DOJ Sues Live Nation & Car Insurance Hits 50-Year High

This episode discusses the DOJ's lawsuit against Live Nation for maintaining an illegal monopoly and the impact of modern car technology on insurance rates.

1. The DOJ aims to dismantle the perceived monopoly of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, initiated by their merger in 2010.
2. Advanced vehicle technologies have led to higher repair costs, significantly impacting insurance rates.
3. Live Nation disputes the monopoly claims, attributing high ticket prices to artists and market demand.
4. The rise in vehicle technology sophistication has transformed car repair into a high-tech job, escalating overall costs.
5. The episode also touches on broader topics like cryptocurrency ETFs and public reactions to market movements.

1: DOJ Lawsuit Against Live Nation

The chapter discusses the DOJ's lawsuit against Live Nation for creating a monopoly in the live entertainment industry. Neal Freyman: "The ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to force a breakup of Ticketmaster from Live Nation."

2: Impact of Vehicle Technology on Insurance

This segment examines how modern car technologies have led to unprecedented rises in car insurance rates. Toby Howell: "More than one fifth of vehicles are now declared a write-off by insurers after examining the claims."

3: Broader Economic and Market Discussions

Explores additional economic topics, including cryptocurrency ETFs and the impact on investment strategies. Neal Freyman: "Ethereum ETFs open up a new wave of funding for people to enter this asset class."

• Consider the broader implications of corporate mergers on market competition.
• Stay informed about how technological advancements in vehicles can affect your insurance premiums.
• Monitor legal proceedings in high-profile cases as they can set precedents affecting consumer rights.
• Keep abreast of changes in the cryptocurrency market and regulatory developments.
• Evaluate the long-term cost implications of owning technologically advanced vehicles.

Episode 330: Neal and Toby discuss the DOJ’s attempt to break up Live Nation & Ticketmaster alleging their monopolistic control over the entertainment industry. Then, the SEC just approved the 2nd-largest crypto-based ETF in the country. Plus, auto insurance rates have been jumping up the last 50 years. Then, Moderna as our stock of the week and Lululemon as our dog of the week. Next, cicadas are being featured in menus as tasty(?) delectables…maybe it’s not for everyone. Lastly, shots fired over which state is the pizza capital in the country: New York or Connecticut?

People

Merrick Garland, Neal Freyman, Toby Howell

Companies

Live Nation, Ticketmaster, Department of Justice, AAA, major auto body repair companies

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Neal Freyman
Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the surprising reason your car insurance bill has gotten so high. Then you won't believe which city just declared itself the pizza capital of the USA.

Toby Howell
It's Friday, May 24. Let's ride.

You have a long weekend coming up. We've got a long weekend coming up, and I have an idea that will make this the best Memorial day weekend ever. Neil, tell em. You didn't tell me what your idea was. It's ordering a morning brew daily mug.

Why, you ask? Well, morning Brew daily mug for Memorial Day just rolls off the tongue. Try it, Neil. Morning brew daily mug for Memorial Day. Morning brew daily mug for Memorial Day.

Neal Freyman
Morning Brew daily mug for Memorial Day. See? It just works. Whatever you say. If you want your own morning brew daily mug for Memorial Day, head to shop dot morningbrew.com to get yours.

Toby Howell
If you haven't seen what these babies look like, they're beautiful. And they're sitting on the desk in front of me and Neil right now. So tune into the YouTube channel if you want to snag a look or just go to shop dot morningbrew.com. now let's hear a word from our sponsor, Sage. Not the herb, but a tool that saves finance professionals a lot of time and money.

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I've cooked with dull knives before, and it just doesn't work. Sage is the sharpest knife in the finance game that just got even sharper with the integration of AI. Just want to point out, you keep reminding everyone that sage is not an herb, but then immediately make a cooking metaphor. Listen, maybe I was hungry when I was thinking about this ad. Okay.

Anyway, let's get back on track here. If you want to slice and dice with the best of them, head to sage.com. morningbrew. Sage helping businesses flow. It is time to break up Live Nation.

Neal Freyman
Ticketmaster. That's not me saying it. That's a direct quote from Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose DOJ made the long awaited decision to sue live Nation over claims it maintains an illegal monopoly in the live entertainment industry. The ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to force a breakup of Ticketmaster, the ticketing giant from Live Nation, the concert promoter that bought Ticketmaster back in 2010. Many recent antitrust lawsuits have raised eyebrows for maybe being overzealous, but this one, well, the people seem fully behind it.

