UNBIASED - Israel and Hamas Reach Temporary Truce, OpenAI Causes Chaos with Firing of CEO, Pentagon Fails Sixth Consecutive Audit, Houthi Rebels Seize Cargo Ship, and More.

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

1. OpenAI Fires CEO and Co-Founder, Sam Altman, Leading to Shock in the Tech World and Three CEOs Within Three Days (2:11)2. Pentagon Fails Sixth Consecutive Audit (18:02)3. Israel and Hamas Agree to Temporary Truce Involving Exchange of Hostages, Pause in Fighting, and More (24:09) (Update: Israel’s Government Voted in Favor of the Agreement Around 9:00pm ET on 11/21/23).4. Three Things You Should Know From the Weekend (30:17) (Houthi Rebels Seize Cargo Ship in Red Sea (30:17); SpaceX Launches Starship (33:23); Former First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, Dies at 96 (36:16))5. Not Everything Is Bad (36:52)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You are listening to the Jordan Is My Lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Wednesday and happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for bearing with me this week. I know the schedule is a little bit off. I had posted to Instagram to let you know that there was only going to be one episode this week. I usually post Tuesdays and Fridays, but due to the holiday, I decided one episode on Wednesday and this episode will be a little bit longer than usual because not only do I have three episode on Wednesday, and this episode will be a little bit longer than usual

because not only do I have three full-length stories, but I also want to include the new segments that I started last week. So last Tuesday, I started a new segment called Three Things to Know from the Weekend, and then on Friday, I introduced a segment called Not Everything is Bad, and I want to include both of those in today's episode since this is the only episode this week. So today's episode will look like this. First, we'll talk about what's going on with OpenAI. Then we'll talk about a story that I did not include last week, but I felt should be talked about just to clarify some things, and that is about the annual audit that the Pentagon

failed. And the third story will be about this truce agreement between Israel and Hamas and what's included in that. Then we'll get into the three things to know from the weekend segment and finish off with not everything is bad. Before we get into it, let me give you the reminder I always give, which is that if you enjoy what you hear today, please do not forget to leave me a review on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps support my show and I appreciate it more than you know. And as my legal disclaimer,

yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. So without further ado, let's get into today's stories. The board of OpenAI fired its CEO and co-founder, Sam Altman, on Friday, and since then it's been this sort of whirlwind of events that I don't think anyone could have predicted, which ultimately may lead to Sam Altman reclaiming his spot as CEO, but also maybe not. Throughout this conversation, I want to talk about OpenAI, what it is, what is this company everyone talks about, what took place over the weekend, starting with Altman's firing, what's gone on since then, and most importantly, why all of this matters. Because for those who aren't well-versed in the digital sphere or the AI world, you may be

wondering why all of this matters and why people are talking about it and why people are so shocked or freaking out about this story. So I think that's something we definitely should dive into. But first, what is OpenAI? OpenAI, first we'll talk about its purpose, and then we'll talk about its structure, because I think the structure is important to this conversation as well. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and development company here in the United States. The research component is pretty self-explanatory. The development component,

on the other hand, involves developing what are called language models. Language models are these algorithms that if we put this into simplest, you know, the simplest of terms, these language models analyze and process data and then use that analysis to create new output. So as an example, you may have heard of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is this new chatbot that uses a particular language model, GPT 3.5, to formulate its output. And that's how it knows how to respond to you when you ask Chat chat GPT questions. So the language model is really the main component of the development part of open AI. That's what they really work on developing. So that's the business of open AI, not only researching AI and making sure it's heading in the right direction, but also creating these language models. But again, and I just want to make this really clear, that's stating it really simply. Think of OpenAI as sort of the company

that's driving the bus in the world of AI, if that makes sense. It's steering the AI ship and controlling the trajectory of artificial intelligence. So it's a pretty significant company. Now a little bit about the structure. This company was founded back in 2015. It was founded by six people, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, and Peter Thiel. They founded it alongside Amazon Web Services, Infosys, and YV Research, and at the start, OpenAI was this non-profit company whose goal it was to research artificial intelligence and make that data and research accessible to the public. Its stated mission was to develop artificial intelligence that would be safe and beneficial

