June 6, 2002

On June 6, 2002, a teenager named James was playing baseball on the last day of his sophomore year of high school. As a classmate swung the bat, it came flying out his hands and flew directly towards him, striking James directly between his eyes.

He was badly injured: broken nose, multiple skull fractures, two eye sockets broken.

Classmates and a teacher walked him to the nurse’s office. Nobody realized that every minute counted. The school nurse asked him questions to see how alert he was:

What year is it? Who is the president of the United States? What’s your mother’s name?

• 1998, James replied -- off by four years.

• Bill Clinton (it was George W. Bush).

• And, it took 10 seconds for him to recall the first name of the woman who had given birth to him and raised him: Patti.

Shortly after that James lost consciousness. An ambulance raced him to the small local hospital, where doctors said the care he needed was beyond their ability to help. They quickly put him on a helicopter, with his mother by his side, and rushed to the much larger hospital in Cincinnati.

That night, although he needed surgery to repair his broken bones, the more urgent need was to control his brain swelling. Doctors put him into a medically induced coma.

I’m wondering how many people recognize the vignette above. “James” is James Clear, and the story is my paraphrasing of the opening of his book, Atomic Habits.

It was the number-1 book on the New York Times bestseller list in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous category for close to 300 weeks. That’s unheard of.

It’s also the #4 book overall on Amazon, with more than 149,000 reviews and a 4.8 star rating. Keep in mind, it’s been out since 2018.

The theory of the book, if I can summarize the whole thing in a sentence, is that while people aren’t good at setting and achieving goals, they can be taught to adopt good habits.

And adopting good habits can often take you to a better ultimate objective than you might have dreamed of in the first place.

For example, James (I think we can keep calling him that) was a kid who had his eyes set on becoming a professional baseball player.

That didn’t happen, but the habits he taught himself to adopt as he rehabilitated from his injuries and sought to achieve his goals did help him to become a successful college athlete. Moreover, they also put him on the path to being the kind of writer whose book has been a perpetual bestseller for years.

Let’s go to the quote of the day, and then I’ve got one more thing to share. There are a lot to choose from; as I say, James Clear literally wrote a highly quotable 320-page book. But we’ll go with this one:

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

OK, for better or worse, here’s another thing to share. It’s that nowhere in James’s book does he actually say the date of the baseball bat incident that sparks his entire story. But I’m confident that it happened on June 6, 2002.

The reason is that this is one of those dates that I simply determined I was going to decipher, because it fits the theme of the whole Big Optimism project perfectly: a day on which something neutral or even bad happened, but that ultimately led to very positive outcomes.

Figuring it out required me to track down what high school James went to, call the school—and then work with a very patient administrator there to find a 22-year-old academic calendar that was archived only in the far corners of the Internet.

Then, after I met someone at a dinner who mentioned that James was a friend, I asked him to ask James if my research was correct.

Actually, I’d thought it might have been June 7, but James replied that he’s pretty sure it was June 6.

So there you have it: an exclusive!

I feel a bit odd, I admit, to put that much effort into tracking down a specific date like that. But, much as James says in that quote, that kind of attention to detail in my work is part and parcel of who I am.

And I suppose the person I hope to become!

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNBC: Trump has signaled he’s prepared to let economic pressure take its toll on Iran rather than launching further military strikes, telling Axios he is prepared to wait for economic distress to mount in Tehran. The shift comes as Iranian strikes in Hormuz and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea continue to keep shippers away from both routes, and as the U.S. military redirected 20 more commercial vessels away from Iranian ports last week.

• Ars Technica: New surveillance tech links your phone to your license plate. Phone and Bluetooth signals could turn roadside cameras into far richer tracking tools.

• Reuters: For McDonald’s and rivals, cheap deals no longer do the trick. Value meals and promotions have been the industry’s most reliable traffic driver for the past two years as consumers squeezed by inflation sought cheaper meals. But results showed the strongest performers paired bargains with menu innovation, quality improvements and a smoother customer experience.

• Science News: An experimental antibody reduced lean-mass loss in people taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy in a clinical trial — potentially addressing one of the drugs’ most common side effects, the loss of muscle alongside fat. Whether preserving that muscle mass improves longer-term health outcomes remains unclear.

• NYT: Should Letting Children Play Alone Outside Be a Crime? Some parents have been surprised to find themselves in the legal system’s cross hairs.

• Wired: The Rise of the 1 A.M. Job Interview. An AI interview is increasingly the first step of a hiring process. Since there’s no human on the other end, candidates are scheduling them whenever — even deep into the night.

• CBS News: A lifeguard in Maine said he “started swimming like hell” when a shark grabbed onto his buoy and pulled him underwater off the coast of Scarborough Beach on Saturday. He was pulled about 5 feet underwater before getting free and emerging unharmed. Officials along the East Coast say there are more sharks closer to shore in areas where they don’t usually go.

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9.5% success rate

Which of these three things do you think is statistically the most difficult to do in America?

1. Become a U.S. Navy SEAL.

2. Get into Harvard University as a freshman.

3. Be awarded a Chick-fil-A franchise.

If you’ve been with me a while, you might know that the surprising answer is number 3 - the Chick-fil-A franchise.

This is mostly a matter of “fun with statistics,” because CFA gets about 60,000 initial franchise applications per year and only opens between 75 and 80 restaurants. That works out to a .13 percent success rate.

Harvard University? The already self-selecting group of A students, class presidents, and varsity team captains each has about a 3.7 percent shot at getting in.

So let’s talk about the Navy SEALs, which if you count everyone who applies to join the Navy and become one has a 9.5 percent chance of making it through the entire year-plus worth of training.

This includes a single week called Hell Week that has only a 25% to 33% success rate.

Personally, I am happy that there are people who want each of these three things—especially the Navy SEALs—but I don’t think I’ve aspired to be any of them.

However, today is a good day to remember someone for whom becoming a Navy SEAL was an obsession, and who had to try as hard as anyone (over and over) to achieve his goal. Frankly, he’s become quite an inspiration to a lot of other people since.

If you don’t know him already, I invite you to meet David Goggins: retired Navy SEAL (how’s that for foreshadowing?) and author of the out-of-nowhere bestseller, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind.

