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If the 1990 classic movie Ghost is any indication, the dead love a good tune. We all remember when the recently deceased Sam (Patrick Swayze) had his infamous pottery session with his very alive partner Molly (Demi Moore). Now, Liquid Death and Spotify are aiming to use music in a similar way, by giving a few hundred of the recently deceased the opportunity to hear their favorite music for all of eternity. The two brands have collaborated on what they claim to be the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled speaker urn. The tasteful white urn has a top outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker. Spotify is also introducing the Eternal Playlist Generator in the U.S., where you can answer a few questions and prompts to generate a personalized mix for your ashes to enjoy for all of eternity. Liquid Death is producing a few hundred of the urns, which will sell on its site for $495. Liquid Deaths senior vice-president of marketing Dan Murphy says that the idea came out of informal conversations between the brands. Murphy had worked with Spotifys senior director of global brand and marketing, Lauren Solomon, and there were other connections between brand leaders. It just started as, Our brands should work together sometime! says Murphy. Soon we were doing our Liquid Death thing, which is always the same: If you take another brand or celebrity into the Liquid Death universe, what is the one right answer? And so of course, it was the Eternal Urn powered by a Spotify custom playlist that’s going to fuel it. The quirky collab strategy Liquid Death has made a habit of creating quirky collabs with unlikely partners, but has stepped up its game over the past year. What started with a Martha Stewart candle has evolved into making a faux leather adult diaper for dive bars with Depends (The Pit Diaper), a coffin-shaped Death Trap snowboard with Burton, and Corpse Paint makeup with e.l.f. Cosmetics. Most sell out in minutes. The Corpse Paint ad, for example, hit 12 billion impressions in two weeks, and the limited-edition collab sold out in less than 45 minutes. Murphy says the collabs have evolved significantly over the last two years, to include global brands like Amazon and Spotify. We’ve established our place in culture and creativity such that maybe two or three years ago, it might’ve been deemed a little too risky to work with us, or maybe we weren’t big enough or interesting enough, but now we’re kind of doing it in our sleep. A month before Ozzy Osbourne died, he collaborated with Liquid Death on a collection of cans containing his DNA. For “Infinitely Recyclable Ozzy,” he drank 10 cans of the brand’s iced tea, leaving “trace DNA from his saliva” on the now-precious metal, which originally sold for $450 each. Weeks later, one sold on eBay for $4,655. Murphy says that the brands collaboration strategy has been to create a brand halo for Liquid Death by using these unexpected collabs to reach new audiences. We find a lot of brands are interested in our unique audience and our creativity, says Murphy. We film and produce and direct these things in-house, so they get that value, and then we’ll find brands that will allow me to extend my marketing budget, jump in on their audience, level up the PR with major household names, that bring what they do best to the table. The companys last valuation was $1.4 billion in 2024, and in early 2026 it launched into the energy drink category. The company started with spring water, expanded to flavored sparkling water in 2021, juice-spiked iced teas in 2022, soda-flavored sparkling water this year, and nowmuch like Liquid I.V.sees opportunity in energy drinks. We might not do as many collabs next year, so I think it’ll be even just a fewer, bigger, better strategy, says Murphy. As we move into a fourth category of healthy, better-for-you energy, it’s that next level of complexity of customer and occasion and strategy. So it’ll take a little bit more focus on the core product. We’ve never taken our eye off that ball, but I think as a consequence, we’ll just look to a few fewer and always bigger and better. That’s what we’re trying for. The Pantheon Bigger and better is getting tougher to reach after a few years of bigger and slightly unhinged collab ideas. Heres my Top 5 Pantheon of Liquid Death Collabs: 5. Deathtrap snowboard x Burton No camber, no sidecut, absolutely should not be taken down a hill. Only 50 of these casket-shaped snowboards were made, and its a lock that all 50 are hanging on someones wall for wine and burrata night. 4. Death Watch x Nixon Classy and timeless, and for the one-time low price of your eternal soul. The Death Watch started in 2021, and is still ticking, selling its fourth iteration in 2024. 3. Pit Diaper x Depends Sometimes the Liquide Death creative team comes up with an idea and then approaches a brand to collaborate with on it. This faux leather dive bar diaper holder is one such example. 2. Corpse Paint x e.l.f. Cosmetics One of the most unintuitive collabs ever made, but its numbers speak for itself. Absolute gangbusters for both brands. Eternal Playlist Urn x Spotify The weirdest, most useless, yet kind of amazing product we didnt know we needed. Steve Jobs once said, A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Damn you, Bluetooth speaker Urn, damn you.