for humanity. That was their main goal. In the beginning, Sam Altman and Elon Musk were the sole initial board members, just the two of them. But eventually, in the years that followed, the board expands, and by 2018, the board consisted of Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, who is another co-founder who will play a role in this story, Reid Hoffman, another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, the research chief at OpenAI, the then COO at OpenAI, Chris Clark, and Holden Karnofsky, the founder of a company that donated to OpenAI. Later in 2018, Elon Musk steps down from the board and in 2019, OpenAI formed this for-profit subsidiary in order to get the funding and employees it needed to carry out all of its

plans. It had these huge plans for development and in order to proceed with those plans, it created this for-profit subsidiary. According to OpenAI, when this happened, it allowed the venture capitalists and employees to get some return on their investment into the company, whether that was a monetary investment or sweat equity, whatever it was, it allowed them to see some return. But still, the nonprofit's board maintained ultimate say over the for-profit business through some new legal provisions that were implemented. So that's how they structured this company. And I should also mention that throughout all of this,

OpenAI and Microsoft have this huge partnership. It started in 2019. It's continued on and expanded since then. Microsoft has invested billions and billions of dollars into OpenAI. And the purpose of their partnership is so that Microsoft can assist OpenAI in its research and help with the development of safe artificial intelligence. So anyway, over the years, new board members are brought on at various points, but by July of this year, the board was down to just six people. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and four others. And it was those four others that ultimately decided to remove Altman and Brockman from the board. They removed Sam Altman from the company completely. They asked Greg Brockman to still retain his role in the company, but didn't want

him on the board. However, once Brockman found out that Altman was fired, let go, terminated, what have you, he quit too. So on Friday, the board posted to the website of OpenAI, quote, and this is in part, I'm not going to read you the whole thing, quote, Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, end quote. And there wasn't really any clarity as to what the board meant by lack of consistent candidness. So the tech world is shocked. They have no answers. They don't understand why this man who created this company and really

steered the ship for so long was all of a sudden gone, and there was no reason why. Following the news, Sam Altman goes on Twitter, and he writes, I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally and hopefully the world a little bit. We'll have more to say about what's next later, end quote. And that is all anyone knew. So it's Friday, late afternoon, early evening, and that's what we know. Well, in the hours and days after that, a lot more happens and we find out a lot more about what went on behind the scenes. So here's what we know. On Thursday night, the day before Sam Altman is let go and Greg Brockman is also removed from the board but also quits, Altman gets a text from Ilya Sutskovor, the board director who is also the chief scientist at OpenAI and also one of the original co-founders. He was very close with both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, still very close. But anyway, Altman gets a text from Sutzkever. The text asks Altman if he can

meet virtually on Friday at noon Pacific time. Noon comes around on Friday. Altman gets on this Google Meet with the board, not including Greg Brockman. And he's told he's being fired and that the news is going to get out very soon. About 10 minutes later, Greg Brockman gets a text from Sutzkever asking for a quick call. Greg gets on the call right away. He's told he's being removed from the board, but the board wanted him to retain his role within the company. And also, by the way, Sam Altman was removed from the board and fired. So Brockman then quits. He says, I'm not retaining my role. You guys want me out. I'm out. You guys let Altman go. I'm gone too. The board then names Mira Marotti, the company's chief technology officer as interim CEO. Within 24 hours of Sam Altman being fired, reports start swirling that the board was considering asking Altman to come back.

On Sunday, so this is now about 48 hours after Altman is fired, he posts a picture of himself at OpenAI with a guest badge that has text along with the photo. It says, the first and last time I'll be wearing one of these, something to that effect. He was apparently there to negotiate with the board about potentially returning. He had some demands of his own, of course. It included, in part, adding a board seat for Microsoft, reinstating him as CEO, but those talks failed. Allegedly, the reason the talks failed, there were a couple of reasons, but one was that no one could agree on the makeup of a new potential board. There were also some legal issues getting in the way as well, so in order for

Sam Altman to return, the board would have had to issue a statement absolving him of any wrongdoing. But if they did that, then the board would open themselves up to potential legal liability for, you know, terminating him without any rhyme or reason. And so long story short, the talks failed. By late Sunday night, so those talks ended around 5pm on Sunday. By late Sunday night, Microsoft's CEO announces that Altman and Brockman are joining Microsoft to run a new AI research group within Microsoft. And remember, as I said, Microsoft and OpenAI are very close. They have this huge partnership. And Microsoft's CEO has been very candid about the fact that he will support Altman and Brockman no matter what.