Raised in East Buffalo, N.Y., and then a small town called Brazil, Indiana, Goggins describes his childhood as “hell on earth,” including an abusive father and run-ins with the KKK. (Goggins is Black.)

He joined the Air Force after high school, served four years, and then left -- a decision he soon came to regret.

I’ve seen this so many times in writing about people in the military who get out but have no good plan for afterward, and find themselves lost.

Goggins went from one minimum wage job to another, eventually worked as an overnight exterminator, became depressed, eating a box of doughnuts and drinking a big milkshake every morning (among other things), and gained well over 100 pounds.

As he tells it, however, a TV special about Navy SEALs training caught his eye -- one of those reruns you might see in snippets or reruns, over and over -- and gave him a new goal:

I watched men sweat and suffer ... I couldn’t remember feeling as awful as these men looked. They were swollen, chafed, sleep-deprived, and dead on their feet, and I was jealous of them.​

The longer I watched the more certain I became that there were answers buried in all that suffering. Answers that I needed.

What Goggins did afterward -- well, it formed the basis for his book, and his career now.

1. First, had to drop 106 pounds in three months even to enlist in the Navy (after his four years in the Air Force).

2. Then, he had to repeat Hell Week three times due to injuries.

3. Finally, after two full years of training, he graduated on August 10, 2001.

Interesting timing, right? Goggins went on to serve another 16 years in the SEALs including combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, complete a bunch of other very challenging military courses, and eventually retired when he hit 20 years combined military experience.

Since then, he’s become known as an ultramarathoner, ultra-distance cyclist, triathlete, and author/speaker. In fact, I don’t think I’d heard of Goggins (I completely missed his book at the time) until a few years ago when readers began citing him as an inspirational and highly quotable role model.

I’m at the point in life when I can’t tell you if 25 years is a lifetime or the blink of an eye, but that’s how long ago yesterday Goggins reached this milestone.

As he put it:

“Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.”

Not a bad thing to think about the next time the going gets tough.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NYT: Top administration officials engaged in an elaborate deception to spirit President Trump out of Turkey during the NATO summit last month, transporting him in a catering container to a military jet because of a threat against him and Air Force One from Iran.

• AP: A powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 111 people, damaging hundreds of buildings and leaving many trapped under debris while loved ones and rescue workers searched through rubble.

• Axios: President Trump issued an executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccinations, splitting the childhood MMR vaccine into three shots delivered at separate medical visits. Trump suggested the MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal” when administered all at once, and likened the volume to “a bottle of soda.”

• AP: Ben Jones, who played the good ol’ boy mechanic in “The Dukes of Hazzard” and parlayed his fame into two terms in the U.S. House, has died at 84. Jones had a heart attack Sunday at his home in Washington, Virginia, as he was waiting to watch his beloved Atlanta Braves play baseball, his wife said on social media.

• CNBC: The 10 most in-demand ZIP codes for homebuyers in 2026.

• Ars Technica: The first self-driving vehicle on Mars has proven to be a smashing success: about 90 percent of the distance driven by Perseverance has been autonomous.

• Wired: How to disable the AI features in Gmail and Google Docs. New AI toolbars and prompts are showing up in Google Docs and Gmail. If you don’t want Gemini’s help writing documents and emails, here’s how to turn that off.

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It’s August, and I’m on a tax extension, and it’s not the first time.

Nor is it the first time my accountant, Griff, who is also my closest friend (we were friends first, he only later became an accountant), has tried to get me to be a bit less of a procrastinator.

One of his best efforts in fact was sort of a fan-favorite here a few years back: He sent me a shrink-wrapped copy of the Holy Bible in the mail, got me on speakerphone, and had me swear an oath to stop filing at the last minute.

Actually, in my defense, I just realized he only asked me to swear not to file in the last minute during 2022. And it worked — not only that but for the next few years as well.

But then, I must admit, my procrastination tendencies returned.

So, when I saw that a Cambridge researcher had just published a new book on procrastination, and that one of the go-to examples of a procrastination trap in the official release was, literally, of all things, “putting off a tax return,” I figured it was worth a closer look.

Dr. Itamar Shatz is a social scientist at Cambridge, and he’s the author of Solving Procrastination: The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop, out next month.

His core argument is that procrastination is not a character flaw (!!!), and it’s not really a time management problem.

Instead, it’s the ramification of an internal tug-of-war that we’re not really wired to resolve.

As Shatz put it:

“Procrastination is an ancient human problem but the increasing bombardment of digital distractions in our lives may be making it worse.

Long ago, people mostly needed to do things that had fairly clear and immediate consequences, like hunt food (or starve).

People were unlikely to procrastinate on those tasks because the drive to not starve is powerful in a visceral way.

Today, we regularly have to do nebulous things with amorphous future consequences, like email tax forms to our accountant.”

See? Again with the tax returns!

Underpinning that internal battle, Shatz said, are two competing forces:

• A hedonic principle: We chase things that feel good, and avoid things that feel bad.

• An immediacy principle: We’re focused on whatever is right in front of us, rather than what might matter more down the road.

Combine the two, and you get a brain that will happily trade a good outcome next month for a slightly better mood in the next five minutes.

Shatz cites research showing half of students procrastinate chronically, and one in five employed adults do too.

One large-scale study found a $21,000 drop in average salary for every point decrease on a five-point procrastination scale.

Employers, meanwhile, lose an estimated $20,000 per employee per year, driven by the roughly two hours a day that employees spend procrastinating.

Shatz says he’s categorized procrastinators into nine types. Isabel Keane at The Independent did a nice job laying out the types with Shatz’s guidance:

1. The Worrier: Some people put off tasks purely out of fear that something will go wrong once they start. Shatz’s advice: “Shine a light on your fears, unpack tasks, reject perfectionism and build your self-efficacy.”

2. The Pessimist: Related, but distinct: Shatz’s advice here is to build genuine self-efficacy, take honest stock of what’s actually driving the fear, and put a support system in place.

3. The Perfectionist: Here, we’re talking about people who get stuck chasing an all-or-nothing standard. Contributing factor: social media, where other people’s curated wins make anyone’s real progress look inadequate by comparison.

4. The Dreamers: Dreamers lose themselves imagining a future version of the work instead of doing the version sitting in front of them today. Shatz says one fix here is simply noticing when that habit starts actively costing you.

