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Good morning, it's Monday, June 29. The World Cup's knockout round is in full swing this week. First time reading? Join 4.7 million insatiably curious readers. Sign up here.
Also in today's Digest: a small aircraft struck Beijing's tallest building (Need To Know), San Jose Sharks win big in this year's NHL Draft (Sports, Ent., & Cult.), Iran strikes Bahrain and Kuwait (Pol. & World Affairs), mow a virtual lawn for science (Etc.), and much more.
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Need To Know
Knockout Round Begins
The knockout round of the World Cup kicked off yesterday, with cohost Canada topping South Africa, 1-0. The win-or-go-home phase of the tournament follows more than two weeks of the round-robin-style group stage, with 32 of the 48 teams advancing. The US, coming off its best group stage showing in team history, plays Bosnia-Herzegovina Wednesday (Fox, 8 pm ET)—see the full 32-team bracket.
Teams are not reseeded in the bracket—placement is determined by group stage performance (see overview)—leading to several heavyweight matchups in the first round. Ranked Nos. 6 and 7 by FIFA heading into the tournament, Morocco and the Netherlands meet tonight (Fox, 9 pm ET), while cohost Mexico face Ecuador tomorrow (Fox, 9 pm ET). Cinderella Cape Verde, playing in its first World Cup, faces superstar Lionel Messi and defending champion Argentina Friday (Fox, 6 pm ET).
Watch the top 10 plays leading into the next stage, and listen to our exploration of the organization that runs the World Cup.
Want more? 1440 is partnering with Men in Blazers to bring you the most detailed coverage of the world’s biggest tournament this summer. Sign up here to get daily, in-depth updates.
Beijing Plane Crash
A small two-seater aircraft crashed into Beijing’s tallest building Friday, killing the pilot and wounding 13 others, per Chinese authorities. Details surrounding the crash—including the identity of the pilot and whether the crash was deliberate—were not publicly available as of this writing. See footage of the falling debris here (via YouTube).
The crash occurred at 5:55 pm local time. In its immediate aftermath, posts about the incident were reportedly censored on China’s WeChat. Flightradar data suggests the single-engine plane took off from Beijing’s Pinggu District at 5:31 pm and encircled the area before flying west into the city’s center. China’s local government confirmed the crash Saturday afternoon but shared few details on the nature of the incident. It comes weeks after Beijing banned unauthorized purchasing, renting, or flying of drones in the city, citing security concerns.
CITIC Tower is a 109-story skyscraper completed in 2018 and shaped like a traditional Chinese wine vase. Learn more here.
🫶 Humankind: Watch a delivery driver become overwhelmed with emotion after receiving a heartfelt surprise on a late-night Mother's Day run.
A Little Birdie Told Me ...
A researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2026 Coller-Dolittle Prize for progress toward interspecies communication. Julie Elie was awarded $100K for her research decoding the calls of zebra finches.
Elie identified the 11 core calls of zebra finches, including introductory calls and distress signals. To test whether birds associated call types with distinct meanings, she played audio tracks, with one call type associated with a reward. The finches correctly pressed a button to "skip" unrelated call types. In some cases, the birds made a mistake by linking calls with similar meanings—for example, calls indicating different distances—even if the calls were tonally unrelated. The mistakes suggested the birds were listening for a call’s meaning above other considerations. Watch one experiment here (scroll for video).
The prize is awarded annually, with a $10M grand prize for when someone cracks two-way human-animal communication. Jeremy Coller, the billionaire financing the prize, thinks we will cross that threshold by 2030, aided by advances in AI.
In partnership with Mochi Health
Care That Listens Before It Prescribes
Plenty of weight-loss programs hand over a prescription and call it care. The part that often goes missing is someone actually listening.
Mochi flips that order. They screen providers for empathy, then pair members with board-certified obesity-medicine providers and registered dietitians for live video visits—the kind of appointment where your history, not just your weight, gets a hearing. Compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide are available at flat monthly rates, so the dose can change without the price tag chasing it. It’s care built around being heard first and prescribed to second.
But don’t just believe us … with 4.4 stars on Trustpilot with 16K reviews, and recommended by Forbes Health, Mochi is on to something. New members can start for $39 their first month (then $79).