So when these talks fail on Sunday, as far as reinstating Altman as CEO, Microsoft CEO then goes ahead and announces that Altman and Brockman are now going to Microsoft. Meanwhile, OpenAI names a new interim CEO, Emmett Shear. If you're familiar with the tech world, you may know him as the former CEO of Twitch. And Meera Maradi, who was the prior interim CEO, goes back to her role as chief technology officer. So this is all as of Sunday. Monday morning rolls around, more than 500 employees at OpenAI sign a letter calling on the company's board to resign, to reinstate both Altman and Brockman, and on top of that, they threatened to leave the company if their demands were not met. That number eventually increases to over 700 employees. Also on Monday

morning, Suitscover posts to X, remember he's the guy who called the meeting with both Altman and Brockman to notify them they were being removed from the board, quote, I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company, end quote. Sam Altman then retweets this post, adding three hearts to it, signaling there's some unification there. A few hours later, Sam Altman makes his own post on X saying, we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before. We're all going to work together some way or another, and I'm so excited. One team, one mission. End quote. And really, that was the feel of all of the posts as of Monday. Brockman and Altman, their posts are mirroring one another's messages, crediting OpenAI's leadership for their response

to everything, not to be confused with the board. The leadership team is slightly different, and just really voicing their desire for unity and their commitment to what they've built. So now, where does it stand, and why does it matter? Let's finish with that. Where it stands currently, as of Tuesday, so as of Tuesday morning, the newest interim CEO, Emmett Shear, was threatening to quit if the board could not provide evidence of why they fired Altman. As of 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Altman was talking to the board about coming back as CEO, not in any other role, just the role of CEO, and that is where the conversations are as of the time I'm recording this episode. Nothing has been decided.

A lot of people think that Altman will return, but of course, we don't know until it happens. So it's very possible with this whole situation changing as quickly as it has that by the time this episode is out on Wednesday morning, Sam Waltman could very well be back in the CEO position. He could also very well not be back, but now at least you have that background. Most importantly, why does it matter? Why is everyone talking about this and why is it shaking up the technology and AI world so much? I asked a very dear friend of mine, her name is Jules Terpak, why all of this matters. Jules is incredibly well-versed in the tech space. She co-hosted a podcast called Forward with Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate. She's interviewed

some pretty cool people like the CEO and founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, as well as some others. And now she really focuses her content more independently on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, where she posts more about technology, the digital sphere, things happening, artificial intelligence, all of that. She is super, super knowledgeable. So anyway, I asked her, why does this matter? What would she tell people who might not be as well-versed in the tech AI world about this whole thing? And this was her answer. She said, in the same way that the internet has completely uprooted our social lives, our work culture, our education, how we consume information,

how we spend our time, and so on, this next evolution of technology with artificial intelligence is going to cause a similar uprooting in how we currently go about day-to-day life. And whoever is at the head of it, whoever is in the room making the rules, obviously steers the direction. And Sam Altman has been the international face of AI, and it's just wild that one, the company is moving him around so easily, but more importantly, two, that there's no concrete reason as to why he was ousted. No one has any idea, there hasn't been any transparency, and the fact that there has been such a lack of communication, a lack of transparency around

a topic that is such a defining factor of this century is insane. If you want to hear more from Jules, you can follow her on Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok at Jules Terpek, J-U-L-E-S-T-E-R-P-A-K. She posts very intriguing conversations about the digital space. And honestly, a lot of stuff that would make for some really good conversation starters at all of your upcoming holiday dinners. We're always looking for things to talk about, and that's a great place to start. She's super, super intelligent. Let's segue now into another topic that relates to lack of transparency, in a sense, and that is that the Pentagon failed its annual audit of its accounting systems for the sixth year in a row. The Pentagon says this is not a surprise.

In fact, the Pentagon has never passed an annual audit since they started in 2018. This year, auditors found that while the Department of Defense has about $3.8 trillion in assets, almost half of those cannot be accounted for. And this is not to be confused with unaccounted for, according to the department, and here's the difference. The Department of Defense says that just because 50% of the department's assets received a favorable opinion doesn't mean the other 50% is unaccounted for. Instead, it just means that a lot of their financial management systems still don't meet the auditing standards and therefore can't be taken into account. Here's how the audit works. And this is really the part I want to focus on because I think it's easy to read the headline, you know, and take away a message, but then it's a whole other

thing to go deeper into it and see what's really happening here. Because the department is so big, that being the Department of Defense, the annual audit consists of 29 sub-audits of the various departments within the Department of Defense. And all 29 sub-audits must pass for the overall annual audit to receive approval. So each department receives one of four possible audit ratings or opinions by the auditors, whatever you want to call them, and they break down like this. You have an unqualified opinion, a qualified opinion, an adverse opinion, and a disclaimer of opinion.