5. The Zigzagger: This is the type that bounces from task to task to task, unable to settle on any one thing long enough to finish it.

6. The Rebel: Rebels procrastinate as a form of pushback, against a boss, a parent, a deadline set by someone else, anyone they feel is exerting too much control.

7. The Thrill-Seeker: Some people genuinely like the adrenaline of a looming deadline, and put things off on purpose to get it.

8. The Hedonist: Hedonists overweight how good something feels right now against how much it matters later.

9. The Burnout: Finally, some people are just too depleted to accomplish what they need to do. Shatz says the fix starts with rest, self-compassion, and finding ways to make the work itself feel less draining, including asking for help.

Reading through that list, I recognize myself in more than one. Rebel, probably — especially when I was a bit younger.

Hedonist, on a bad week. And clearly, when it comes to taxes specifically, enough of a Zigzagger that even a Bible oath (although a coerced oath, so did it really count?), only bought me temporary compliance.

Shatz makes a point of noting that even wildly successful people procrastinate. But he also warns: High-functioning procrastinators tend to develop a false sense of security. That can set them up for failure when circumstances change.

I’ll try to get around to remembering that.

But in the meantime, to my good friend Griff, the CPA, who often reads this newsletter: I’ll get the tax docs soon. I promise.

Oh, and I’ll give you a call this morning, too. Lots to catch up on.

Afternoon, at the latest.

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNN: The U.S. military has burned through nearly 80% of its THAAD missile interceptors and roughly half its Patriot interceptors since the Iran war began, with senior commanders warning the Pentagon’s stockpile is “dangerously low.” The depletion was a key reason Trump called off a major planned strike last week. Analysts say rebuilding THAAD inventories to pre-war levels could take three years or more.

• CBS News: The White House released declassified information saying the FBI opened a 2017 investigation into whether President Trump was acting as an asset for Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey — a theory an administration official said was not backed up by evidence. Trump has vowed to launch probes of his own into what he has called unethical intelligence agency investigations into his campaigns and presidency.

• AP: A Greek-flagged cargo ship carrying grain from the U.S. to Egypt was seized by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz, the second commercial vessel detained in a week, as Iran maintained its position that it has the legal right to inspect and hold ships transiting the waterway.

• The Guardian: The Trump administration has refunded about $100 billion from the tariffs it collected before the Supreme Court ruled them illegal — roughly 60% of the total from Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, according to customs officials reporting to the U.S. Court of International Trade.

• Politico: Michigan’s Senate primary — won by Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-backed physician and former Wayne County health director — is now widely seen as one of the most closely watched general-election contests of the midterms. El-Sayed will face Republican Mike Rogers in November in a state Trump won in 2024; Democrats worry the progressive nominee could make the seat harder to hold.

• NYT: They Were Voted Out. They Refuse to Leave. Now What? Avenal, a city in the rural Central Valley of California, has become an unlikely example of election denialism months after a recall election.

• AP: Scientists have captured images of the sun’s surface in the finest detail yet, revealing strange feathery patterns rippling across its scorching outer shell. Researchers using the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii originally took the images to test the telescope’s limits — and realized they’d produced something extraordinary.

• AFP: We went to Montreal for the 2024 solar eclipse, so I liked this description of what it will be like in northern Spain next week among a few other places: The world is plunged into darkness. The temperature drops. Birds and other animals, bewildered by unforeseen night, start behaving strangely. Stars and planets appear in the sky next to the blotted-out Sun. It is this awe-inspiring experience that will draw people from all over the world to northern Spain next week in the hope of witnessing a total solar eclipse.

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Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

I wish I had more time today to dive into this ... but for now just let me say:

Thank you! You all are awesome!

More to come. Lots about mission statement, things I learned, etc. I just need another day or two to think it through. Meanwhile, obligatory:

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C’mon & visit & we’ll go to the city ...

Today we have my favorite kind of science-backed habits story: the kind that tells me there are benefits associated with things I’d do even if they had no such benefits whatsoever.

Let me set the stage. When my family left the city for the suburbs, we did it for the reasons lots of families do it:

• More space.

• Something resembling a yard.

• A little more room to breathe.

But, even though we were still within a proverbial long-arm’s reach of the city (NYC, in our case), we wondered if we’d fall into a common trap: no longer taking the time to visit the “city things” that we liked about living here to begin with.

Nobody’s accused me of being a habitué des arts, but I think a lot of families joining the city-to-burbs parade feel the tension.

Friends come to visit from out of town, and you realize that’s the only time you take advantage of all the things you have going on right around you.

In my case, the city means New York City. I didn’t grow up here so I don’t quite have the “this is the greatest city in the world and no other city comes close fuggetaboutit” attitude you see sometimes.

But it’s still pretty great.

Now, as life turned out, we’ve been quite good about keeping that part of our life.Also, we chose a suburb that has a reputation for being the suburb for people who refuse to admit they did in fact move to the suburbs.

It’s a small-ish place that nevertheless has several walkable downtowns, an art museum that punches well above our town’s weight, a 2,500-seat concert theater, renowned jazz and film festivals.

We even had minor league baseball team until very recently, but we do still have a lower-tier soccer team.

And, if I can step back from my boosterism, we also actually make the effort to get back to New York.

Now, as promised, there’s new evidence suggesting this habit that I enjoy making has physiological benefits—especially as people get older.

A study out of the Institute of Science Tokyo, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that older adults who regularly go to museums, theaters, concerts, and movies have physiological ages that run meaningfully younger than their birth certificates would suggest.

Physiological age is a measure of how well the body is functioning based on things like blood pressure, lung capacity, cholesterol, grip strength, and walking speed.

Two people can share a birthday and have physiological ages years apart.

The researchers followed 1,899 adults age 50 and older in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a large, nationally representative study in England, across multiple survey waves.

• Nurses measured 10 physical health indicators to calculate each person’s physiological age.

• Participants also reported how often they went to the movies, museums, art galleries, theater, concerts, or the opera, which researchers combined into a cultural engagement score from 0 to 15.

• People with higher cultural engagement had an average physiological age of 66.9. People with lower engagement averaged 69.9.

Even after adjusting for income, employment, and chronic health conditions, each one-point increase in cultural engagement was still associated with a 31-day reduction in physiological age.

