Vivek’s Big Buddy, The Netflix Epoch, Putin’s Org Chart

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon compilation of Puck’s best new reporting.

Today, we lead with Teddy Schleifer’s dispatch on the budding Vivek-Elon bromance, the other ’24 hopefuls cozying up to Musk, how Larry Ellison ghosted Tim Scott, and more.

Plus, below the fold: Julia Alexander runs the numbers on YouTube’s $14 billion bet on the NFL’s Sunday Ticket. In the fifth and final installment of About a Boy, Julia Ioffe connects the dots between Putin’s leadership style and his years as a punk kid in the dvor. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw examine Netflix’s reign of dominance. And on The Powers That Be, Ben Landy and Julia Ioffe recall a time when a two-state solution seemed viable, before discussing the cascading events that led to the current Israel-Palestine war.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

New dish on Musk’s budding presidential bromance, how Larry Ellison ghosted Tim Scott, and a new S.B.F. dark-money casualty.

JULIA ALEXANDER

YouTube TV’s investment in the Sunday Ticket bundle seems like merely the first step in Alphabet’s larger opportunity of turning the one-time hub of cat videos into the future home for all video—on mobile, sure, but also TV.

JULIA IOFFE

To predict what Vladimir Putin might do next in Ukraine, it’s helpful to remember his first and foremost education—in the dvor.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss Netflix’s reign of dominance in 2023 and how it managed to return to form after the Great Netflix Correction.