Brands of the Week: Spider-Man Smashes Records, Ozempic Hair Loss & the Great Chicken vs. Beef Wars
On Brand with Donny DeutschShow Notes
On Brand with Donny Deutsch — Brands of the Week: Spider-Man's Record Opening, Vincent Pastore Tribute, Chicken Crushes Beef & AI Rental Scams
Donny Deutsch and Lou Pellegrino break down the brands shaping the zeitgeist this week. Spider-Man: Brand New Day starring Tom Holland and Zendaya smashes the all-time domestic opening weekend record with a $360M debut. The team pays tribute to Vincent Pastore ("Big Pussy" from The Sopranos), who passed away at 80, with Lou sharing behind-the-scenes stories from Sirius XM's Wiseguy Show.
Plus: Pepsi teams up with beauty brand Glamnetic for a body care collab; chicken prices overtake beef as grilling-season inflation hits consumers (Chick-fil-A, Wingstop, Raising Cane's win; McDonald's and Burger King struggle); Reebok relaunches in basketball with Shaquille O'Neal and Allen Iverson; a viral rescue monkey named Punch the Monkey; Ozempic and Mounjaro linked to hair loss in a new BMJ study; the protein-maxing backlash and mTOR aging research; record back-to-school spending; a Barbie 2 contract standoff with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and Greta Gerwig; AI-powered rental scams on the rise; state fair food trends going viral on TikTok; and William Shatner, 95, headlining a heavy metal band at Riot Fest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from On Brand with Donny Deutsch
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This week Donny Deutsch and Lou Pellegrino run through who's up and who's down in American culture. They start with a CDC report finding that most U.S. adults are running on empty, then compare notes on five o'clock naps and why sleep has become a $100 billion industry. From there it's senior TikTok creators talking openly about sex and intimacy, the University of Chicago banning AI and laptops from its core courses, and the dictionary's newest additions, including "parasocial," "cuffing season," and "Sunday scaries."
Anthony Scaramucci joins Donny Deutsch to break down his new book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, a sharp and surprisingly self-critical look at how America got here. The SkyBridge founder and co-host of The Rest Is Politics: US walks through the three turning points he believes set the stage for MAGA: letting China into the WTO without checking its rise, the post-9/11 wars funded by tax cuts that blew up the deficit, and a 2008 bailout that rescued the banks but left Main Street behind. As Scaramucci puts it, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party "had a baby, and they named it baby MAGA."