The researchers said the effect looked comparable to what you’d expect from regular physical exercise. A few likely explanations:

• Cultural activities get people out of the house and around other people, which supports mental health.

• They often involve at least some walking.

• And going regularly probably reflects a broader habit of staying engaged with the world instead of retreating from it.

Granted, this is observational research. It can’t prove that going to more shows adds years to your functional life.

And, it’s also entirely possible the causation runs the other way, that healthier people are simply more able to get out to a concert or a matinee in the first place.

But if you’re going to do it anyway …

And we are …

It’s nice to have another reason.

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Other things worth knowing …

• KTLA: Deputies arrested a man allegedly armed with a handgun and ammunition at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes just days before a planned visit by President Trump. Trump was expected to arrive in Southern California Tuesday afternoon ahead of a Republican Party fundraising event at the golf course.

• AP: A man charged with intentionally setting a wildfire that has destroyed hundreds of buildings in and around Washington state’s second-largest city was questioned by law enforcement during two fire investigations last year, though he wasn’t charged then. Aaron F. Farinacci, of Spokane, was arrested Monday on suspicion of first-degree arson.

• The Independent: A former producer of CBS News’s 60 Minutes is trying to launch a rival current affairs show featuring journalists and crew members who left the network now spearheaded by Bari Weiss. Producer Bill Owens is seeking $50 million to launch a new hour-long news program staffed by people Weiss allegedly alienated and jettisoned, including Scott Pelley.

• NYT: Ariana Grande and the debate over health, privacy, and celebrity: The pop star has long pushed back on comments about her weight loss, urging fans to be “gentler.” As her fame reached new heights, so did the scrutiny.

• WSJ: Helicopter parents are co-piloting their adult children’s careers — calling up hiring managers, applying for jobs on their kid’s behalf, and even lurking just off-screen on Zoom calls.

• The Guardian: Why are vinyl albums becoming so different from their digital versions? They’re expensive, elaborate — and may not contain all the music. After Olivia Rodrigo, Charli xcx, and others sent out incomplete or unfinished vinyl versions, fans are feeling shortchanged.

• AP: A book on Greek antiquities has been returned to an Australian public library about 150 years late, with water damage from years bricked into a fireplace. Ross Simmons found it during home renovations inside a tea crate sealed behind a fireplace, and assumes it was borrowed by his great-great-grandfather John Simmons, who had owned the house.

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Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

Before we dive in … I’m building a free web app for Life Story Magic.

The idea is to have an easy, DIY app that anyone can use to interview friends, family members — really anyone they care about.

I was hoping there might be a few Understandably readers who are curious, and who might be willing to try it out, test it, give feedback, and help me get it to where it needs to be.

Click the link and let me know if you’d like to help out. I suspect it will take 30 minutes or so to try it out. Thank you!

Yes, I'd like to help test the app!

27 things I seem to have to learn over and over

Speaking of commuting (which we were yesterday)... a few years back on Halloween, I got into the spirit by wearing a full body lion costume all day.

I almost chickened out, because I was nervous what folks would think. We were encouraging costumes at work—but I had to walk about 10 blocks and ride the subway to get there.

Would people make fun of me? Would I be embarrassed? Would I run into anyone I knew?

I’ll bet you can predict what happened: Nothing! Nobody cared!

That’s an important lesson, and one I admit I have had to learn over and over.

Whatever I’m worried about on any given day, it’s probably totally overblown. Nobody cares!

Anyway, this is not the only lesson I find myself having to learn over and over.

In fact, here are 27 more of them. I’ll be interested to hear how many readers have a 28th to add to the list!

1. Take the first step.
Best personal example: Sending that first email (actually a Facebook message) to my then-ex-girlfriend and now-wife, back in 2012. Carpe diem.

2. Try three things at once.
I’m a devotee of the Tom, Dick, and Harry Strategy. It goes back to the book and movie The Great Escape, in which Allied prisoners of war dig three tunnels out of their camp, on the theory that probably only one of the tunnels will make it all the way to the wall before being discovered.

3. Focus on just 1.
Identify the winners and work at them. I’m all for quitting things if they aren’t working, especially if you’re freeing up time and effort to work on more promising things.

4. Your inner voice is usually right.
Whether you call it your intuition, or your conscience, or a guardian angel, it’s surprising you often know the right answer to almost any question you pose to yourself.

5. Be open to the 5% of the time when it’s wrong.
It’s surprising how often your intuition is right, but occasionally, it’s wrong.

6. You only get one body.
Exercise, eat right, go to the doctor when something seems wrong, all that stuff you already know.

7. Forgiveness is easier to get than permission.
This was Admiral Grace Hopper’s mantra.

8. Act.
Fortune favors the bold. Don’t be the guy or the woman reminiscing years from now about the time you wish you’d been brave enough to try.

9. Decide.
Decision is the prerequisite to action. Move purposefully through life.

10. Sleep on it.
There’s a difference between being decisive and being rash.

11. Forgive when asked.
Holding a grudge or refusing to forgive harms you more than the person who seeks your forgiveness. But, there’s a big difference between forgiving and forgetting.

12. Ask for and accept forgiveness.
Everybody hurts somebody else sometimes. When you do, own up to your mistakes, apologize, try to make amends–and move on.

13. Forgive yourself.
You aren’t perfect, not even close. So forgive yourself when you fall short.

14. Forgive when not asked.
“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept the apology you never got.” - R. Brault

15. Say thank you.
When people do nice, thoughtful things, express your gratitude.

16. Say you’re welcome.
It’s so much better than “no problem” or “yep,” because it acknowledges that you think enough of the other person to do something worthy of thanks.

17. Give up your seat.
This is a metaphor for being giving and polite–which costs you almost nothing and makes people like you more.

18. Be authentic.
Heck, maybe even vulnerable. It’s so easy to say, and yet so hard to do.

19. Stay interested.
Interested in what? Other people, learning new things, experiencing new places, challenging your deeply held beliefs.

20. Stay interesting.
Be the person who has done or learned something truly intriguing. If nothing else you’ll be a lot more popular at parties.

21. Get rid of stuff.
We’re Americans. We have a lot of material stuff. Most of it gets in the way.

22. Start with the end in mind.
This is right out of Stephen Covey, but it’s smart. If you don’t know where you’re going, chances are you’ll never get there.

