Good morning. In this edition:

• 🎓 Proposed higher-ed overhaul
• 👵 Why women live longer
• 🧠 AI as a second brain

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~3.70-minute read (983 words).

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“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

–Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

On Wednesday, the White House sent letters to nine of the top private and public universities in the US, asking them to commit to supporting a list of President Trump’s priorities in exchange for more favorable access to federal money and other terms.

The letters—sent to Arizona, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Texas, UPenn, USC, Vanderbilt, and Virginia—represent the most comprehensive presentation to date of what Trump aims to achieve with his monthslong pressure campaign on higher education.

What’s in the letters?

The Trump admin laid out a wide-ranging set of terms which they say are intended to boost the universities’ standards and performance. Under the Trump-proposed deal, schools must:

• Freeze tuition for US students for five years, with wealthier campuses required to eliminate tuition for students pursuing "hard science programs.”
• Cap international enrollment at 15% of a college’s undergrad student body, with no more than 5% of the student body coming from a single foreign country.
• Institute policies "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
• Require applicants to take the SAT, ACT, or other similar entry exams.
• Share all known information about foreign students with both the State and Homeland Security Departments upon request.

In exchange for agreeing to those terms, the White House said schools would get “multiple positive benefits” like priority access to federal funds, looser restraints on overhead costs, and an assurance of compliance with civil rights laws.

Federal civil rights investigations have been used by the Trump admin to halt research funding to several universities this year, including five of the eight Ivy League schools.

Trump’s move prompted some concern

Several academic leaders pushed back against the White House proposal, saying the points regarding political expression and views are particularly troubling.

• “This is not something the federal government should be involved in and adjudicating…The implications for free speech are horrifying,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said local schools—like USC, which received a letter—can expect to lose state funding if they accept Trump’s proposal to “sign away academic freedom.”

Looking ahead…Senior White House officials say Trump’s higher-education agreement could ultimately be extended to all colleges and universities.

📊 Flash poll: In general, how do you feel about the Trump admin’s new proposal for higher-education?

• Support
• Oppose
• Unsure/other

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

🐭 When Disney+’s latest price hike takes effect on October 24, the price of the streaming service will have risen by 172% since its launch in 2019.

💼 Just 30% of individual contributors in the workplace want to be promoted into management anytime soon, according to LinkedIn's latest Workforce Confidence survey.

📵 Nearly two-thirds of American men (64%) between the ages of 18-24 say pornography should be harder to access, per the Survey Center on American Life.

👎 The US government is less popular than all 25 key business sectors included in new Gallup polling, with its 23% positive rating coming in lower than even the pharmaceutical industry (28%).

💰 Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is the first in the world to reach a net worth of $500 billion, according to Forbes' billionaires index.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🤖 OpenAI reportedly finalizes secondary share sale valuing the ChatGPT-maker at $500 billion, up from $300 billion earlier this year; new figure would propel OpenAI past SpaceX as the world’s largest startup.
• 🚗 Tesla reports better-than-expected vehicle deliveries in Q3, coming in 7% higher than the same period last year; analysts attribute much of the bump to the expiration of federal EV tax credits on Sept. 30.
• 💳 FICO to give mortgage lenders a way to offer its credit scores directly to borrowers; new system bypasses reporting agencies Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, whose stock fell between 4%-10% each. | PayPal and Venmo users will finally be able to send money directly between the two payment apps starting next month.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ⚾ MLB Wild Card round concludes; the Divisional Round is set to begin on Saturday.
• 📰 Americans’ trust in mass media falls to a record low for the third year in a row (28%), per new Gallup survey.
• 📺 Peaky Blinders sequel series gets two-season order at Netflix, with OG star Cillian Murphy on board as executive producer.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🩸 PepsiCo is experimenting with paprika, turmeric, and other natural substances to maintain vivid colors of products like Flamin' Hot Cheetos without using artificial dyes.
• 💊 FDA approves generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone, which is used to terminate pregnancy at up to 10 weeks; it marks the second mifepristone generic to receive FDA approval in the past month.
• 👵 Anthropologist study suggests women live longer than men due to evolutionary reasons; it finds females live longer in 72% of mammal species, likely because they have two copies of the X chromosome—while the opposite is true for birds, where males have two copies of the same sex chromosome.

US, WORLD & POLITICS

• 🙏 Two people were killed and several injured in what police describe as a terrorist attack outside a British synagogue during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
• 🌍 US to provide Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, per multiple reports.
• 🏛️ President Trump said he met with OMB Director Russ Vought "of PROJECT 2025 Fame" to discuss temporary or permanent cuts to "Democrat Agencies" amid the ongoing US gov’t shutdown. | Furloughed Education Dept. employees say their out-of-office messages were altered without their knowledge to include talking points blaming the gov’t shutdown on Democrats.

☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 2025 Siena Awards, regarded as one of the world’s leading international photo competitions.

🤔 Did you know? The most complicated word in the English language is only three letters long. It is “run,” which holds a record-high 645 different possible meanings, according to Oxford English Dictionary editors.

📰 Worth a read: For young people, AI is now a second brain—should we worry?

🖱️ Clickbait: Elon Musk is telling his followers to cancel Netflix subscriptions. Here’s what’s happening

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How well did you pay attention this week? Find out here.

👀 Watch: How to trick monkey brain to like doing hard things (dopamine detox)

⚒️ The fix is in: I Fix It provides step-by-step instructions on how to fix a large variety of electronic devices—customized down to the exact make and model.

🧠 Learning corner: Explore the history of antibiotics with This Podcast Will Kill You

1. I’m the smallest two-digit number in which both of my digits are prime, and I’m divisible by 11. What am I?
2. What is the sum of the first four prime numbers?
3. The Roman numeral “L” stands for which number?

🏆🐻 A 10-year-old Doberman named Night has been officially inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame. The quick-thinking pup intercepted a grizzly bear attack while out hiking last spring, likely saving his 70-year-old owner's life.

1. 22
2. 17 (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 17)
3. 50

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