Now, if you're familiar with the financial accounting world, this may make sense to you, but if you're not, let me tell you what each of them means. An unqualified opinion is the best rating you can get. It's a pass. It's also known as a clean opinion, and that is, it's a good thing. A qualified opinion is also a pass, but it's not as clean as an unqualified opinion, right? So think of an unqualified opinion as just a pass without any sort of qualifications, right? It's unqualified. Whereas think of a qualified opinion as, okay, yeah, it's still a pass, but we're going the auditor had sufficient information and evidence, they reviewed everything, and they concluded that the misstatements were both material and pervasive.

Then you have a disclaimer of opinion. A disclaimer of opinion is when the auditor does not have the necessary information to form an opinion, but still concludes that the possible effects of undetected misstatements could be both material and pervasive. So they don't have enough information, but if they did, they think that it wouldn't necessarily be enough for a pass. Knowing that, seven of the 29 subaudits got an unqualified opinion. So the highest possible rating, they passed. One subaudit received a qualified opinion, still a pass, just includes a qualifier. Three subaudits are still pending, and 11 received disclaimers of opinion. And that is why the Department of Defense said it's working to get its older systems up to accounting standards so that in future audits, auditors will be able

to access sufficient information to not render disclaimers of opinion and instead issue more either unqualified or qualified opinions, therefore passing all 29 subaudits. The Pentagon staff did acknowledge that it could improve. They said, we are working on improving our process. While it wasn't the results we wanted, we certainly are learning each time an audit passes. It's a continuing and ongoing process that this building is accessing, end quote. And as sort of a side note, but related note, earlier this year, a bipartisan group of senators actually proposed this piece of legislation called Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023. And it was essentially meant to require the Defense Department to pass a full

independent audit in fiscal year 2024. And on top of that, the agencies that failed to get a clean pass would be forced to return 1% of their budget for deficit reduction. That bipartisan push came after a CBS report found that defense contractors were overcharging the Defense Department by 40 to 50%, and sometimes by up to 4,000%. If you want to get a better look into the relationship between the military contractors and the Pentagon and, you know, the contracts between the two and the cost of the taxpayers and all that stuff, I linked an interesting 60 minutes article for you in the sources. If you have Paramount Plus, you can actually watch the 60 minutes episode, but there's an article

that accompanies it that you can read no matter if you're a Paramount Plus user or not. That is also a good read. So check that out if you have time. Again, it's a CBS report, and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there. So that sums up the Pentagon audit. I just wanted to kind of give you some background information, some context, and that way you are fully aware of what happened with the annual audit. I just wanted to kind of give you some background information, some context, and that way you are fully aware of what happened with the annual audit. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll discuss the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas. We'll recap three things you should know from the weekend, and we'll talk about why not everything

is bad. Israel's full cabinet met on Tuesday to discuss a possible hostage deal that was delivered by Qatar on Tuesday morning following weeks of negotiations. Now, here's a couple of things I want to mention before we actually get into this potential deal. One, I always like to remind you whenever I cover a time sensitive situation like this, something that's changing by the minute, I just want you to know the information I provide to you is accurate as of 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the night before this episode goes live. The next thing I want to mention is that as of the time this episode is being recorded, nothing has been officially agreed to.

The narrative is that Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu is urging the Israeli government to accept the deal and get some of the hostages home, but again, nothing has been agreed to as of 5 30 p.m. on Tuesday. So now let's get into the deal itself. According to sources, how this deal would work is that Hamas would free about 50 hostages, but each hostage would be freed in exchange for three Palestinian prisoners in Israel. And this would happen over a four or five day period. And during this four or five day period, the fighting would be paused. Now you might be wondering, what do you mean Palestinian prisoners in Israel? Because what we've heard since October 7th is about these hostages that

