July 17, 2026

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Happy Friday. Today, July 17, is World Emoji Day. Wanna know why?

Pull up the calendar emoji and look at the date: It’s July 17. Apple picked that date because that was the day in 2002 when the company debuted iCal for Mac. Emojipedia later decided that July 17 made the most sense for a global celebration of emoji.

Many other platforms have joined in, using July 17 as the date on their calendar emoji. But there are holdouts: Facebook’s still shows May 14 (Mark Zuckerberg’s birthday).

—Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Adam Epstein, Holly Van Leuven

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The Odyssey’s big opening weekend
The grocery shopping crisis
Eli Lilly getting into psychedelics

Markets

Nasdaq

25,881.95

-1.47%

S&P

7,533.77

-0.51%

Dow

52,552.97

-0.20%

10-Year

4.569%

+2.0 bps

Bitcoin

$64,105.42

-1.07%

Intel

$96.98

-5.84%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks tumbled yesterday, as investors decided that it was one of those days when they remember they’re kinda scared of the AI boom. Chip stocks were particularly clobbered, with Intel continuing a monthlong slide.

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The Sirens Call

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is finally here

Universal Pictures

The long-awaited sails are appearing on the horizon, as Christopher Nolan’s $250 million adaptation of the Greek classic ~~you SparkNoted in high school~~ The Odyssey hits theaters in the US today.

Cinephiles and cinema CEOs are holding their breath for the biggest premiere of the summer, featuring an Olympus-of-Hollywood cast headlined by Matt Damon as Odysseus and supported by Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Elliot Page, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson, among others.

While its current Rotten Tomatoes score of 96% already exceeds that of any previous Nolan film, it’s also aiming for an epic opening weekend domestic box office of $100 million, which would eclipse the debut of the director’s previous hit, Oppenheimer.

It’s about how it was made

In the age of AI-assisted production, the auteur director opted to shoot scenes on location across the Mediterranean, with the cast and crew spending days on a reconstructed Viking ship in the open seas. It’s also the first feature film shot entirely on Imax 70mm film, Nolan’s preferred instrument that affords the maximum resolution possible:

People who casually drop the phrase mise-en-scène in conversation will likely insist on seeing the film at one of only 25 movie theaters in the US equipped to handle the format.
But they may have to pay an eBay reseller $1,000 for a seat (on top of $70 for a novelty Trojan Horse popcorn bucket with a hidden compartment in the crotch): Even some 3am Imax showtimes are sold out this weekend.

There are also battles on smaller screens. Some conservative online commentators, including Elon Musk, have accused Nolan of prioritizing diversity over faithfulness to Homer’s text. The director dismissed the pre-premiere criticism as “irrelevant.”

Wide-angle picture: Odysseus’s on-screen return to Ithaca is furthering a movie theater revival this summer, after years of falling ticket sales. Several recent blockbusters, ranging from Toy Story 5 and Michael to breakout horror hits like Backrooms and Obsession, have put the domestic box office on track to reach $10 billion this year for the first time since 2019, per Rentrak.—SK

Reader poll

When are you seeing The Odyssey?

This weekend.
Next weekend.
When it’s streaming.
Never.

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World

Tour de headlines

President Trump speaks on July 16, 2026, from the East Room

Pool/Getty Images

🗳️ Trump used primetime speech to cast doubts on election integrity. Ahead of the midterm elections, President Trump made many accusations about the readiness of the US voting system and the integrity of the 2020 election results in a television address last night, in which he reiterated previously disproven claims about election fraud, but did not raise doubts about the results of the 2016 or the 2024 elections. Many major media outlets, including NBC and ABC, did not air the speech live but offered it in full on their streaming services. Trump commented on this in the speech, saying the networks weren’t carrying it “because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.” In the speech, he also announced the declassification of documents related to the 2020 election and urged the passage of the SAVE America Act, which is stalled in the Senate.

🥬 Cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to Taylor Farms lettuce sent to Taco Bell. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked the multistate outbreak of Cyclospora infections to shredded iceberg lettuce provided to Taco Bell by Taylor Farms, according to two unnamed officials who spoke to the New York Times. Last night, Taco Bell released a statement saying it was voluntarily removing potentially infected lettuce it received from a supplier in select states. It didn’t name the lettuce provider, but said that another vendor would replace it. A spokeswoman for Taylor Farms did not reply to the NYT’s request for comment. The CDC has not publicly named Taylor Farms as part of its investigation, but it did release a post last night warning the public not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia.

