Good morning. In this edition:

• 🍿 Hollywood’s original movies are flopping
• 📈 Waymo + Austin
• 🏘️ Private equity firms are becoming apartment moguls

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.55-minute read (1,211 words).

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“Let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”

–Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

As ADHD diagnoses continue to hit record highs across the US, many leading researchers are seeing a disconnect between scientists’ evolving knowledge of the condition and the way it’s being treated, per a New York Times Magazine report from child development expert Paul Tough.

Let’s break it down

In 1999, the first large-scale scientific study of how the stimulant Ritalin affects kids with ADHD published its initial results. This study, known as “MTA,” revealed strong evidence that children aged 7-9 with ADHD who took Ritalin every day had significantly fewer symptoms compared to a control group.

• MTA’s initial results gave many US clinics and doctors’ offices the green light to prescribe Ritalin—and later Adderall—to children across the US in the years following the study’s initial publication.

However…As scientists continued to follow the ~600 children in MTA, they realized newer data was telling a different story about Ritalin’s effectiveness. While children taking the stimulant did show improved behavior compared to other groups after 14 months of treatment, that advantage faded completely by 36 months.

Despite the newer data, stimulants remain the preferred ADHD treatment for most doctors. And the market for those stimulants has expanded rapidly in recent years in step with the growth of the condition.

• The percentage of US children diagnosed with ADHD has risen from 5.6% in 1999 to a record-high 11.4% last year.
• Meanwhile, US prescriptions for stimulants to treat ADHD increased by 58% from 2012-2022.

Bottom line: These millions of stimulant prescriptions rest on certain assumptions, including that ADHD has a largely biological basis and is diagnosed on a categorical model (either you have it, or you don’t). But many experts are beginning to question those assumptions, especially after the latest MTA study—published last October—found most subjects’ ADHD symptoms had fluctuated substantially over the years, mostly due to environmental factors.

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…two examples from this past weekend:

• Drop, a Christopher Landon-directed thriller, opened to ~$7.5 million domestically.
• Disney’s The Amateur, a spy thriller adapted from a little-known 1981 book, opened to an estimated $15 million.

They’re not alone. Nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment, including Amazon’s Red One and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, The Wall Street Journal reports.

One potential fix—more marketing: Theater owners say they welcome more original films—but only if they are backed by robust advertising campaigns, since building buzz for a relatively unknown title in a fractured media environment can prove difficult, per the WSJ. Even franchises with built-in audiences aren’t a sure thing in the age of streaming and content overload (just ask the studio execs who greenlit The Flash and the latest Indiana Jones movie).

The formula for A Minecraft Movie—currently the highest-grossing movie of the year, at ~$281 million domestically—was to combine a built-in audience with a lot of marketing. The havoc-wreaking, Chicken Jockey-featuring film was boosted by the largest third-party promotional campaign in Warner Bros. history.

Looking ahead…Hollywood is betting on sequels like Tom Cruise’s fifty-first eighth Mission Impossible and Avatar: Fire and Ash to save this year’s domestic box office, which over the first three months of the year saw its lowest revenue since 1996 (excluding the pandemic).

These days, it seems like no worker is safe from an AI replacement—even Dr. Dolittle.

Google’s AI research lab DeepMind yesterday unveiled a new AI model aimed at helping scientists translate dolphin vocalizations, with an end goal of allowing for basic communication between humans and dolphins.

Background: Dolphins are some of the smartest and most communicative animals on Earth, with social interactions so complex that researchers at the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP) have spent the last 40+ years attempting to decipher them.

In the process, WDP has amassed decades’ worth of dolphin audio and video, using it to tie certain sounds to behavioral aspects like courtships, unique names, and dolphin squabbles.

That’s where AI comes in. Using WDP’s massive dataset, Google researchers created a generative AI model called DolphinGemma that uses a special audio technology to tokenize dolphin vocalizations.

• DolphinGemma operates on an audio-in, audio-out model. So after being provided with a dolphin vocalization, the model does what human-centric language models like ChatGPT do—it predicts the next token.
• Once the model is completed and fine-tuned, those predicted tokens would ideally be sounds that a dolphin can understand.

Looking ahead…Researchers hope DolphinGemma will help tease out complex patterns, and eventually allow them to create a shared vocabulary between dolphins and humans to enable basic interactions.

Your Everyday Heroes presents Tracey Lemon, who proves "we can choose to be better every single day." After successful careers in the military and real estate, she now volunteers to protect Costa Rica's endangered turtles, nature’s crucial "cleaners of the ocean."

Tracey’s contribution has led to a drastic increase in the survival rate of this “keystone species” essential for the functioning of our ecosystem.

Complaints of “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!” are increasingly falling on robotic ears in the streets of Austin, Texas.

Waymo robotaxis made up ~20% of all Uber rides in Austin during the last week of March, after first becoming available across the city earlier that month, according to data from market analytics firm YipitData.

