Good morning. In this edition:

• 🫁 Organ donor safety issues
• 🏈 NFL season begins
• 🌋 Volcano facts

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.95-minute read (1,051 words).

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"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

–Carl Jung (1875-1961)

First came reports of patients showing signs of life during organ retrieval. Then came a New York Times investigation and congressional scrutiny.

Now, the federal government is cracking down on the US organ donation system in an effort to protect patients on both sides—donor and recipient—from systematic safety lapses.

What’s going on?

Recent probes have uncovered two main problems with organ procurement organizations, the nonprofit groups in each state that arrange transplants.

1) Improper harvesting procedures. Several investigations found that organ procurement groups in several states pressed forward with harvesting—even when patients showed signs of growing alertness.

• In one case, signs of recovery in a New Mexico woman were dismissed until she awoke just before a planned organ removal.
• Another case involved doctors who only realized an Alabama woman was alive after they began cutting into her😳.
• A federal review of Kentucky’s organ donation system also found 73 instances of doctors ignoring signs of increasing consciousness in potential donors.

2) Bypassing transplant waitlists. In February, the NYT reported that procurement orgs were increasingly violating regulations by ignoring waiting lists and sending organs to patients who hadn’t been waiting as long as others, and weren’t as sick. Patients were skipped for ~20% of all US organ transplants last year, or 6x as often as just a few years earlier.

• The orgs said they bypassed patients so that organs at risk of becoming unusable didn’t go to waste.
• But the NYT’s report found they often did it to save time, or to send organs to hospitals where they had relationships.

But...The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, a national trade group, has also emphasized that safety errors in organ donation remain rare.

Some changes are on the way

Federal officials are rewriting the rules around organ donation to mandate more rigorous reporting, give frontline staff authority to halt retrievals, and more harshly penalize groups who violate the rules.

Big picture: At least 20,000 Americans have removed themselves from state organ donor registries since late July, when the NY Times first reported of premature attempts to remove organs across the US. There are currently 100,000+ patients on US organ donor waiting lists.

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Close to moving in together? Now may be a Prime time to consider taking the next step. Amazon this week confirmed that it will begin requiring customers to live under the same roof in order to share free, two-day shipping under Prime.

Until now, the retail giant’s Prime Invitee program let members extend shipping benefits to outsiders. That ends this fall. Those invitees will get a notice on Sept. 5 telling them to either (a) sign up for their own account, or (b) move in with the account holder.

• Replacing it is Amazon Family, which allows sharing with one other adult in your household, plus up to four teens and four kids.
• And the service isn’t just shipping—Amazon Family benefits include streaming, grocery discounts, and digital perks.

Prime directive: With the move, Amazon is nudging freeloaders toward full-price options, in a shift that comes as US Prime sign-ups were underwhelming in the lead-up to this year’s Prime Day.

Looking ahead…Amazon’s move will officially take effect on Oct. 1, ahead of a holiday shopping season that’s projected to be unusually muted. A new PwC report indicates Americans are planning to spend 5% less compared to last year, which would mark the first holiday spending pullback since 2020.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 📊 Job openings fell to 7.18 million in July, per new Labor Dept. data; there are now more unemployed Americans (7.24 million) than job openings for the first time in four years. | US manufacturing activity contracted for a sixth straight month in August.
• 🦅 American Eagle stock rises 20+% in after-hours trading, after retailer says recent Sydney Sweeney ad campaign was its “best” ever and also reports better-than-expected earnings.
• 🍟 McDonald’s will bring back the Extra Value Meal menu next Monday for the first time since the pandemic.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

in partnership with Particle

• 🚫 Streameast, the world’s largest illegal sports streaming platform, shut down by a coalition of media firms and Egyptian authorities; though Reddit posts suggest back-up domains to Streameast—which generated ~1.6 billion visits over the past year—are now up and running. | Newsmax files antitrust lawsuit against Fox News, accusing it of anti-competitive behavior regarding pay-TV distribution deals.
• 🏈 NFL season kicks off tonight, with the defending champion Eagles hosting the Cowboys at 7:20 pm CT. | NBCUniversal set to earn record ad revenue from this NFL season.
• 📺 Saturday Night Live announces five new cast members.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🤖 OpenAI says it will add parental controls for teen users of ChatGPT within the next month.
• ⌚ Chinese engineers create world’s first thermoelectric rubber band, which can generate electricity from body heat; innovation could eventually power smartwatches and health monitoring devices.
• 💉 Florida is working to become the first US state to eliminate all vaccine mandates, including for school children, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

US, WORLD & POLITICS

• 🧑‍⚖️ Federal appeals court issues injunction blocking the Trump admin’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. | Federal judge rules Trump admin’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grant funds for Harvard University back in April was illegal.
• 🏙️ President Trump says he still hasn’t determined whether to send federal troops to Chicago to combat crime, and suggests New Orleans as a potential new target; it comes one day after Trump declared “We’re going in” when asked about troops in Chicago.
• 🏛️ Political ad spending for the 2025-26 midterm season projected to reach a record-high $10.8 billion, or ~$2 billion higher than in 2021-22.

☝️ Veteran tennis photographer Ray Guibilo snagged a viral shot of Jasmine Paolini that looks straight out of a jack-o’-lantern carving contest. Guibilo, who’s been photographing the tournament for 31 years, called it “impossible to reproduce.”

🤔 Did you know? Most of Earth’s volcanic activity actually happens underwater, via submarine volcanoes that line the ocean floor. These active sea mountains shape new seafloor, create unique ecosystems, and sometimes form temporary islands when eruptions reach the surface.

📰 Worth a read: What happens in the brain when we experience art

🖱️ Clickbait: Meet the world's best air hockey player

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Yesterday we covered how fewer US adults than ever believe in the American Dream, with record-low optimism about improving living standards across the country.

❓ Our question to you: Do you think the American Dream—that if you work hard you'll get ahead—still holds true, never held true, or once held true but doesn’t anymore?

• Still holds true: 36%
• Never held true: 18%
• Once held true, but doesn’t anymore: 46%

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

+Note on sample size: We received 1,112 votes and 124 longform responses.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water on the planet in terms of area—but can you name the world’s largest sea?

🐾 Some colleges, like MIT, Eckerd College, and the University of Northern Colorado, are letting students bring pets into the dorms for the first time. The four-legged friends can help ease homesickness and stress, while doubling as the best study buddies.

The Philippine Sea