That's, of course, because Live Nation's industry dominance was on full display two years ago when it botched the rollout of Taylor Swift's era's tour tickets. An investigation into Live Nation was already underway by then, but the scrutiny certainly ramped up following the massive outcry from the swifties. But Live Nation is not going to give up Ticketmaster without a fight. The company fired back that the DoJ caved, to, quote, intense political pressure and said that the high ticket prices fans are experiencing right now are set by artists and are a result of surging demand for concerts. It called the suit baseless.

Toby, how do you see this case playing out? I see Live Nation as this four headed monster. You have the ticket sales that comes from Ticketmaster, but then you also have the promotional piece, you have the artist management piece, and you have the venue ownership piece. And the DOJ is saying that they're using this four headed monster to set up this very lucrative and anti competitive flywheel where you capture revenue from concert fans and sponsorship. You use that revenue to lock up artists and these venues into long term exclusive promotion deals.

Toby Howell
Then you use that kind of powerful library of live content. You have to sign venues, and then you start to cycle all over again. So I do think that the DOJ really looked at this whole flywheel and said, this is not fair to everybody else involved in it. Right? Let's see how this concert promotion arm, which is what live nation does really well, and then the ticketing arm, which is when it bought Ticketmaster work in practice, pick up, pick an artist.

I was immediately was going to say taylor swift, but usher, we'll go with usher. Okay, so I'm live nation. I'm promoting usher's concert. I'm running his tour all over the world. I go to a venue like red rocks or something, and I say, hey, we'd love to bring usher to your venue.

Neal Freyman
I think he would absolutely kill at red rocks. Except, you know what? You have to use Ticketmaster as your ticketing platform. And if you don't, we're not going to bring usher to the masses here at Red Rocks. So that is how those.

And then, you know, what is, what does Red Rock say? They're like, all right, well, we want usher, so we have to use Ticketmaster. That is sort of how the DoJ sees live nation. Ticketmaster playing out by using those two arms of its business to work together to squash competition. Ushered rock would be electric.

Toby Howell
Those are two kind of disparate types of artists, but that would be fun. Yeah. A major focus to lawsuit too is Live nations. They called it a competitive detente with a rival venue operator, which is called Oakview Group. There were some emails that leaked out that was essentially saying, let's not both compete for the same artists at the same venue.

Let's just go our separate ways here. It's more lucrative. It would drive up artist fees if we were both competing for usher at Red Rocks, for instance. So there's a lot of juicy bits to this. And, yeah, it really puts Ticketmaster and Live Nation finally in a spotlight that so many fans have.

Just so many fans have had that experience with Ticketmaster. Like the long queues, the fees, just the super high prices. So I think this is part of the reason, too, why they want this to be. The Department of Justice wants this to be a jury trial. They want to get people in the building because I think that they know that there's some sort of emotional connection when it comes to an antitrust lawsuit in this arena.

Neal Freyman
Yeah. And let's talk about Live Nation's response, because they are definitely not going to go down without a fight. They say we have nothing to do with setting ticket prices. That is all on the artists. And there's so much demand for concerts right now.

So what are we supposed to do? Like, prices are going to be sky high. That is not our problem. And then in terms of who gets the money at the end of a concert, they say that the venues receive most of the money and that their profit margins are actually on the lower end of all s and P 500 companies. So they're going to come with their argument.

We'll see how it holds up in court. Right. They're saying it's only 1.4% last year, which is far too low, they argue, to be to indicate an actual monopoly in the past. If the past month has been one big old Sunday for crypto supporters, yesterday was a cherry on top. The SEC approved applications from nine different exchanges to list spot ether exchange traded funds.

Toby Howell
According to CNBC, the SECs decision does not technically approve the individual funds themselves, so will likely have to wait till later in the summer before they actually start trading. But it does give the regulatory pathway forward for the spot ether ETF's to be listed on their respective exchanges. So far, nine exchanges have applied, including BlackRock, fidelity and grayscale. So the big boys of traditional finance world are getting involved. Ethereum which is the second largest coin by market cap in the world, actually fell a little bit after the announcement, but has been on a nearly 30% run in the past week as SEC's decision loomed.

It's a little confusing with the delay between approval and actual trading, but still another watershed decision for the crypto industry that is still riding high from the spot bitcoin ETF approvals early earlier this year. Yeah, let's talk about the significance of this. First of all, it was a huge surprise. I think as recently as a week ago, there was a lot of concern and doubt that the SEC would approve spot ether ETF's. This is a big wave of potentially retail investors and institutional investors being able to buy Ethereum, because right now you have to go to a crypto exchange platform, maybe Coinbase or also Robinhood offers it, but you have to buy Ethereum directly.

