Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 🐭 Disney is trying to adapt in a whole new world
• 🤔 Has America entered its soul-mate era?
• ✌️ 95% of OpenAI is threatening to resign

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be about a 4.65-minute read.

P.S. First time reading? Subscribe here for free.

P.P.S. We’ll be off until Monday, November 27 for the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving, from our team to all of you and your families🦃♥️.

“Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.”

–Hilary "Zig" Ziglar (1926-2012)

Yesterday marked exactly one year since Bob Iger returned to Disney for a second stint as CEO. And while his latest tenure hasn’t exactly gone smoothly thus far, Iger has a plan to turn things around in a time of uncertainty for the House of Mouse.

The current situation: Disney’s movie studio has struggled to produce major blockbusters since the Covid pandemic. Other than last year’s Avatar sequel, it hasn’t had a movie gross over $1 billion since 2019, when Disney produced seven of the nine movies that did so. And the company’s latest attempt – The Marvels and its $275 million budget – has been the worst-performing member of the 33-film MCU after its first two weeks in theaters.

When it comes to linear TV and streaming, things aren’t much better:

• Disney has reported $10+ billion in streaming losses since 2019, and began cutting billions of dollars in annual content spending earlier this year.
• The company is also considering selling ABC and its eight owned TV stations, along with taking on a financial partner for its ESPN sports empire, amid an industry-wide decline in linear TV viewership outside of live sports.

There is a bright spot, however. Disney’s theme parks reported a 17% annual bump in revenue through Q3 of this year to reach $24 billion.

But that’s about where the bright spots end. Overall, Disney’s stock is currently trading at ~$95/share, which is about the same as when Iger re-took the helm and roughly half its value compared to November 2021.

👀 Looking ahead… After flooding Disney+ and theaters with new content for several years, Iger says he’s going back to the bear necessities and reducing quantity in an attempt to improve creative quality. Disney is scheduled to release seven films next year – including Deadpool 3, Inside Out 2, and a live-action Lion King prequel – down from nearly three dozen in 2023.

• Iger has also recently cut jobs and hiked prices across Disney’s services in an effort to improve profitability, and revealed plans to nearly double Disney’s investment in theme parks over the next decade to reach ~$60 billion.
• He’s expected to stick around as CEO until at least early 2025, per CNBC.

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🇮🇹 More than 200 people were convicted in Italy’s largest Mafia trial in three decades. The nearly three-year trial took place in a custom-built bunker and featured 338 defendants, 400+ lawyers, 900 witnesses, and 24,000 wiretaps introduced into evidence. The defendants – including former law-enforcement officials, politicians, businessmen, and gang members – were all affiliated with Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta crime family, which controls 80+% of Europe’s cocaine trade and earns ~$55 billion each year. A total of 207 defendants were sentenced to a combined 2,200 years in prison, with terms ranging from 10 months to 30 years.

🇦🇷 Argentina’s libertarian candidate was elected president. Javier Milei officially won with ~55.7% of the vote over his socialist opponent, whose party has governed Argentina for 16 of the last 20 years. Milei, who is a self-described anarcho-capitalist, says he will abolish Argentina’s central bank along with its health, education, and environment ministries. He also plans to transition Argentina’s national currency from the peso to the US dollar in an attempt to address triple-digit annual inflation, which has left 40% of the country’s population in poverty.

🇦🇺 Australia won the Cricket World Cup final over India. Ten countries competed in the six-week tournament hosted by India, whose cricket team is ranked No. 1 in the world. In the championship match, India scored 80 runs on its first powerplay, equaling the record for a men’s World Cup final. But Australia overcame the early deficit as play continued, and eventually took home their record-extending sixth World Cup title. Over 59 million viewers tuned in to watch the final match, setting a new tournament record.

Fewer Americans are deleting social media, hitting the gym, and lawyering up than in years past.

The US divorce rate has been generally declining since peaking at 22.6 per 1,000 married women in 1979, with the downturn accelerating more quickly over the past decade, according to federal data dating back more than five decades.

As of last year, the US divorce rate stood at 14.6 per 1,000 married women. That figure is down from 19.6 a decade ago, and just shy of a four-decade low set in 2020 and 2021 (14.0).

✋ Yes, but: The recent decline in divorces has coincided with a similar – but slightly smaller – dip in US marriage rates, which fell from around 39 per 1,000 unmarried women a decade ago to 31.2 last year.

📝 Bottom line: It’s unclear exactly how many US marriages end in divorce, but experts say the rate is likely somewhere between 40% and 50%.

Note: While the Census Bureau publishes marriage and divorce figures for both men and women, female data has historically been selected when comparing across different eras.

