the administrator of the space agency. He said, quote, this mission proves that NASA does big things, things that inspire us, things that unite us, and things that really show nothing is beyond our reach. So a big W for NASA. Big W for humanity in general, too.

21:35All right, Kyle, let's move on to our final segment of the day, which is a preview of the week ahead. Usually Neil does this segment, but I'm taking it off for a spin, Kyle. Up first, pour one out for those red envelopes from Netflix that used to get our hearts all aflutter when we saw them in the mailbox. On Friday, Netflix is shipping its final physical DVDs. Obviously, it's been a long time since DVDs have been in style, and Netflix's DVD catalog shows it. At its peak, it offered 100 ,000 different titles to choose from. Now it's down to just 4 ,000. Kyle, best DVD you ever got from Netflix?

22:09I actually was late to the Netflix game. I don't think I ever did a Netflix delivery because I was team Blockbuster. I was supporting that business till its last death, and I still need to make it to the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. Thank you for your service, Kyle. All right, moving on tomorrow, President Biden will head to Michigan to support the United Auto Workers strike. Biden has billed himself as the most pro-union president in history, but he hasn't yet secured the endorsement of the UAW yet. So he's kind of killing two birds with one stones with his visit to the picket lines. Now, this is not a normal move for a president.

22:41In fact, University of Texas at Austin historian Jeremy Suri told Reuters that Biden is likely the first president to publicly support striking workers since Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Wow. Big deal, Kyle. Then, as you know, I'm excited for the Ryder Cup to kick off on Friday. It's a three-day team event in the golf world starting at 1.30 a.m. Eastern. The U.S. team is listed as slight betting favorites over Team Europe. Kyle, I think Neil would be more excited about this one, but will you be doing it? I'm not going to be tuning in. And Toby, you have to get up at 4.30. So if I see you watching this at 1.30 a.m.

23:17Eastern, it's not going to be good. I'm not sleeping. Let's go Team USA. Okay, just a few more rapid fire things to keep an eye out for. Yom Kippur began last night. So Gamar, Katima, Tova to all those observing, including Neil. Google turns 25 on Wednesday. Google is a Gen Zer, which makes a lot of sense, I guess. And then the giant Las Vegas sphere at the Venetian Resort opens Friday with a U2 show. And you know I'm asking if we can get the Morning Brew to expense some tickets so we can get out there. We have to go. All three of us, you, me, and Neil. We'll do it, Kyle. All right, Kyle, that's all the time we have today.