23. Embrace the different outcome.
Don’t be afraid to find that success might look different from what you originally imagined.

24. Remember who will care the most.
The corollary to the very first rule about how most people don’t care–a small handful will! They’re probably the key to your success. (By the way, apropos of nothing, I love my readers!)

25. Be part of the solution.
Complaining without trying to find a solution often just adds to the problem.

26. Go to reunions and funerals.
Everybody goes to weddings, but your friends and family really need you at funerals. Reunions are for your benefit.

27. Kids are great.
Since you read to the bottom, you get the best of the list. If you’re not a mom or dad, granddad or grandma, be the best aunt, uncle (official or not) that you can. I only had to learn this rule once–but it’s one of the most important.

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNBC: U.S. forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8 p.m. Wednesday, retaliating against Iranian missile attacks on American forces in the region. The resumption of strikes marks the latest turn in a conflict that has whipsawed oil markets and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since fighting erupted in late February.

• Reuters via Yahoo: Iran is expected to receive a first shipment of up to 400 Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missile launchers as it rebuilds its defenses amid the war with the United States. The purchase, valued at $60-70 million, is one of Tehran’s largest-known efforts to strengthen its short-range air defenses since the outbreak of the war.

• KCUR: A Missouri couple who had recently returned to Guatemala after the husband was deported and the wife went to be with him were found bound and shot dead in a sugarcane field. Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz were killed just weeks after González de la Cruz self-deported to be with her husband, who was deported by ICE last year after being detained on his way to a roofing job. Their 14-month-old daughter, Giovanni was discovered crying beside her mother's body.

• NBC News: Dr. Anthony Fauci declined to answer senators’ questions at a contentious hearing Wednesday on the origins of Covid, invoking his Fifth Amendment right over concerns that Republicans would use his testimony to prosecute him for perjury. The surprise decision set the stage for a hyperpartisan hearing that yielded no new revelations about the origins of the coronavirus or the government’s pandemic response.

• The Independent: FBI Director Kash Patel’s $10 million defamation lawsuit targeting a blogger who called him a “Kremlin asset” and an “incompetent chud” has been thrown out by a federal judge. Patel had claimed that Jim Stewartson, who writes on Substack, accused him of working for the Russians, trying to “overthrow the government,” and helping organize the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

• NYT: AI companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands. The future of artificial intelligence depends on finding more skilled humans for some very physical jobs.

• Yahoo Tech: A Filipino cartoonist has sued the company behind AI ad generator Memes.ai, alleging it sold access to his best-known comic as an advertising template. Elmer Saflor, creator of “Running Away Balloon,” claims the company offered the strip — which he registered in 2024 — to paying subscribers, while urging customers to “fire your ad agency.” Agencies, he notes, license the content they use.

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The good thing is that you don’t have to commute, she observed.

This is true, and it is an advantage. But I also realized that, as much as I like working for myself and not having to travel to an office every day, I actually got a lot of work done during my commute when I had one.

In some ways, this newsletter is like my personal diary. I mean, not as personal as it might be if I didn’t think anyone was going to read it.

But I can go back in time and find things like an edition I wrote three years ago about trying to recreate the most productive parts of my old commute—without actually commuting.

So, if you’re keeping track, this means I once wrote about trying to recreate a thing that I used to do — and now I’m writing about how I no longer do the thing I used to do in order to recreate the thing I previously did.

If you are still with me, thank you. Let’s get you something a bit more actionable as a reward.

Perhaps this study from the journal Environment International, in which researchers found that people who regularly commuted through natural environments reported better mental health.

They defined those environments as outdoor spaces containing “green” or “blue” natural elements: street trees, forests, city parks, nature reserves and bodies of water.

Researchers led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health surveyed 3,599 workers in four European cities about their daily commutes and mental health.

Those who commuted through natural environments every day had mental-health scores that were, on average, 2.74 points higher than those of people who did so less frequently.

The association was even stronger among people whose commutes involved physical activity, such as walking or riding a bicycle.

Now, as I think about it, I probably had one of the least scenic and nature-oriented commutes possible when I rode NJ Transit trains into Manhattan every day.

There are certainly places in New Jersey that live up to the state’s self-appointed nickname, the Garden State.

But let’s just say the industrial areas and swamplands along the Montclair-Boonton Line aren’t at the top of the list.

Of course, it’s not as if someone commuting by public transportation can ask the conductor or bus driver to find a more scenic route.

And I suspect that many of the people who could benefit most from a more nature-filled commute are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a decidedly not-scenic interstate.

Wait, maybe this isn’t really about commuting.

Maybe it’s more about recognizing what commuting sometimes gave us besides frustration: a boundary between work and home, a period of transition and, in the best circumstances, some time outdoors.

Fun fact: Last week, the day before my mother-in-law’s visit, I put a beach chair in my car, drove to a park on the other side of town and spent two hours outside in the green with my laptop.

It was probably my most focused and productive stretch of the week.

I felt pretty darn mentally healthy afterward, too—and grateful once again that I’m able to do something like that and still get enough work done to keep the lights on.

Working from anywhere is a freedom. The trick, apparently, is remembering to choose where “anywhere” will be.

What are the odds that a few years from now I’ll come across this edition of the newsletter and remember that day in the park?

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNBC: Iran targeted U.S. forces in the Middle East with several ballistic missiles late Tuesday, U.S. Central Command said, raising tensions that had seen hostilities put on brief pause. All the missiles were intercepted.

• The Hill: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said 13 people have been found dead after a powerful earthquake shook southwestern Japan, with rescue work continuing Wednesday morning. A magnitude 7.1 quake struck the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu late Tuesday afternoon.

• NYT: The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans. Some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and visitors expired visas occupy a legal gray area, as they are awaiting visa extensions or green cards and have been issued work permits.

• Haitian Times: As Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who came to the U.S. beginning in 2010, families are asking who will care for their U.S. citizen children, whether to sell their homes, and whether they can survive what comes next. “I cannot tell you how many clients are flat out saying ‘oum pito tuye tèt mwen ke m tonunen en Ayiti,’” one advocate shared. (Translation: “I’d rather kill myself than be buried in Haiti.”)