Category:
E-Commerce
The MAHA movement wants to name one of its own as Americas top doctor. U.S. surgeon general nominee Casey Means fielded questions about vaccines, autism research, and her own qualifications before Congress this week, a critical moment in the Trump administrations quest to remake Americas health systems. In her opening statements on Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Means expressed concerns about the proliferation of preventable disease that plagues Americans, including chronic illness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. During the hearing, Means touched on many policy priorities she shares with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other figures in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, better known as MAHAa spin on Trumps MAGA branding. As surgeon general, I would call on every American and the Public Health Service to join in a great national healingone that halts preventable chronic disease, makes healthy living the easiest choice, honors the bodys connection to the environment, and puts America back on the road toward wholeness and health, Means said. MAHA Controversy surrounds Means A close ally and adviser of Kennedy, Means would be an anomalyas the first U.S. surgeon general who lacks an active medical license. Without an active medical license, doctors cannot see patients or write prescriptions. And Means says she has no plans to reactivate it, even if she is confirmed. Historically, practicing physicians with years of experience take on the role as Americas top public health communicator, but the qualification is tradition, not a requirement. Means, a 38-year-old wellness influencer, graduated from Stanford Universitys medical school but left her surgical residency program at Oregon Health & Science University before completing it. Left my residency in my 5th year to focus on the real root causes of why Americans are so sick, Means, who was previously an otolaryngology resident, wrote on her LinkedIn page. Public health leadership must address the evidence-based, modifiable drivers of chronic diseases, including ultra-processed diet, industrial chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, chronic stress and loneliness, and overmedicalization, Means said. I have been asked to help our nation get healthy and answer the call of millionsespecially motherswho are begging for transparency and support. That is what I am here to do.” Means cashed in on health trends Beyond her lack of experience as a practicing physician, Means is an untraditional surgeon general choice in other ways. She is a cofounder and former chief medical officer of the health tech startup Levels, which makes a popular app that helps people monitor their blood glucose levels continuously. Levels has raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz and other prominent Silicon Valley investors. In excerpts from her book, Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, Means has extolled the virtues of monitoring blood sugar to shift eating habits and reduce global metabolic suffering. Blood glucose monitoring isnt the only health business Means has cashed in on. The surgeon general nominee has also made hundreds of thousands of dollars by promoting supplements, vitamins, and wellness products through her newsletter and social media channelsoften without disclosing her paid partnerships. Those lucrative relationships pose sticky and unprecedented ethical questions for someone seeking to shape the national health conversation as Americas next surgeon general. A MAHA-friendly vaccine message Like other members of the MAHA movement, Means emphasizes personal habits and mindful eating, criticizing common pharmaceutical and medical interventions as a corporate cash grab. A prolific blogger, Means mixes sound sciencelike recent research on the risks of alcoholwith dubious claims sowing concerns about the dangers of vaccines. There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children, Means wrote in a newsletter published last year, echoing a core concern of the anti-vaccine movement. On Wednesday, Means faced direct questions over her beliefs about autism and vaccines from Republicans and Democrats alike. During the hearing, Means claimed that anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of my message while suggesting that the link between the autism crisis and vaccines remains unexplored. Hinting at a possible link between autism and vaccines without scientific evidence denies established research on the topic and can dissuade adults and parents from seeking potentially lifesaving vaccinations. The American Medical Association wrote last year that an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism and urged people to seek vaccines, which have been proven to be safe and effective. This week, 15 states announced that they would sue the Trump administration over its decision to pare down federal recommendations for childhood vaccines. While vaccinations for measles, polio, and whooping cough are still recommended for all children, federal health policies no longer recommend jabs for COVID-19, rotavirus, meningitis, hepatitis A, or hepatitis B across the board. During her hearing, Means was pressed repeatedly to articulate her position on childhood vaccinesprobably the most contentious issue to emerge out of Kennedys MAHA movement. Means, who previously called the practice of giving newborns the hepatitis B vaccine absolute insanity, emphasized parent and patient choice over universal public health policies designed to protect Americans at large. “I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they’re putting in their body or their children’s body, Means said.