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In The Know
Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> 2026 NHL Draft sees San Jose Sharks scoop up top talent, including No. 2 Ivar Stenberg and No. 9 Keaton Verhoeff; Toronto Maple Leafs nab No. 1 Gavin McKenna (More)
> "Supergirl" opens to a disappointing $38M domestic opening; with a $170M production budget, the movie will likely need to earn $375M to break even since cinema owners keep roughly half of revenue (More)
> Vanilla Ice performance at Freedom 250 concert is canceled due to the threat of "inclement weather" (More) | See list of acts that previously backed out (More)
Science & Technology
> Anthropic gets go-ahead to release Mythos 5 to some US companies, weeks after federal officials restricted the AI model over national security concerns (More) | Why are people worried about Mythos? (More)
> Humans and great apes have similar rhythmic patterns when giggling, a shared behavior potentially dating back at least 15 million years (More) | Watch and hear a gorilla's response as a researcher tickles him (More)
> Marine expedition off Brazil's Atlantic coast discovers more than 30 new species in two weeks; researchers focused on the "mid-water," roughly 600 feet to 3,000 feet below the surface (More)
In partnership with EnergyX
The 1,700%+ Lesson From SpaceX’s IPO
SpaceX IPO’d at a $1.75T valuation. Three days later, they were the 6th-most valuable public company. Those who bought right away saw a 40% gain. Andreessen Horowitz, who invested in 2023? 1,700%+. The lesson? Today’s biggest growth can come at the private stage.
A similar dynamic’s playing out in lithium, where EnergyX reached a $1B private valuation. Only now you can invest at the private stage, too. With prices rising and demand growing 5X by 2040, EnergyX can recover up to 3X more lithium than usual methods.
Now they’re preparing to unlock up to 13M tons. Invest before EnergyX’s 7/16 deadline.*
Business & Markets
> Markets close down slightly Friday (S&P 500 -0.1%, Dow -0.1%, Nasdaq -0.2%), driven by a slide in chipmaker stocks; tech-heavy Nasdaq down 4.6% on the week (More)
> Consumers spend an estimated $26.4B during Amazon's Prime Day, from June 23 to 26, up 9.3% year over year; increase attributed to inflation, larger ticket items (More) | Amazon's most profitable segment is actually its cloud computing service (More, w/video)
> Prediction site Polymarket tops $1B in annualized revenue less than two months after launching US exchange (More) | ... and as it reportedly comes under a federal probe for use of deceptive social media videos (More)
Politics & World Affairs
> US Supreme Court is expected to release opinions today, possibly including a ruling on President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order (More) | See background on the case (More)
> Iran strikes US military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain and threatens to halt peace talks with the US; comes after US struck Iranian targets last week in response to Iran's alleged drone attack on a Singaporean-flagged ship (More) | See war updates (More)
> Death toll in Venezuela's earthquakes last week rises to more than 1,400 people, with tens of thousands unaccounted for as of this writing (More) | See previous write-up (More)
In partnership with Mochi Health
“With Mochi Health, I Never Feel Alone”
The hard part of weight loss care usually isn’t the science—it’s finding someone who treats you like a person, not a chart. Mochi starts there, pairing members with providers screened for empathy who take the time to listen before they prescribe.
Live video visits, registered-dietitian support, and flat-rate compounded GLP-1 options, oh my! New members can get 50% off their first month ($39 intro, then $79).
Please support our sponsors!
Etcetera
What's the highest paid job in your state?
Join a collaborative data science project and mow a virtual lawn.
An engineer provides a fascinating breakdown of a toy car.
Americans pay roughly $65B in hidden mortgage costs.
The scientific case against scratching mosquito bites.
Test your ability to terraform Mars.
The purpose of those tiny plastic "tables" in pizza boxes.
Noah Kahan tells fans to use the washroom at designated locations.
In partnership: 50,000+ investors have already backed this private-stage energy unicorn to date.*
Clickbait: Guess who poked her neck out?
Historybook: Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London destroyed by fire (1613); "The Little Prince" author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry born (1900); "Bird of Paradise" plane completes first successful transpacific flight (1927); Modernist Swiss-German painter Paul Klee dies (1940); Apple releases the first iPhone; see original press release (2007).
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"Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible."
- Paul Klee
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