By Walt Hickey

Beast

Amazon and YouTube sensation MrBeast have cut a deal, with Jimmy Donaldson launching a new reality show competition called Beast Games that will feature 1,000 contestants all vying for a $5 million payout, the largest prize in the history of television. Big payouts are a staple of Beast’s videos, best seen in the $456,000 imitation of Squid Game, and his channel brings in $600 million to $700 million per year, per Donaldson. The jump from YouTube to streaming is going to be an important moment for the performer, as he’s reaching the age where YouTube stars tend to lose steam.

James Hibberd and Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter

Volcano

A volcano has been spotted “hiding in plain sight” on the surface of Mars on the Tharsis plateau, the fourth known volcano in the area. It’s next to the steep valleys of the Noctis Labyrinthus, and stands 9,022 meters tall, slightly larger than Mount Everest (8,839 meters tall) but still considerably smaller than Mars’ Olympus Mons, which is 25,750 meters high. The volcano is ancient and deeply eroded, and it’s been tentatively named Noctis Mons. Just throwing this out there — lots of great emo band names in this paragraph, so have at it people.

Isaac Schultz, Gizmodo

Asbestos

The EPA has announced it’s rolling out the long-awaited comprehensive ban on asbestos, which will ban the last remaining ongoing use of chrysotile asbestos. Currently it’s found in brake linings, gaskets, and is often used in the manufacture of bleach and sodium hydroxide. As it stands, there are just eight chlor-alkali plants in the U.S. that still use asbestos in the production of chlorine and sodium hydroxide, and it’s used in less than a third of the chlor-alkali production in the country. While the chemical industry’s lobbyists wanted 15 years to transition off asbestos diaphragms, the EPA will phase in the prohibitions over five or more years.

Matthew Daly, Associated Press

Astrologers

The government of Sri Lanka backs a group of 42 astrologers through their cultural affairs ministry, and a key job for them is to unanimously agree on the best date for new year rituals. Well, for the first time, the astrologers are split, and while a majority backed the dawn of the Sinhala and Tamil new year on the 13th of April, a number of dissenters argue that that day is wrong and will lead to disaster. Astrologers possess legit political power in the country; a former president once called a snap election based on the advice of an astrologer (he lost), and over a decade ago an astrologer was arrested after forecasting that the president would be ousted by his prime minister.

The Guardian

Country

Beyoncé has a hit country song out in “Texas Hold ‘Em,” but it’s caused controversy in the country music radio scene. Before Beyoncé, just seven Black women have appeared on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in the entire history of the chart, and radio airplay remains critical for the success of a country song. There has been resistance in playing Beyoncé, best known as a pop act, on country stations, and it’s increasing scrutiny of the radio format. From 2002 to 2023, songs by white artists averaged 96.5 percent of country radio airplay, and of the remaining 3.5 percent of radio plays, three artists — Darius Rucker, Kane Brown and Jimmie Allen — account for 96 percent of the plays.

Emily Yahr, The Washington Post

Electrolytes

The phenomenon of hungover college kids drinking Pedialyte to recover from benders inadvertently spawned a massive sector of the beverage business: hydration drinks. Already, there have been billion-dollar deals for versions of the electrolyte-replenishing drinks that don’t taste like crap, such as BodyArmor being bought for $5.6 billion by Coca-Cola. The market for electrolytes drinks is projected to grow by 5.9 percent every year, up to hitting $59 billion by 2032. This is good news, because it sets our society on the path of Brawndo: It’s Got Electrolytes, and It’s Got What Plants Crave in record time.

Chris Casey, Food Dive

Weddings

The 2023-24 wedding season in India is estimated to have generated $75 billion in spending, with the peak period from November 23 to December 15, 2023, seeing 3.5 million couples wed in India, spending in those weeks alone hitting INR 4.25 trillion ($57 billion). It’s a huge business for the hotels — weddings accounted for 10 percent of Marriott’s revenue in India — and it’s supremely competitive. Even other countries are getting in the mix competing for destination weddings for Indian couples: Thailand hosts 400 to 500 Indian weddings per year, and the tourism board has a specific provision that allows Indians to enter Thailand without a visa through May. The annual surge in nuptials even resonates through the gold markets.

Peden Doma Bhutia, Skift

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