Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to Puck’s best new reporting. Here’s what you need to know…

Meanwhile, on the pods…

HOLLYWOOD

In his first earnings call as Disney C.E.O., Josh D’Amaro did the expected: preaching A.I. integration, the synergistic potential of a One Disney strategy, and a super-app to end all super-apps. But perhaps what’s most telling is what he glossed over: coming layoffs, the increasing costs of sports programming, and the high price of each attempted spin of the Disney flywheel.

SPORTS

News and notes on the latest machinations surrounding the NFL’s highly coveted, obscenely expensive rights packages.

WASHINGTON

Many Democrats aren’t happy that Jake Sullivan and the other Biden bros who rode shotgun for Barack and Joe’s foreign policy adventures are positioning to return to power: “The idea that the same foreign policy leadership that brought us the Afghanistan withdrawal and the cover-up of Biden’s decline should be in charge of staffing the next Democratic administration,” said one insider, “is tone deaf at best.”

FASHION

The Zac Posen experiment at Gap Inc. exemplifies C.E.O. Richard Dickson’s unorthodox executive hiring strategy—the company is certainly seeing some returns, and performing better than expected. But is a bias toward flair over fundamentals preventing more meaningful growth?

A.I.

With the specter of the A.I. singularity around the corner, Ineffable Intelligence just raised a billion-dollar seed round without a single product. The investment arms race is putting massive pressure on venture capital—and changing how the entire industry thinks about risk.

MEDIA

Julia and Dylan chew over James Murdoch’s expected $300 million-plus acquisition of New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. They discuss what the deal signals about Murdoch’s true ambitions—whether he’ll embrace a journalism-first approach, à la The Atlantic, or adopt Jay Penske’s events-driven playbook—and what it means for New York’s legacy identity moving forward.

FASHION

Lauren’s guest this week is Mytheresa C.E.O. Francis Belin, who joined the parent company from Christie’s earlier this year. They discuss the difference between collecting and buying, what the luxury customer wants in 2026, the resilience of the U.S. market, Phoebe Philo’s secret sales, and plenty more.

ART

Marion Maneker joins Peter to discuss the art market’s resurgence after years in the doldrums, driven by a wave of significant collections hitting the auction block. Marion explains why the ultra-wealthy seem remarkably unbothered by tariffs, geopolitical turmoil, and everything else rattling the broader economy—and what it all portends for the art market moving forward.

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