Neal Freyman
And that might provide a lot of hurdles for people who are just on their regular exchanges, brokerage accounts and don't want to, you know, may get a little spooked about buying crypto. And this just puts it in an ETF. And ETF's are these tracking indexes that track everything from stocks to commodities to anything, any kind of asset class, and it's very easy to buy them. And so they think that this, like what happened with bitcoin, will open up a new wave of, you know, funding for people to be able to get into this asset class. People are expecting the Ethereum ETF's to be a lot smaller, at least initially, than their bitcoin counterparts.

Toby Howell
One, it's just got a smaller overall market cap. But also, if you just compare the amount that Grayscale, which is a finance company that has been kind of pushing forward the crypto agenda, their grayscale Ethereum Trust currently has around 11 billion in assets under management, which is much smaller than the bitcoin fund was when that conversation was going on. For comparison, the Grayscale bitcoin Trust had $26 billion in assets under management before it was approved to convert to a spot bitcoin ETF. One of the reasons why also I think these might not see as big of an uptake as bitcoin is. These funds won't allow staking.

Staking is where you can basically loan your ethereum out to the network for a period of time and you actually earn interest on that. I actually do that right now with my Coinbase and Ethereum ETF's don't allow this. And staking is a big part of the Ethereum ecosystem. So there's a few hurdles here that I think will prevent it from becoming quite as big as these bitcoin ETF's. When we talk about AI as a gold rush, it does seem like these crypto ETF's are something similar for at least retail investors.

Neal Freyman
Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, which is the largest asset manager in the world, and they've gone all in on this bitcoin ETF. He said that his bitcoin ETF, ibit, is the fastest growing ETF in the history of ETF's. There's so much demand. So it took 57 days for bitcoin ETF's broadly to cross $50 billion in assets under management. It took gold ETF's more than five years to hit that same threshold.

So all these institutional finance companies, these traditional Wall street firms, are looking at bitcoin ETF's, Ethereum ETF's as a potential huge money maker, and they're seeing a ton of demand for it. And it feels like in general, along with a major crypto bill that was passed in the house this week, that the vibes on DC are definitely thawing. Towards crypto, we're getting some regulatory clarity, which is what the crypto industry has just wanted for. They're like, you can regulate us, but just tell us what you want from us. And it seems like we are making steps in that direction.

Not too long ago, getting your car repaired was relatively straightforward. Your bumper got messed up from an overconfident parallel. Parker, you took it into the shop and voila, good as new. But in these high tech times, getting your car fixed is more like taking it to the Apple store. As more vehicles come equipped with fancy driver assist software, cameras and sensors, car repair has gotten way more expensive, with major consequences for insurance and the auto market as a whole.

Fixing sensors and cameras now accounts for more than a third of post crash repair costs in a new vehicle, according to a new study by AAA. One exec at a major auto body repair company said the change theyve seen in the last five years is greater than the change in the last five decades. And thats because new cars, sometimes called computers on wheels, now come with sensors and cameras plastered across the vehicle to enable those safety features, like automatic emergency braking and blind spot monitoring. When your car gets crunched by a bad driver, those cameras get damaged and are far more difficult and expensive to repair than bent metal. They just can't be welded back on.

Toby, this is another fascinating downstream side effect of all the tech we've been putting in our cars. Right? And the craziest stat from this kind of rise of tech being inserted into cars is that more than one fifth of vehicles are now declared a write off by insurers after examining the claims. So basically, they'd rather total these cars than actually go through the process of repairing them, because the math just doesn't math. The repairs cost so much money, and after factoring in insurance, that you literally make more money just by totaling the cars.

Toby Howell
So it is very interesting what these downstream effects are. The rocket in the hard place here, though, is you should probably still get these features. You shouldn't be put off by the repair cost, because it does make driving a lot safer. Like these rear view cameras, the automatic lane detection, these pieces of software that cost so much to fix also make driving a lot safer. So consumers are kind of left between a rock and a hard place.

But you should still probably opt for the safer vehicle overall. I don't think you have a choice at this point. If you buy a new car, I mean, it's gonna come with all of these gadgets. And I know when I go home and drive my parents cars, like, you back out of the garage, and there's like 17,000 things beeping you all at once, and I'm like, shut it off. I really don't need all this beeping.