Overall, Alphabet-owned Waymo has racked up 80% more driverless rides in Austin over its first 27 days of service compared to the company’s San Francisco launch, which didn’t involve Uber.

Looking ahead…Waymo is bringing its robotaxis to Atlanta starting this summer, with rides to be offered exclusively through the Uber app similar to Austin.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📈 US markets rose across the board (S&P: +0.8%; Dow: +0.8%; Nasdaq: +0.6%).
• 💊 Pfizer is scrapping its experimental daily weight loss pill; the move comes after a patient experienced a liver injury that was potentially caused by the drug in a trial.
• ⚖️ Meta’s antitrust trial regarding its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp kicked off yesterday; CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave four hours of testimony. | A group of US small businesses sued to block Trump’s tariffs, saying trade deficits don’t constitute an emergency.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Finance Buzz

• 📺 India-based streaming platform JioHotstar passed 200 million paid subscribers; it’s the world's third-largest streaming service, behind Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
• 🎭 HBO confirmed the first cast members for its new Harry Potter series. | Tony Award winner Leslie Odom Jr. will reprise his role of Aaron Burr in Broadway’s Hamilton this fall.
• 🏀 WNBA Draft: UConn’s Paige Bueckers was selected #1 overall by the Dallas Wings; see the rest of the picks and their grades here.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🔥 A newly published analysis of three fireplaces at a prehistoric site in Ukraine sheds light on how humans used fire 10,000+ years ago.
• 🔍 Astrophysicists discovered half of the universe's hydrogen; the previously undetected, diffuse ionized gas partially accounts for the universe's "missing" normal matter.
• 🚀 Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, and three other women successfully ventured past the Kármán line on a Blue Origin rocket; the group is the first all-female crew to travel to space since 1963. | A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with 27 Starlink internet satellites successfully blasted into orbit yesterday; it was the 27th launch for the rocket's first stage, breaking a reflight record this same booster set two months ago.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

in partnership with Niphtio

• ⚖️ The man accused of setting fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was charged with terrorism, arson, and attempted murder; Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and his family were in the house asleep when the fires were set.
• 🏛️ President Trump’s top advisers and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele—who visited the White House yesterday—both said they have no basis for El Salvador to return the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a high-security prison there by the Trump admin last month; the Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump admin must “facilitate” the man’s return to the US.
• 📅 It’s Tax Day…except in these 13 states.

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👆 You’re looking at some of the finalists from the 2025 SkyPixel Photo & Video Contest, which has celebrated aerial drone photography for the past 10 years.

🤔 Did You Know? Sloths typically poop just ~1x/week, and can lose up to a third of their entire body weight with each bowel movement. They also only poop on the ground—descending from treetops to the forest floor, where they’re extremely vulnerable to predators—a phenomenon that remains one of the biggest mysteries surrounding sloths despite decades of study.

📰 Worth a Read: The long history of the human aura

🖱️ Clickbait: 15 US restaurants worth planning a trip around

Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

• 🏀 Nuggets star Nikola Jokić became the third player in NBA history to average a triple-double for the entire regular season (29.8 points; 12.8 rebounds; 10.3 assists).
• 🏬 90% of Walmart store managers started as hourly employees at the retail giant.
• 🧑‍🚀💩 NASA is offering $3 million to anyone who proposes the best technology to recycle feces and other human waste in space.
• 🏢 Private equity firms own 2.2+ million apartment units in the US, or 10+% of all supply, per a new study.
• 🤖 AI experts are far more likely than the general public to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the US over the next two decades (56% vs. 17%).

Yesterday, we covered how the Trump admin officially exempted a range of electronic products from most reciprocal tariffs—but also signaled those products will soon be subject to new tariffs targeting the global semiconductor industry.

❓ Our question to you: In general, which of the following best describes your opinion regarding Trump’s tariff policies?

• I agree in theory and in practice: 21%
• I agree in theory, but not in practice: 17%
• I disagree: 56%
• Unsure/other: 6%

Click here to read some of the most thoughtful longform responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 1,939 votes and 217 longform responses.

🦍 Fatou, the world’s oldest living gorilla in captivity, is celebrating her 68th birthday. Zookeepers made a fruit and vegetable cake to celebrate the occasion.

📚 A school district in Spokane, Washington, has introduced its “Engage IRL” plan. This plan enforces a school-wide cell phone ban while also ensuring every student is enrolled in at least one extracurricular activity.

🐑 A headline that speaks for itself: Wonky lamb with wobbly walk becomes internet star.

❓ Trivia: Which plant species produces the vanilla bean?

🎓 True or False? A group of unicorns is referred to as a murder.

🤡 Riddle Me This: I start at the end and finish at the beginning, and wherever I go I am cold. What am I?

k

e

e

p

s

c

r

o

l

l

i

n

g

❓ Trivia: The orchid

🎓 T/F: False, it’s called a blessing

🤡 Riddle: Winter