👋 This year is already getting weird, and the latest brand partnership to make you question everything is here. Native is teaming up with Dunkin’ on a line of donut-scented deodorant, body wash, shampoo, and more. If your resolution was more self-care and fewer donuts, then maybe Boston Kreme deodorant is the answer.
🎧 On the pod:The billionaire island off the coast of Miami you’ve never heard of.
NEWS FLASH
🐟 A tuna reels in millions: If you think that $30 salmon you ordered over the weekend was pricey, think again. A 608-pound bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Oma, Japan, sold for $1.3m at Tokyo’s Toyosu Market auction on Sunday. The fish — which is roughly the same weight as your average male grizzly bear — was scooped up by a Michelin-starred Japanese sushi restaurant chain, the Onodera Group, which will serve the fish at 13 of its restaurants. It’s the fifth year in a row that the sushi group has won the auction.
✈️ Tardy tax: The US Department of Transportation fined JetBlue Airways $2m for “chronic delays” and “other unrealistic scheduling practices.” It’s the first time the department has charged an airline for delayed flights, and the DOT said $1m of the fine will be paid out within the year to affected JetBlue customers. A flight is considered chronically delayed if it’s been flown at least 10x in a month and arrives 30+ minutes late 50%+ of the time; cancellations are also counted as delays.
🤖 Never mind: Meta took its AI-generated profiles offline. The various characters were labeled as “AI managed by Meta,” and gained little attention until Connor Hayes, Meta’s VP of generative AI, mentioned them in a recent Financial Times interview. Users mocked them, especially “Liv,” a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” who was reportedly created by a mostly white team and inspired by a straight, Colombian character on “Modern Family.” Meta clarified that these bots were part of an “early experiment” before removing them to fix a bug.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
United Airlines will have SpaceX’s Starlink Wi-Fi running aboard its planes earlier than previously planned. The first commercial flight on an Embraer E-175 plane will take off with Starlink this spring.
DraftKings is trialing a $20 subscription service called Sportsbook+ that boosts members’ odds on sports parlays. The subscription, which recently rolled out to some participants in New York, may be the company’s attempt to offset the state’s gaming taxes.
A ski patrol strike at Utah’s Park City Resort — the largest ski area by acreage in North America — has shut down most of the resort for over a week during its busiest time of year. Negotiations are ongoing between the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association and Vail Resorts, which owns Park City and 41 other resorts worldwide.
SKILL UP
Mad ways to do less work
This is how you carve out hours for dillydallying, vegging out, goofing off, and all fitting synonyms.
When you think of today’s most popular influencers and public figures, your mind might not immediately go to historians — but it should.
History is having its moment in the limelight, perBloomberg:
People in the UK and Ireland spent more on history books in 2023 than any other year since 1998, according to Nielsen BookData.
Sales for ancient history books rose 67% between 2013 and 2023, while books on specific history subjects increased 70%.
Despite a flat market for books in the US, the history niche has grown 6% in the last year, according to Circana data, and, in a first for an election year, the category outsold politics two to one.
Plus, history is popping up in successful Substack newsletters and on TikTok — let’s not forget the Roman Empire trend.
The real breakout star?
Podcasts: Nearly 70m people listened to podcasts in 2023, a number estimated to reach 110m by 2029.
And history pods are keeping up with the best of them — shows like Hardcore History and The Rest is History, which sees 12.5m downloads per month,frequently top the charts, beating out longtime favorites like This American Life.
Goalhanger, which produces The Rest is History, signed a deal with a Hollywood production company to develop TV shows and films based on the podcast.
And the podcast’s hosts have performed for live audiences at sold-out shows across the world.
Why history, why now?
It could be that the greying world population is more interested in stories of the past, or that society’s AI tipping point has pushed some away from tech and toward the humanities.
Plus, fewer higher-ed students are studying history, per Bloomberg. While student enrollment in the UK has increased by ~20% in the last five years, the number of students studying history has fallen 10%. In the US, spring enrollment in undergraduate history classes has fallen 15%+ since 2019.
With the rising costs of tuition, it’s no wonder that students might be tuning in to a history podcast on their way to corporate finance class.
Tune in: Discover the secret sauce used in the Rainforest Café’s unexpected revival.
Don’t just crank out content — make sure it’s working for you. Here’s how to audit your creative inventory.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Amount of caffeine in a 16-ounce can of Jolt Cola when sports nutrition brand Redcon1 returns it to store shelves this year. That’s ~130 milligrams more than its 12-ounce cans had in 1985, when Jolt debuted as a rival to Coca-Cola and Pepsi with “all the sugar and twice the caffeine.” Jolt’s parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. It enjoyed a short-lived reboot in Dollar General stores from 2017 to 2019 before disappearing again.
Redcon1 chief marketing officer Ryan Monahan told CNN the beverage is apt to attract older nostalgia-loving consumers or younger customers looking for a “throwback.”
But will it still appeal to techies? Jolt appeared in 1995’s Hackers, where it was advertised as “the soft drink of the elite hacker,” and computer programmer Dennis Nedry is seen sipping one in 1993’s Jurassic Park.
AROUND THE WEB
💰 On this day: In 1975, gameshow “Wheel of Fortune” premiered on NBC.