• AP: FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced a proposal to create a $20 billion company running the World Cup with private investors, including family members of Jared Kushner. The plan was immediately attacked by UEFA and new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham. “It is not FIFA’s to sell,” UEFA said. “None of us are the owners of football.”

• Axios: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent a blunt letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell and his staff demanding that the 84-year-old senator verbally address constituents and demonstrate his ability to serve — or resign. It has been more than 40 days since McConnell was hospitalized and last appeared publicly outside of photos released by his office.

• The Independent: Gen Z, once heralded for their sobriety, is actually drinking about as much as everyone else, according to a new study. Those born between 1997 and 2012 were touted as “sober curious,” but according to IWSR, the drinking rate for legal-age Gen Zers is now 74% — up from 66% in 2023.

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If you or someone you care about is looking for a job, I have some very annoying advice to share:

Apply early.

At least, I find that advice annoying. During times when I’ve been between jobs, or looking for a better job, I hated checking job listings and updating feeds, having to be Johnny-on-the-spot on the theory that he or she who applies first has the best shot.

But it’s true—even though a new study I came across recently suggests it shouldn’t be, at least from the point of view of the people doing the hiring.

Researchers at George Mason University, Vanderbilt University, Cornell University, and the University of California, San Diego analyzed 11.66 million exchanges between clients and freelancers on Fiverr.

Before you say, “But I’m not applying for gigs on Fiverr,” fair enough.

But anticipating that somebody would later write a newsletter and that his readers might say exactly that, the researchers also ran eight follow-up experiments involving more than 8,600 people, using scenarios involving caterers, doctors, photographers, and other professionals.

Results:

• Applicants who replied quickly were almost always more likely to be hired.

• Delaying a response by just five or ten minutes hurt their chances.

• Waiting more than a day reduced the odds of being chosen by roughly 90 percent.

This was true regardless of the applicant’s ratings or previous record.

Interestingly, the people making hiring decisions did not realize they were doing it.

In one early experiment, participants told the researchers that replying anytime during the same day would be perfectly acceptable. But then, when they were asked to choose between candidates, they picked the faster responder every time.

“Speed is a signal. People see a quick response as a sign that you’ll be attentive to their needs in the future, not just right now,” said study co-author Einav Hart of George Mason University.

That might not be fair or rational, but it appears to be real.

So last week we ran a survey here at Understandably, and it was so fantastic, and I am finishing going through it all.

One thing I heard from a few people was: I like the idea of Life Story Magic, but please stop bringing it up in every single newsletter. (Slight exaggeration, but a nonzero number of you said something like this.)

That’s fine—but Life Story Magic is a big part of why I even noticed this study, so we have to mention it.

This is the first time in a while that I’ve been in a position to recruit people to work for me, or at least with me. And sure enough, I found myself responding in three apparently predictable stages:

• Stage 1: These were the applicants who applied almost immediately and who got responses almost immediately. There were some great people in this group, but I think they benefited from (a) not having later applicants to be compared to, and (b) my anxiety that maybe I wouldn’t get ANY good applicants, which led me to reply fast.

• Stage 2: These were the later group, who, let’s say, applied during the next week or so. Again, there were some fantastic applicants—frankly, this is when I started to get people who speak other languages natively, which opened my eyes to a whole other market and product. But it was harder for anyone to stand out, just because there were more people in the mix.

• Stage 3: And finally, we get to the last group, some of whom were certainly as impressive as the top people from the first group—but, simple math, it’s easier to stand out as the best of five than it is to stand out as the best of 150.

My sense, having been on the other side of the hire/get-hired relationship more often, is that it’s best to both be best and be first.

And while that sort of seems obvious, the way to get there probably isn’t quite as obvious—which basically has to do with triage and prioritization:

1. Apply for jobs where you’re a great candidate and it’s early in the process.

2. Think twice about jobs where you’re not-so-great, or it’s not so early.

3. Don’t apply where neither of these applies. (Sorry, just a little English major punning in that last sentence.)

My family and I are going to Cape Cod for a week in August, and out of nowhere I had a flashback to a similar vacation long ago—similar in that it was Cape Cod, but my wife and I weren’t together yet and my daughter was many years from being born.

That was a fun trip, but it was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that I was job-hunting at the time, and I recall spending half the time in an unair-conditioned attic of a rental house honing job applications and portfolios.

Did it pay off? Come to think of it, I did land one of those jobs.

But, then I quit after a single day, told nobody about it for a decade, then wrote about it, went viral, and wound up being featured on CBS Sunday Morning.

Unusual resolution to that kind of story, I grant you.

Anyway, the point is: Apply early, and only for jobs you actually want, and also not while you’re on vacation.

And if you’re the one doing the hiring, just be aware of the apparent bias toward those who come in first.

Oh man, I feel another pun coming on.

Sorry: Because being first doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll last.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NYT: Iran War Enters 6th Month and a Period of Greater Uncertainty: a rundown of the major events of the war, as both sides consider their next moves.

• CNN: More than 300,000 people have been displaced by wildfires in France and Spain, with officials warning of “difficult days ahead” as firefighters battle blazes around Bordeaux and west of Madrid.

• CBS News: Three people were killed and four others wounded — including a 2-year-old boy — when two gunmen opened fire on each other at the Bite of Seattle food festival near the Space Needle on Sunday evening. A 15-year-old is in custody; a second suspect remains at large.

• Just Security: The Trump administration is reviewing its vetting process for ICE officers after reports that the agent involved in the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán in Maine on July 13 had a history of violent outbursts, White House Border Czar Tom Homan said.

• NPR: Rage-giving, innovation and cuts: How public media has survived without federal funds.

• The Guardian: A California man was rescued alive drifting in his sailboat off Hawaii after 30 days stranded at sea. Kai Sato, 39, had set sail from Catalina Island on June 7 hoping to complete his first solo Pacific crossing, but his mast snapped and his navigation phone died. He drifted into a shipping lane where a passing containership spotted him.

• AP: A man using a wheelchair was struggling to cross six lanes of traffic in Arkansas when Christopher Hellenthal — still in his Spider-Man costume from a trampoline park event — ran out to help. “I had a bunch of adrenaline pumping through me,” said Hellenthal, 20. “I was just kind of thinking, ‘I’m wearing this suit; it’s gonna be pretty funny.’”