Category:
E-Commerce
If youve been caught up in the cottage cheese craze, take heed: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that you toss tubs of cottage cheese purchased from Walmart stores in 24 states because of concerns the ingredients werent fully pasteurized. The FDA issued an alert Thursday of a voluntary recall of Great Value brand cottage cheese made by Saputo Cheese USA, though no illnesses or hospitalizations associated with the recalled dairy products have been reported. The recall affects Great Value cottage cheese products with milkfat content of 0%, 2%, and 4%, various curd sizes, and containers ranging from 16 ounces to 3 pounds that were distributed to Walmart stores earlier this month. The issue was discovered by Saputo Cheese, the manufacturer, during pasteurizer troubleshooting exercises and the impacted pasteurizer was subsequently fixed and returned to normal function, according to the recall details. The FDA is recommending that people not eat the affected Great Value cottage cheese and either throw away the tub or return it to the Walmart store where you purchased it. Consuming products that are not fully pasteurized can pose a significant health risk, especially to the young and elderly or immunocompromised individuals, the FDA advisory cautions. The affected products have best if used by dates in early April and were sold at Walmart stores in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. A lack of full pasteurization is a very atypical reason for an FDA recall. In fact, Thursdays cottage cheese recall is the first instance among 850-plus recalls since March 2023 in which the reason cited was not fully pasteurized. COTTAGE CHEESE CRAZE Cottage cheese has become a favorite among social media foodie types in recent years thanks to its high protein content. Americans consumed roughly 2.4 pounds of cottage cheese in 2024, the most in 15 years, according to the latest figures on per-capita dairy consumption released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While cottage cheese is having a renaissance of sorts, it hasnt yet returned to its 1970s glory days when Americans were eating 4.6 pounds, on average. In January, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new dietary guidelines that redesigned the food pyramid and encouraged Americans to consume more dairy, and particularly full-fat dairy, than in the recent past. Thursdays recall announcement and the FDAs warning about consuming food that isnt fully pasteurized might seem at odds with some additional rhetoric from the Trump administration. Before he was appointed Health Secretary Kennedy posted on X in October 2024 that he intended to end what he termed the FDAs war on public health and called out the administrations aggressive suppression of a variety of products including raw milk, which is unpasteurized. The FDA falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and is led by Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner. Any progress on creating standards for raw milk, as advocates were banking on, hasnt happened yet and isnt among the dozens of accomplishments that Makary touts on his X account for his first year as commissioner. Neither Makary nor Kennedy have publicly commented about the cottage cheese recall.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Since the 2008 housing bust and subsequent Great Financial Crisis (GFC), mortgage lending has steadily shifted away from big banks. In the years that followedamid tighter regulations, higher capital requirements, and elevated litigation riskmany large banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, reduced their mortgage footprint. In that void, nonbank lenders, also known as independent mortgage banks (IMBs), such as Rocket Mortgage, United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), and LoanDepot, gained market share. Now, a top Federal Reserve official is openly questioning whether policy and regulation went too farand is signaling that a policy shift may be coming. In a February 16 speech at the American Bankers Associations Community Bankers Conference, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman, pointed to what she described as a significant migration of mortgage origination and servicing out of the banking sector over the past 15 years. According to Bowman: In 2008, banks originated around 60% of mortgages and held the servicing rights on about 95% of mortgage balances. In 2023, banks originated around 35% of mortgages and held the servicing rights on about 45% of mortgage balances. Thats pretty in line with the data ResiClub pulled from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. During her speech, Bowman suggested that post-2013 capital rulesparticularly the treatment of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs)* under Basel standards**may have contributed to the mortgage retreat by banks. MSRs, which represent the expected value of servicing income when loans are sold into securitizations, were assigned higher risk weights and subject to deduction thresholds after the crisis. While regulators tightened those rules over concerns about valuation volatility and model risk, the capital treatment also made servicing and, by extension, mortgage origination less economically attractive for banks. The result, Bowman implied, is a mortgage market increasingly concentrated in nonbank firms that lack deposit funding and operate under different supervisory and resolution frameworks. