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Morning Brew Daily

OpenAI Shuts Down Sora & United Wants More Premium Seating

25 Mar 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

1.887 - 9.124 Neil Freiman

Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, United's giving you more ways to lie down on a flight.

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9.665 - 18.124 Toby Howell

Then, OpenAI's video generation platform Sora is dead as a doornail. It's Wednesday, March 25th. Let's ride.

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21.918 - 28.167 Neil Freiman

Good morning. We got to tell you about this geography game that has completely taken over our office conversations and Slack channels.

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Chapter 2: Why is OpenAI shutting down Sora?

28.627 - 45.951 Neil Freiman

It's called MapTap, and each day you get five cities to locate on Earth, from Tulsa to Hanoi. It has a sharing mechanism, much like Wordle and all those other games that end in L-E. And yeah, it's just been a blast, and we wanted to recommend it. If you want your workplace to devolve into madness the way ours is, Toby, you'll find out where Monaco is one day.

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45.931 - 62.991 Toby Howell

The desire to beat Neil, or at least not lose embarrassingly to Neil, has me learning geography at a faster clip than at any point in school. I think the magic of the game is that you just get the landmass. There's no borders. There's no cities labeled. There's no rivers highlighted.

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63.151 - 83.23 Toby Howell

It's just the world, and you realize how much you use other countries to approximate the location of other countries. It's been very fun. I recommend bringing it to your group chats. You can play it at map.com. Tap.gg. Comment and email us your scores, too. I want to see if Neil is actually playing at such a high level or if maybe there's some more geography nerds out there.

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83.25 - 88.645 Neil Freiman

And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Toby, you are the best podcast co-host I know.

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88.625 - 93.031 Toby Howell

Oh, Neil, you're making me blush. I thought you were going to tell me I'm the best map tap player, you know.

93.071 - 102.425 Neil Freiman

You'll get there someday, maybe. But do you know what else is the best LinkedIn ads is when it comes to generating the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks?

102.565 - 106.971 Toby Howell

They also have a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers.

106.951 - 114.241 Neil Freiman

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

114.501 - 133.688 Toby Howell

Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. OpenAI's video generation platform came out of the gates soaring, but now it's no longer flying.

Chapter 3: What led to the closure of OpenAI's Sora platform?

558.454 - 573.716 Neil Freiman

They're ripping out, they just, currently this plane has 50 economy seats. So it's just, you know, regular seating. But now they're going to put just 450 41 seats, 34 has economy, and seven first-class seats. So they're just big and small. It doesn't matter the plane.

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573.916 - 579.825 Neil Freiman

They're just going all in on economy, and they just want people to lie horizontally and pay them a buttload of money just to get on these planes.

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580.125 - 602.183 Toby Howell

I think the price gap that really tells the story here is just looking at a single fare spread between the flight from Newark to San Francisco. If you fly standard coach, $423. If you fly the top-tier Polaris class... $5,556. So it is a massive gulf here. I don't know who is paying that, by the way.

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602.203 - 603.466 Neil Freiman

You're paying it on the company's dime.

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603.486 - 613.187 Toby Howell

Yeah, it's definitely business travelers, but it just shows if you were doing the math as a company executive, you are earning so much more money from these premium seats. Of course, you're going to put more of them in.

613.167 - 634.129 Neil Freiman

Meanwhile, United's coming on hot on Delta. In December, Delta CEO said, United is doing their best to copy us. And I don't blame them. I would copy Delta, too, if I was them. But right now, Delta and United are completely separating themselves from the rest of the airline pack. American Airlines has faltered in this push to premium, while United, which I think had a

634.109 - 655.122 Neil Freiman

pretty bad brand reputation for the past couple of years of the past decade has really rehabbed itself. And since we're talking about the airline industry, we should say any updates on the shutdown. There really isn't any. Senate Republicans are offering this deal to Senate Democrats, saying that perhaps we can fund all of Homeland Security, including TSA, besides immigration enforcement.

655.142 - 661.652 Neil Freiman

So we'll see. It looks like they're coming a little bit closer to the deal. But TSA lines are still long at various airports around the country.

661.632 - 679.253 Toby Howell

I have a flight tomorrow morning out of LaGuardia. So I've been on Reddit and just literally combing through like, what are the lines looking like? What are the lines looking like? I think the issue is people are showing up four and a half hours early to their flights, which just, you know, pushes all the lines forward. Hopefully things start to shake out and I just get lucky by tomorrow.

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