Neal Freyman
But it truly is insane cost to repair. I'm sure a lot of people have been shocked when they've looked at the bill and they've taken it into the shop. I mean, if you just want to replace a side mirror with a camera on a new f 150 pickup truck, that'll cost you $1,600, which is kind of insane for a mirror. But the thing is that also comes with a camera. And replacing a camera is not just like slapping another camera off you have on.

You have to calibrate it as well. You have to log some road miles so it can get used to where it's looking. And so all this tech comes at a huge price tag. Another thing to consider here is that auto body repair technicians are extremely in demand right now, because you're right, they're not just bending metal back into place anymore. They are very, very highly trained individuals who have to be able to calibrate these sensors.

Toby Howell
So that is another downstream cost that's passed on to insurers that are eventually passed on to consumers as well. And it's why we've been having this conversation around car insurance and how it's been leading to sky high inflation. We talked about the inflation numbers that came out earlier this month, and car insurance was one of the biggest drivers of inflation overall. So that is probably why you're seeing your insurance premiums go up. Yeah, they're up 23% from a year ago, which was the largest annual increase since 1979.

Up next, whip out your portfolios, ladies and gentlemen. It's stock of the week, dog of the week time.

Neal Freyman
Fun fact of the day. According to Forbes, $84 trillion is expected to be transferred from the boomer generation to their adult children in the next two to three decades. The problem is most people aren't having conversations around generational wealth to plan for the future. And another problem, a lot of people don't feel comfortable or equipped to talk about finances. Luckily, massmutual has been an industry leader in helping people secure their financial futures for over 170 years.

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Toby Howell
Hey, Neil, what's your favorite part of a road trip? Hmm, that's a tough one. Probably queuing up the perfect playlist before I hit the wide open road. What about you? Honestly, I like to kick back and play a video game as a passenger, of course.

Neal Freyman
Really? Doesn't it get all glitchy and laggy? It can, but with at and t in car wifi, there's no worry about that. Basically, at and t hooks up your car with unlimited wifi so you can stay connected, stream video, blast that streaming playlist, or even catch up on work. Oh, nice.

Does it work in rural stretches? For sure. At and t actually covers more roads than any other carrier based on independent third party data. It even powers features like real time gps and voice assistant. And it works outside your car, too, if you want to get a little tailgate action going or something.

Sounds awesome. So where can I go to add some wi fi to my wheels? Head over to att.com incarwifi. That's att.com incarwifi.

Toby Howell
Bird flu is getting a little scary. Yoga pants are getting commoditized. And I couldn't be more excited to bring you another edition of Stock of the week. Dog of the week. This is the segment where we pick one stock that rated morning brew daily, five stars on both Apple and Spotify, and one stock that pronounces Sriracha incorrectly.

Neal, it's been a bit of a shaky week in the markets, but I tell you what, you dominated the pre show windsurfing competition with ease. So you're up first. What's our stock of the week? My stock of the week is the biotech Moderna. And when shares of a vaccine maker shoot up 24% in a single week, it's usually not good news for the rest of us.

Neal Freyman
And so it is this time, Moderna's shares got a boost after the us government said it was in discussions with the company as well as Pfizer, over a potential avian flu vaccine program. Yup, bird flu or h five n one. The news of readying a possible bird flu vaccine came as a second human case of bird flu infection was found in the US. A worker at a dairy farm in Michigan. Remember, bird flu has been spreading in cattle across the country.

With the count of dairy farms infected up to 51. Officials are concerned about this mammal to mammal spread, but still say the public health risk to humans is very low. Still, the fact that the government is talking to Moderna and Pfizer about prepping a vaccine shows they're taking the threat seriously. The US does have an existing stockpile of bird flu vaccines, but it's not nearly enough to cover the population should something like a pandemic happen. Toby?

Moderna, Pfizer and other vaccine makers were all on the rise this week. Their investors love to see it. The rest of us, not so much. Yeah, it's such an interesting thing here because analysts covering the stock is the bull case for Moderna, as if another widespread pandemic happens. So a lot of them are saying, like, we probably expect them to retrace their gains unless something like a wide scale pandemic happens.

Toby Howell
So it's a very interesting stock to kind of COVID This is actively happening, though, that Moderna is going ahead and starting the process of converting some of those raw materials that the US has stockpiled into doses of avian influenza vaccine. Even if it doesn't become pandemic level, like, if it becomes more widespread, then they will have these ready. So just a very interesting stock to cover in general. Yeah. There's a very fascinating debate also happening within the public health community because it's like, all right, well, we know that avian flu is spreading.