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Bowman said, borrowers with bank servicers were more likely to receive forbearance than those serviced by nonbankshighlighting structural differences that can matter during stress periods, she says. Bowman previewed potential changes now under consideration, including removing the deduction requirement for MSRs and making mortgage capital rules more sensitive to loan-to-value (LTV) ratios rather than applying a uniform risk weight. Such changes would not unwind post-crisis reforms but could modestly improve the economics of bank mortgage activity, Bowman says. Here’s what Bowman said in her February 16 speech: Two regulatory proposals will soon be introduced that, among other broader changes to the regulatory capital framework, would increase bank incentives to engage in mortgage origination and servicing. First, the proposals would remove the requirement to deduct mortgage servicing assets from regulatory capital while maintaining the 250% risk weight assigned to these assets. We will seek comment on the appropriate risk weight for these assets. This change in the treatment of mortgage servicing assets would encourage bank participation in the mortgage servicing business while recognizing uncertainty regarding the value of these assets over the economic cycle. “Second, the proposals would also consider increasing the risk sensitivity of capital requirements for mortgage loans on bank books. One approach would be to use loan-to-value ratios to determine the applicable risk weight for residential real estate exposures, rather than applying a uniform risk weight regardless of LTV. This change could better align capital requirements with actual risk, support on-balance-sheet lending by banks, and potentially reverse the trend of migration of mortgage activity to nonbanks over the past 15 years. James Kleimann, founder of The Mortgage Scoop, writes in a recent newsletter: This stuff is quite complicated, but basically, the Fed is weighing a plan to remove the rule that banks must deduct MSR assets from regulatory capital while maintaining a 250% risk weight for those assets. In plain English, that means regulators treat $1 of MSRs like $2.50 of risky assets. What the appropriate risk weight level should be remains the central question, but this potential change is something the MBA [Mortgage Bankers Association] has been arguing in favor of for years. Big picture: If adopted, the proposals could mark the beginning of a gradual rebalancing in housing financeone that brings more mortgage origination and servicing back inside the traditional banking system after more than a decade of migration outward.
Category:
E-Commerce
For the first time in history, podcasts have overtaken talk radio as the most-listened-to medium for spoken-word audio in the United States. Podcasts, including video podcasts, eclipsed AM/FM talk radio (which notably doesnt include listening to music on the radio), with 40% of listening time, as opposed to 39% for radio, according to Edison Researchs Share of Ear survey. Researchers have tracked these statistics over the last decade. In 2015, AM/FM radio accounted for 75% of the time Americans spent listening to spoken-word audio. At the time, podcasts accounted for just 10%. Year over year, that gap has slowly closed, as podcasts boomed in popularity, increasingly keeping us company on daily commutes and during menial tasks. Over half of Americans, 55%an estimated 158 million peoplelisten to a podcast monthly, and 40%, or 115 million, listen every week. This year, the scales finally tipped. Although the difference is only 1 percentage point, this is the first time podcast listenership has surpassed radio. Whether the gap continues to widen remains to be seen. Watching podcasts has become a growing trend over the past year, perhaps shifting the balance in podcasts favor. YouTube said viewers watched 700 million hours of podcasts each month in 2025 on living room devices like TVs, up from 400 million the previous year. Streaming platforms like Netflix have inked deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports to bring podcasts to their services. Daytime talk shows have also suffered blows, including the recent cancellations of both Kelly Clarksons and Sherri Shepherds TV talk shows. Apples audio-only app has taken a hit as well, falling from 15.7% of monthly podcast listeners preferred platform in 2022 to 11.3% in 2025. But audio-only isnt going anywhere, at least for now. According to Triton Digitals annual podcasting report, only 7% of audiences exclusively watch their favorite podcasts, while 13% exclusively listen. The remaining 80% alternate between the two. The meaning of the word podcast has vastly expanded and grown increasingly diffuse as our media habits shift, Joe Berkowitz recently wrote for Fast Company. As for the future of podcastingnot talk radio, not TV chat show, but instead a secret third thing.
Category:
E-Commerce
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