Hamas took back to Gaza following their attack. Israel also has Palestinian prisoners. To give you a little bit of backstory without getting too into the weeds on this, following the 1967 war, Israel's government issued various military orders over the years, not just in 1967, but in the years that followed. And basically, and again, I'm summing this up, not getting too into the weeds. These military orders criminalized various things. But if I had to simplify it, I would say they criminalized any sort of action that amounted to Palestinian political expression or any sort of opposition to the Israeli government. And if you violated the military orders, then the Israelis could detain you. So as we know, or as you should know if you listened to my two-part series about this conflict, Israel and Palestine have a very conflicting rhetoric about their

history and their current situation. Palestinians say that they have been occupied by Israelis for decades. They essentially live in this open-air prison, and they are subject to Israel's control. Israel says they have no choice but to crack down on Palestinians because they've been constantly attacked by Palestinians for so long. So anyway, Israel has Palestinian prisoners, and Hamas wants them back. According to an infographic that I saw through the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies, there are currently about 8,200 Palestinians being held in Israeli detention centers. Roughly 5,200 of those have been detained since before the October 7th

attack by Hamas, so nothing to do with that. And one other note, when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th and took hostages back to Gaza with them, they said that these hostages would be used as leverage to get the Palestinian prisoners back. Now, some other components of the deal. For the days that the fighting is paused, Israel would stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza for at least six hours each day. The hostages would be released in blocks per day, so 10 hostages per day for five days, roughly, depending on whether, you know, this is a four or five day agreement, but something like that. Hamas says that they can't afford to release all of the hostages at once, so it'll be in stages. Hamas has also allegedly demanded hundreds of trucks of aid, consisting in large part of fuel,

which is a critical component not only for running hospitals and things for the greater good of the civilians, but also running Hamas military operations and ventilating their underground tunnels and letting them continue with their operations. So that is a conflict that Israel is trying to work through. There's also a part of the deal that would allow for an option to extend a potential ceasefire in return for 10 hostages per day being returned. And the deal also provides for a 24-hour window for appeal. So the deal would not take effect until 24 hours after Israel agrees to it.

So let's say, you know, Tuesday night, late Tuesday night, Israel agrees to the deal. It wouldn't take effect until late Wednesday night. So whenever that 24 hours after Israel agrees. Israel says it's only negotiating for Israeli citizens. That includes those with dual nationalities, but Israel does say that other countries will have to negotiate for their own terms with Hamas. Israel is not responsible for that. A Qatari official did confirm on Tuesday that the negotiations were at their closest point and have reached the final stage. Apparently, teams are operating in Doha, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Rafah, and Gaza to get this deal done, and the Red Cross is on standby to help transfer the hostages from Gaza into Israel once

an agreement is reached, if an agreement is reached. We do also know that although Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu is urging his cabinet to accept this deal, he did also say on Tuesday that Israel will continue its war against Hamas even if a temporary ceasefire is reached to release the hostages. So if a ceasefire is reached, if this temporary truce agreement is reached, he's made it clear it's just temporary, and he does want to continue with his stated mission of eradicating Hamas. That takes us into three things you should know from the weekend. And the first one is in relation to what's going on in Israel and Gaza right now. And that is Yemen's Houthi rebels took control of an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the

Red Sea on Sunday, taking 25 crew members hostage. Two things I want to mention from the outset. One, this is not the first attack that the Houthis have launched on Israel since the start of the war. They've been launching missiles into Israel since October 31st. So this is not the first action of violence. Two is that Israel says the ship is not an Israeli ship. Instead, they say it's a British-owned and Japanese-operated ship and that there are no Israeli nationals on board. The confusion lies in the fact that the Houthis say the ship is an Israeli ship due to the public shipping databases associating the ship's owners with a company called Raycar Carriers, which was founded by Abraham Rami Ungar, who is

one of the richest men in Israel. So according to the Houthis, this is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli-linked ship. Who are the Houthi rebels and why did they take over the ship? The Houthi rebels are another Iran-backed group. They are based in Yemen, very similar to Hamas and Hezbollah in the sense that they're also a radical Islamic group that portrays themselves as fighting for the economic development of their country and fighting for the peace of Palestinians while also being backed by Iran. The slogan of the Houthis is death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam. the Yemeni armed forces have been warning since early last week that it would be targeting ships either carrying the Zionist flag or those ships that are owned or operated by Israeli companies. Following the seizure, a spokesperson for the Yemeni armed forces wrote on X that the ship's