Neal Freyman
It could come to humans, it could not, most likely not. But shouldn't we be prepared and shouldn't we ready hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines right now just to get ahead of it? But it's not that simple of an equation, because these vaccine makers have only so many finite number of assembly lines, and they have to produce things like the seasonal flu vaccine. And you kind of have to produce either the seasonal flu vaccine or other vaccines that can save people's lives or this other one for the avian flu that you don't even know if you need. So there is a.

There's a very much of a question and its uncertainty whether these companies, like Moderna and Pfizer should switch out all of their production and start making the avian flu vaccine. It's not as simple as saying yes, you should. Just to be prepared, let's shift over. To the dog of the week. And my dog of the week is Lululemon.

Toby Howell
I'm wearing their pants right now. But apparently it wasn't enough to keep them out of the dog column. The stock is down 12% in the past week. After some reshuffling at the executive level, chief product officer Sun Cho is out. But the company doesn't plan on backfilling the role.

Instead, they plan to pull a money ball and try to recreate Cho in aggregate with a new team made up of execs from the merchandising and brand branches. It's the kind of shakeup that you don't really want to see from a company that does rely on innovative product design to maintain its foothold in the ultra competitive athleisure space. There is just a general malaise around Lulu after it offered weak guidance last quarter amidst shifting consumer trends and increased competition. How about this? That, Neil, Lulu is the worst performing stock in the entire S and P 500 so far this year.

Worse than Boeing, worse than Walgreens, worse than everyone. Pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. I mean, it came out of the pandemic, riding high, and I thought that along with all these other Covid stocks, it would fall back to earth because people were dressing up again and weren't, you know, weren't wearing athleisure just to bum around the house because they're going back to the office. But it does appear like there is true competition here from people like, from companies like Allo and Vori.

Neal Freyman
And analysts have walked around Lululemon stores and they're really not impressed with what they've seen from the selection. And they're like, oh, my God, there's all these colors available and all these different. You have way too much inventory here. It's a sign that people, that your products are not resonating with customers as much as they used to. And I'm not an apparel expert or anything.

So I don't have any prescriptions for what they should be doing. But it does appear like Lululemon is in a bit of a slump right now. Yeah. And apparently Cho was a baller to Lulu. Lemon's revenue grew by 20%, compound compounded annually during her tenure.

Toby Howell
Obviously can't be attributed just to one person, but a lot of analytics were like, listen, she played an integral part in making Lulu the juggernaut. It's been over the past seven plus years. But you're right, the business has just matured at this point. It's an established brand. The hyper growth days are over.

The growth opportunities now lay abroad, and that's always a little bit of an unknown. So, yeah, it's just a lot of things combined to make Lulu just not as exciting to investors. But hopefully it can bounce back because I do like their pants. I will say I see a lot more aloe stuff going around these days than Lulu. Moving on.

Neal Freyman
Trillions of cicadas are now emerging across the United States. And you know what? I'll go ahead and say it. Those cicadas are looking like a snack. I mean that literally.

Adventurous eaters and even some restaurants are using the opportunity to widen their culinary horizons and eat the bugs, which are high in protein and apparently taste kinda good. A brewery in suburban Chicago made headlines this week by announcing a cicada infused malort. And anyone who's been forced to drink that stuff knows that adding insect flavor couldn't possibly make it any worse. Elsewhere, people are hosting potlucks, where you must bring a dish with a cicada component. And a restaurant in New Orleans called bug appetite is serving dishes like cicada salad and roasted cicadas.

Toby, are you joining this cicada feast? After all, we eat wet bugs like lobster and shrimp. Why not eat dry bugs? I am so conflicted on this because I love the idea of a crispy, maybe fried tempura. That crispy exo skeleton sounds very good.

Toby Howell
But once I start thinking about kind of the juicier innards, it really is off putting to me. I do love this from the creative director of the brewery that's making this malort shot. He said, basically everyone already hates Malort, so it's like, let's just try to make it even worse. So clearly this is more of a stunt in that regard. But yeah, I have seen other things that cicadas have a flavor reminiscent of succulent lobster.

I don't know. They are relative. Yeah, I mean, they are both arthropods, so it makes sense. I'm very conflicted on this. You have eaten crickets, though.