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Shark Tank and Plato

This is a story about Plato, Shark Tank, and AI. Let’s do the Shark Tank part first.

A new study out of the University of Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, and the University of Michigan asked a strange question: Does your voice sound more persuasive if it sounds like the person you’re talking to?

Shark Tank

The researchers were specifically interested in timbre — the texture and color of a voice, the quality that makes one person’s “hello” sound different from another’s even when both hit the same pitch, tone, and volume.

Led by Kimberly Hyun, the researchers used machine learning to measure timbre objectively, then tested it against 7,002 entrepreneur-investor pairings from 14 seasons of Shark Tank.

The pattern held.

Entrepreneurs whose voices were closer in timbre to a given shark’s voice were more likely to land a deal with that shark, regardless of the pitch itself, the product, or the entrepreneur’s actual vocal pitch or gender.

They ran the same test on 2,091 Kickstarter campaigns, comparing each narrator’s voice to the average voice of the whole donor pool.

Campaigns whose narrator sounded closer to that average voice raised more money and hit their goals more often, though the effect shrank when a campaign already carried an outside credibility signal, like a “staff pick” badge.

Then came four controlled lab experiments — radio ads, restaurant picks, headphones, a sparkling drink — and the result kept repeating.

People trust voices that resemble their own, perceiving them as more competent. That trust then translates into more persuasion.

Artificial Intelligence

Now for the AI. Because as interesting as this is, what are we going to do — change our vocal timbre to match hundreds or thousands of individual consumers, one conversation at a time?

In fact, the study authors say, Yes, we probably are going to do that. We’re just going to use AI to make it happen—meaning real-time AI adaptation of a salesperson’s or AI agent’s voice, reshaped on the fly to match an individual listener’s timbre.

“As voice technology and cloning technology gets more advanced and accessible,” Hyun said, “it’s so much easier to just create an AI salesperson’s voice that’s similar to your voice.”

The JMR paper itself raises the call center scenario directly as the obvious next move once the technology catches up to the finding.

Honestly, I think the technology has already caught up. Voice cloning tools now need less than ten seconds of audio to produce a convincing copy.

Plato

All of which brings us back to Plato.

In the Gorgias, Plato has Socrates worry about something that sounds almost quaint today: that if you teach rhetoric and persuasion as a set of techniques, you separate speech from truth.

The most persuasive argument wins, not the most useful one. A clever speaker can learn exactly how to produce agreement in a listener without ever caring whether that agreement points toward wisdom, justice, or anything real.

Socrates wasn’t worried about voices, but the mechanism he was describing and the mechanism this study measured are similar.

A skilled rhetorician finds the shape of persuasion that fits a particular listener and pours the message into it.

An AI system doing real-time voice matching is doing the identical thing, just one layer beneath the words, at the level of the sound itself—and doing it automatically, instantly, for every listener at once.

Plato thought the danger was a talented individual who’d mastered a craft. What he couldn’t have anticipated is a machine that mass-produces that exact craft, sanded down to a repeatable technical process, deployed simultaneously across every customer service line in the country.

Study the Greeks, my friends. And maybe watch Shark Tank. But above all pay attention to timbre — and how AI might be changing it.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NY Post: The number of adults who are “not in the labor force” (NILF) surged to an all-time high in June to 105.8 million. “We’ve got a big problem…with the flight from work of prime-age men,” said labor economist Nicholas Eberstadt at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

• WSJ: Gen Z Looks for a Cheap Date: Date night in America now costs an average $189. Young, broke romantics go for picnics in the park, conversation over coffee. (Quick aside: Sometimes it’s pure coincidence that I choose two items that could theoretically be related, like this one and the on above.)

• NY Times: The Trump administration planned to announce Wednesday that it has reached a broad nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that could lead to the country enriching its own fuel for nuclear reactors. The accord is intended to further bind the United States with the Saudi government as the war with Iran strains the relationship.

• Axios: The U.S. measles case count for this year has surged past last year’s total and now stands at 2,295 — a level that hasn’t been seen in 35 years.

• CBS News: France has become the first country in the European Union to ban social media for children under the age of 15. The law will also ban students from having phones in high schools.

• Business Insider: Phone calls on flights could soon be banned. Former flight attendants say it’s about more than manners.

• BBC: South Korean prosecutors sought a one-year jail term for the owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant accused of using ants as a dessert garnish. The owner admitted to serving ants but argued that they were used in a “small part” of the restaurant’s 15-course menu – as a topping for sorbets – and that diners were told they could opt for non-ant toppings.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about a study finding that Americans are speaking about 120,000 fewer words a year than we used to — roughly the word count of an entire novel, gone every single year, compared to 14 years earlier.

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot.

Partly because there’s so much research showing that relationships are what lead to a happy, successful life. And partly because I’m the kind of person who will talk to anyone for hours, even a perfect stranger.

Now there’s another piece of data, and it points in the same direction.

According to a new analysis from Axios, drawing on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, Americans are spending less time socializing than we did 20 years ago — and the decline shows up in every single age group, from teenagers to retirees.

The numbers:

• Average time spent socializing per day has dropped from 45 minutes to 35 minutes over the past two decades.

• The steepest decline is among the young. Fifteen- to 24-year-olds went from an hour a day spent hanging out with other people to 35 minutes.

Put the two studies side by side, and the picture gets clearer. We’re not just talking less. We’re spending less time in the room with each other in the first place.

A lot of the reasons are familiar.

We’re on our phones instead of in front of each other. Teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, according to Gallup.

Remote work, which exploded during the pandemic, has stuck around. It’s kept more of us out of offices—and off the sidewalks and trains that used to force us into contact with other humans.

Homes have gotten bigger and more comfortable. Every restaurant is on a delivery app now. You can eat well without ever having to talk to anyone.

One thing I hadn’t fully considered until I read the Axios piece is that many of the places people used to gather are disappearing too.

A 2025 report from University of Colorado Boulder researchers found widespread closures of hangout spots of every kind over the past decade — libraries, coffee shops, museums. Churches are closing at unprecedented rates too.

So even when people want to be around other people, there are fewer places built for exactly that purpose.

Writer Derek Thompson called this “the Anti-Social Century” in The Atlantic last year (h/t Erica Pandey).