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💬 Quoted… “Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgement and care for our mission and employees.”

• More than 700 OpenAI employees – equivalent to 95% of the company – and one board member have signed an open letter threatening to resign and join newly ousted CEO Sam Altman at Microsoft should the entire OpenAI board not resign and reappoint Altman. The biggest winner so far from the whole situation? Microsoft, whose shares closed at a 52-week high yesterday after its hiring of Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and assurances to OpenAI employees that they would have jobs should they resign. Can’t wait for the documentary on this one.

🏥 Stat of the Day: 55% of registered US voters say it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if she wants it for any reason, per a new WSJ-NORC poll. That figure is 2% shy of a record-high set last year, and up from 42% in 2012.

🤔 Did You Know?... 40% of Americans between the ages of 26 and 54 haven’t been to the doctor in the past five years. To those folks: health is wealth, please take care of yourselves🙏.

📰 Worth a Read: The pay raise people say they need to be happy → (WSJ)

• ☝️ You’re looking at the center of the Milky Way galaxy in “unprecedented detail” thanks to a new image captured by NASA’s James Webb telescope; the region contains more than 500,000 stars in total.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with Tenikle

• 💰 US markets closed up across the board (S&P: +0.7%; Dow: +0.6%; Nasdaq: +1.1%). | 📈 Nvidia shares closed at an all-time high ahead of its Q3 earnings report; the company’s market cap sits at $1.2 trillion, ahead of both Meta and Tesla.
• 🤖🚗 Kyle Vogt – co-founder of Cruise, GM's self-driving car unit – resigned 12 days after the safety recall of all 950 Cruise vehicles. | 🏦 Citigroup began eliminating ~300 senior managers yesterday (~10% of these roles); the cuts are part of a previously announced reorg of the country’s third-largest bank.
• 🪙 DOJ officials are reportedly seeking $4 billion from crypto exchange Binance to settle accusations of multiple criminal violations.

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SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⛳ TGL, the indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, postponed its inaugural season one year after the organization’s venue’s roof collapsed; the season was expected to start in January. (What is the TGL and how does it work?)
• 🎤 Shakira (Shakira!) reached a deal with Spanish authorities to settle her tax fraud case. | 🏆 Morgan Wallen (11) and Taylor Swift (10) topped this year’s Billboard Awards. (See the full list of winners)
• 🚬 Snoop Dogg isn’t giving up smoking after all.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Rasa

• 🧠 Researchers in Texas have developed a method to keep a brain alive and functioning for several hours without being connected to the body.
• 💉 A neck injection could improve smell issues in some long Covid patients, per new research from Jefferson Health in Philadelphia.
• ✋ Scientists 3D printed a robotic hand with human-like bones, ligaments, and tendons for the first time.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• 🧪 The US gov't is offering four free at-home Covid tests to each household starting yesterday.
• ⚖️ A federal appeals court issued a ruling Monday saying only the federal government — not private citizens or civil rights groups — is allowed to sue under a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
• ⛈️ Pre-Thanksgiving storms could make travel more difficult for the eastern two-thirds of the US this week.

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Yesterday, we covered OpenAI’s sudden firing of CEO Sam Altman, which reportedly came amid an internal dispute over its charter to develop AI in a safe and responsible manner.

❓ Our question to you: In your opinion, how should AI companies approach the topic of safety as they develop new technologies and products?

• “Young people are excited about AI's possibilities, but they need to have the critical thinking skills to evaluate what AI produces. I am not in the "ban AI" camp, but I think safety is critical, and we need to be protecting students from and teaching them about AI's fallibilities.”
• “The real threat at this point is almost 0. We will see potential risks as they are exposed and deal with them accordingly. This is a manageable technology that will prove to be very disruptive in a good way. Our greatest risk is slowing the advancements down and not allowing AI to save lives in medicine and other critical areas."
• “It’s hard for me to care about any potential dangers posed by AI when climate change represents a much more real and existential threat to humanity.”

Click here to read more of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 162 longform responses.

Valerie Weber gave birth to her fourth child, Teegan, on October 23rd, 2023. Born six days before her due date, Valerie didn't expect to celebrate her birthday while... giving birth. 

🤯 Like mother, like daughter... That's right, Teegan was born on Valerie's birthday – but she's not the first to have this happen. Valerie was also born on the same day as her mom, meaning all three generations share the same October 23rd birthday.

❓ Trivia: What year was Twitter launched?

🫒 True or False?... A black olive is just a ripe green olive.

🤔 Riddle Me This: You throw away the outside, eat the inside, then throw away the inside. What is it?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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❓ Trivia: 2006

🫒 T/F: True

🤔 Riddle: Corn on the cob🌽