Neal Freyman
Grasshopper. Yeah, I ate grasshopper in Mexico City. I am very adventurous. I'll eat anything that did not taste good. That definitely warded me off to the insect thing because it just tasted like grass and soil, so earthy.

And I really couldn't stomach more than ten of them. So it was toasted. It was toasted with a chili sauce and a little lime. But it's the taste that got you. Not the best.

It was the texture. It was both. Okay. It was bad. I think cicadas probably might be a little bit better.

And there's a lot of people out there that say that they taste quite good and a little more seafoody, probably, than grasshoppers do, so I'd definitely be down to try it. Um, and I mean, around the world, people eat bugs. 2 billion people eat bugs regularly. And there's a booming startup ecosystem that has received $1.3 billion so far about turning insects into protein that people can eat for the sustainability, for the climate, uh, for the climate help. So, you know, I'm.

I'm all in on it. I just don't know what. I just maybe need, like, you know, somebody good to prepare. It definitely is. Comes down to how you season that.

Toby Howell
I mean, you could put, like, I don't know, cool ranch Dorito seasoning on anything and it would taste good. So it really comes down to, to the seasoning of it all. We got some good old fashioned pizza pie drama to take us into Memorial Day weekend. Connecticut lawmakers are drawing a line in the sauce and officially declared New Haven to be the pizza capital of the US, which has another city and another state. Particularly peeved, New Yorkers immediately fired back to defend their honor.

New York City doesn't have to declare itself the pizza capital of the United States because people across the country already know it to be true, one city hall rep told the New York Post. And when one pizza shop owner in Brooklyn was called by the New York Times to get his thoughts on Connecticut's proclamation, he thought he was being pranked. Called, but New York's New, or. But New Haven is not messing around. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut read a statement into the congressional record that declared New Haven to have the best pizza in the country, and it's not even close.

She said, neil, it's a more like Connecticut is a moron. New York for life. Oh, my God. Yes. You.

Neal Freyman
You pre, you told me that the ending of this intro would be pretty wild and it definitely lived up to that. This was a show of force, okay? They brought 100 pizza makers on a chartered flight down to DC, and New Haven staked their claim. And you know what? To me, the question isn't whether New Haven has the best pizza.

It does. It's which of the big three in New Haven have the best pizza. There's Sally's, there's Frank Pepe's, and there's modern. They've all been around since the 1920s or the 1930s, and they make this delicious coal fired brick oven pizza with this juicy dough and this just, like, great crust going on. A little burnt and charred in some places.

And so I've personally only had one, which is modern. And it really was the best pizza I've ever had. Simple, delicious. And just the vibe when you go in, you're like, this is where they make pizza. They've been doing this for a century, and they have perfected the art.

Toby Howell
I just think that you got. You're. You're not playing the numbers game here. There's only 75 pizza making establishments in New Haven in New York. There's 1600 across the five boroughs.

And then also, just the variety you get in New York just laps what you get in New Haven. I mean, you can get the neapolitan slice. You can get the square slice, like the Detroit style crispy crust one. And I just think that I don't want to be locked into this one very specific type of pizza. That's why I'm on Team New York here.

Neal Freyman
Okay. That makes sense. You would think that. But I just want. You know, there's a very.

There's a very specific type of pizza, and they do it the best in the world. Therefore, they are the best pizza capital in the United States. And New York can't handle just not being number two in anything. Yeah. You know?

Like, they just can't handle it. Here's my final thoughts on this. I do think that pizza is more about the memories and the people that you share it with. I mean, I have fond memories of eating pizza hut growing up, and that's not top tier pizza, but I will always have a special spot in my heart for it. So I think that pizza is a canvas on which you paint the tapestry of life.

Toby Howell
So all pizza can be good pizza as long as you're sharing it with good people. Well, I think we have to wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and have a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. One piece of advice. Get yourself to a body of water, if you can.

Neal Freyman
It's legitimately good for you. Research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology shows that just viewing water for one minutes and 40 seconds reduced blood pressure, heart rate and other ratings of relaxation compared to looking at trees or city streets. Let's go to the beach. Let's go to the beach. So try not to look at a screen, but if you must, you might as well use the time to write an email to morningbrewdailyorningbrew.com and let us know your thoughts on the show.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yuchinoa Ogu is our technical director.

Billy Menino is on audio and he agrees with me about New Haven. That dude has eaten 24 pizza slices in the last week alone, so he knows hair and makeup is making cicada pancakes. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. I wish you all well.

Toby Howell
I wish you all well.