👀 Netflix will report fewer engagement updates going forward. Alongside its quarterly earnings, the streamer released one of its “What We Watched” reports yesterday, which offers a snapshot of user engagement and has traditionally been released twice a year. The company said What We Watched will now become an annual report, with the next one due out in Q1 2027. As for those aforementioned earnings, they pretty much matched Wall Street’s expectations for the second quarter, but the stock fell by 9% in after-hours trading, as investors balked at the fact that Netflix narrowed its revenue forecast for 2026.—HVL

SELF CHECKED OUT

Americans’ money-saving hack: not buying groceries

Woman shopping in a the produce section of a grocery store

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

A “positive attitude” might start counting as something to legitimately bring to a dinner party. Food prices are rising so much that US shoppers are simply buying fewer groceries: Grocery unit sales, which refer to individual items sold, fell 1.8% in June compared to the same time last year, according to a new analysis from Bain & Company using NielsenIQ grocery data, reported by CNBC.

In June 2025, grocery unit sales actually increased 0.1%, compared to 2024. The recent drop suggests that prolonged inflation, which has hovered between 2% and 4% year over year for the past few years, has finally forced shoppers to make changes to their shopping trips:

Grocery prices are about 33% higher than they were seven years ago.
About 66% of US shoppers think groceries are unaffordable, according to a Washington Post/Ipsos poll published yesterday. That’s a steep increase from the 45% of respondents who thought so in February.

Americans are trying every trick in the book to lower the bill. More shoppers said they’re couponing, deal-hunting, or swapping out name brands for private labels, per the survey. Even credit card rewards points, typically used to fund vacations, are increasingly being deployed to pay for everyday staples, a separate survey shows.

Big picture: Even though June’s inflation data was softer than economists’ expectations, energy prices, which got some relief last month, are expected to continue rising amid renewed tensions with Iran.—MM

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MIND BLOWN

The GLP-1 leader expands into psychedelics

Adobe Stock

Eli Lilly is in the market for some DMT and ecstasy. The pharmaceutical giant said yesterday that it will acquire psychedelic drugmaker AtaiBeckley for $2.8 billion, gaining access to its line of experimental mental health therapies.

Lilly will tack another $1 billion onto that price if AtaiBeckley’s drugs hit certain milestones. The upstart’s pipeline includes:

Its lead drug, BPL-003, a DMT-based nasal spray for treatment-resistent depression. It’s shown promising results in mid-stage trials and was recognized as a Breakthrough Therapy by the FDA last fall.
An oral drug for social anxiety disorder that contains a molecular structure found in MDMA (aka ecstasy).

Full circle: Before it became known for Mounjaro and Zepbound, Lilly’s last major growth spurt came from its antidepressant Prozac, released ~40 years ago. In an interview with CNBC, Lilly’s chief scientific officer compared the stigma around mental health treatment at that time to the current stigma around psychedelic therapy.

But the regulatory environment is getting friendlier—the FDA fast-tracked psychedelic drug research earlier this year. Shares of AtaiBeckley had already more than doubled over the past year before the acquisition news.

Shopping spree: Lilly has said it would spend up to $25 billion on acquisitions this year. Other recent purchases include companies in vaccine development, cancer treatment, and sleep medication.—ML

Dave’s sports desk

English-speaking soccer fans are loving Telemundo

Nick Illuzada

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

Spanish-language network Telemundo has been setting viewership records throughout this year’s World Cup, with ratings thumping the numbers from the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

But the increase isn’t just because of Spanish speakers in the US—many English speakers are opting to watch games on the NBCU-owned network, which features play-by-play announcer Andrés Cantor’s signature “goooooooooool!” calls:

A July 5 match between Mexico and England drew a record 23.2 million viewers on Telemundo, vs. 21.7 million on Fox Sports.
Half of this year’s World Cup viewers have watched at least part of the tournament in Spanish, according to Nielsen, despite only ~20% of the US being Hispanic.

One big difference: Telemundo has eschewed ~~cash grabs~~ airing commercials during each match’s two hydration breaks.

Extra time: Viewership on Telemundo has been so robust that FIFA is considering packaging English- and Spanish-language US broadcast rights for the 2030 tournament, per CNBC.—DL

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Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: eschewed, meaning “deliberately avoided or shunned.” Thanks to Jamie from Las Vegas, and many others, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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Written by Adam Epstein, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, and Holly Van Leuven

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☕️ The sirens call