crew would be dealt with in accordance with the principles and values of their Islamic religion, reiterated their warning to all ships belonging to or dealing with the principles and values of their Islamic religion, reiterated their warning to all ships belonging to or dealing with the Israeli army, urged countries whose citizens work in the Red Sea to avoid any work or activity involving Israeli ships or ships owned by Israelis, said that the Yemeni armed forces will continue to carry out military operations against the Israeli enemy until the aggression against Gaza stops and the heinous acts against their Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank stop. And concluded by writing that if the international community is concerned about regional security and stability, rather than expanding the conflict, it should put

an end to Israel's aggression against Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel called the event another act of Iranian terrorism and constitutes a leap forward in Iran's aggression against the citizens of the free world, with international consequences regarding the security of the global shipping lanes. End quote. The second thing you should know from this weekend is about the Starship test flight. SpaceX launched its second test flight of Starship on Saturday, which some media outlets are calling a failure, but SpaceX is actually calling a milestone. The disconnect there lies in the fact that SpaceX sees any sort of success or learning experience and data collection as a good thing, whereas others see the fact that Starship exploded as just an overall general failure. Starship is a crewless

spacecraft, so there's no one on board. It's also the most powerful rocket ever built. It lifted off from Starbase in Texas on November 18th at 7.02 central time. But where things didn't go to plan was when the rocket tried hot staging, which is basically where the spacecraft separates from the rocket booster. Once the spacecraft and the rocket booster detached from one another in this hot staging, the rocket booster exploded over the Gulf of Mexico and the spacecraft kept going upwards towards space. But then SpaceX lost Starship signal, which then triggered the system's software to terminate the flight because they set it up so that if the signal was lost, the flight would be automatically terminated. So this spaceship didn't just veer off course and potentially

cause irreparable damage somewhere else. So in a sense, it did still go to plan, but it also didn't go to plan. It didn't go to plan in the way that Starship was supposed to go up, fly a lap around the Earth and come back, but it did go to plan in the way that the flight terminated like it was supposed to if the signal was lost. According to SpaceX, the flight completed six milestones. One, all 33 engines started up successfully and for the first time completed a full duration burn during ascent. Two, the hot stage separation was successful. Three, following the separation, the booster successfully completed its flip maneuver and initiated the boost back

burn before it ultimately disassembled. Four, Starship's second stage engines all started successfully, which allowed it to become the first Starship to reach outer space and almost complete its full duration burn. Five, a safe command destruct once the signal was lost at the end of the second stage burn. And six, the water-cooled flame detector and other pad upgrades performed as expected, which means there is minimal post-launch work that needs to be done to get ready for the next test. Following the test launch, SpaceX said, quote, with a test like this, success comes from what we learn. And this flight test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary, end quote. And the third thing you should know from the weekend,

sadly, Rosalyn Carter, former first lady, wife to former president Jimmy Carter, passed away on Sunday at the age of 96. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married for 77 years, and following her death, Jimmy Carter, who has also been on hospice since February and is now 99 years old, issued a statement that read, Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalind was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me. End quote. And finally, what is quickly becoming my favorite segment, not everything is bad. This is a segment I introduced last Friday to let you go into the

weekend feeling a little bit lighter to just remind you that not everything is bad. So the story I have for you today is a message that there are still kind people out there and also that TikTok can definitely be a weird place, but it can also be a pretty cool place as far as connections go. Katie Holum, who is a University of Oklahoma student, was diagnosed with IgA neuropathy. This is a life-threatening, uncurable kidney disorder. And shortly after her diagnosis, she started posting on TikTok to sort of make light of her situation. And also at the same time, she was putting the information out there that she was in need of a kidney from someone with an O blood type. And, you know, if someone were to happen to see it, perhaps she could find a match.

On July 30th, 2022, Savannah Stahlbommer, who's around the same age as Katie, saw this video and having no idea who Katie was before this, commented on the video asking how she could get tested. Savannah ultimately proceeds to get tested and finds out months later that she's actually a perfect match. Savannah even went so far as to surprise Katie in person with a sign that read, breaking news, you're getting a new kidney. And the transplant went forward just a couple of months ago on August 17th. Both girls are healing well and they're now friends and they've actually invited each other's family to spend Christmas together this year. So that's your reminder that not everything is bad. I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving. I hope you eat some really good food and you remember what you're grateful for.

I am grateful for you. I'm grateful for this platform. And I just feel really grateful to be able to do what I do every day and make a difference. So thank you for being here. Have a great holiday and I will talk to you next week.