Nobody decided to build a quieter, more solitary version of American life. It happened through a hundred small conveniences, each one reasonable on its own.

Working from home saves a commute. Delivery saves a trip. Headphones make public spaces less awkward. Add them all up over 20 years and you get 10 fewer minutes of socializing a day, every day, for everyone.

Ten minutes doesn’t sound like much until you multiply it out the way I did with the missing words. Ten fewer minutes a day is over 60 hours a year — more than a full workweek of conversation and connection that used to just happen, and now doesn’t.

The research on weak ties — those brief, low-stakes interactions with near-strangers — already tells us those small exchanges matter more to our happiness than most of us assume.

So if both the words and the minutes are disappearing from our days, maybe the answer is not especially mysterious.

Scroll less, talk more. Better yet, do it in person.

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Other things worth knowing …

• AP: The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes against Iran on Monday after announcing the death of another American service member. Iran responded by launching attacks on American allies Kuwait and Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The interim deal signed last month has crumbled and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has largely stalled. As fighting intensifies, both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people.

• NYT via ABC News: Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened state election officials on Friday with prison time if they don't comply with the Trump administration's demands to "scrub" their voter rolls ahead of November's midterms. Mullin's threats followed a primetime address by Trump resurrecting debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

• AP: Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Miami to face rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom. Prosecutors said the new charges relate to four new victims; the brothers are already charged with rape, bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution relating to three other alleged victims in the U.K. between 2012 and 2015. Their lawyer called the charges "filth and slander."

• WSJ via US News: The IRS's acting chief counsel, Kenneth Kies, was forced out after warning White House officials that their requests would violate a federal law prohibiting the president and other officials from ordering the IRS to conduct or terminate audits of specific taxpayers.

• CBS News: Defaults on student loans have surged to record levels across the United States, with around 9.5 million people — 1 in 5 federal student loan borrowers — now more than nine months behind on their payments.

• AP: Cuba's iconic vintage cars have all but disappeared, replaced by small electric tricycles — most of them made in China — as the primary means of transportation for hundreds of thousands of Cubans grappling with a prolonged fuel crisis. Many have outfitted the vehicles with solar panels, allowing them to recharge without relying on the island's strained power grid.

• Newsweek via MSN: Garbage trucks could soon do more than collect trash. Officials in several communities are considering equipping sanitation trucks with AI-powered cameras to photograph properties during normal collection routes, flagging issues such as overgrown lawns, peeling paint, and illegal dumping for city staff to review before taking enforcement action.

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Eight hours a night, they told you. But the largest sleep study ever conducted now suggests that might actually be a bit too much.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers said sleeping more than eight hours was associated with faster biological aging. The sweet spot, across nearly every organ in your body, tops out slightly less, at around 7.8 hours.

500,000 adults

Led by Junhao Wen of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Columbia University researchers analyzed data from roughly 500,000 adults in the UK Biobank. Participants were between 37 and 84 years old.

Using machine learning, the team built 23 biological aging clocks across 17 organ systems: brain, heart, lungs, liver, immune system, fat tissue, and more.

These clocks estimate how biologically old each organ looks, based on medical imaging, blood proteins, and metabolic markers.

Across all 17 systems, the same U-shaped pattern emerged. People sleeping fewer than six hours showed accelerated biological aging. But so did people sleeping more than eight hours. The lowest aging rates appeared in people sleeping roughly 6.4 to 7.8 hours. There were slight differences by sex: women’s optimal range ran 6.5 to 7.8 hours; men’s was 6.4 to 7.7.

Not the first time

The “too much” finding isn’t entirely new.

A few years ago in this space, I wrote about a 44,000-person study that found people who slept beyond the recommended window were “equally impaired as those who slept too little.”

Researchers at the time admitted they didn’t know why, but the Columbia study helps answer that.

Long sleep was associated with faster aging across multiple organ systems, with a particular signal running through fat tissue, which the researchers link to systemic inflammation.

Their best explanation: Sleeping too much is often a marker of underlying illness rather than a direct cause of aging. Sick people sleep more.

But when the same pattern shows up across 17 independent biological clocks in half a million people, it’s hard to wave away.

Earlier research tended to focus narrowly on the brain.

A 2025 MIT study found that during attention lapses after a sleepless night, waves of cerebrospinal fluid surge through the brain performing the same cleanup that normally happens during sleep — the brain forcing maintenance on itself whether you’re ready or not.

And a separate UK Biobank study of 88,000 people linked poor sleep to 172 different diseases.

This Columbia study goes further — asking what decades of a given sleep pattern do to your organs collectively. The answer runs from your brain to your lungs to your liver:

• Short sleep was specifically linked to depression, anxiety, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart arrhythmias.

• Both short and long sleep were associated with COPD, asthma, and digestive disorders including GERD.

• The researchers also found that short and long sleepers may arrive at late-life depression through different biological pathways, which suggests perhaps they should be treated the same way clinically.

A light sleeper, himself

Sleep duration here was self-reported, not device-tracked, and the study was observational, so it shows association, not causation.

Importantly, the optimal range is a population average. Your own number may differ.

Wen mentioned he’s a light sleeper himself and was partly motivated by personal concern.

He wanted to know whether sleep — something people can actually control — was measurably tied to how fast the body ages. Across half a million people and 17 organ systems, the answer was yes.

The target, then, isn’t eight. It’s somewhere between 6.4 and 7.8, with the exact number varying a bit by organ and by sex.

For most people, that means aiming for roughly seven, which, as it turns out, is probably what your body has been asking for all along.

Personal note: I’m finishing this at 11 p.m., and I have to be up at 6:30 a.m. Turns out maybe I’ve been timing this all perfectly without even realizing it.

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNN: Oil surged on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said America’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran was “over” and threatened a new volley of attacks on the country tonight. Trump also said the United States may attack Iran’s critical infrastructure again. “It may be a big attack, and it’ll knock out a lot of stuff,” Trump said, saying the US could hit electrical plants. “We’ll take them out. I don’t want to do that, but if we have to, we’ll take them out.”

• France 24: NATO allies pledged 70 billion Euros in military equipment and training for Ukraine in 2026 and committed to sustaining at least that level in 2027. European allies and Canada have increased defense spending by nearly 20% since last year's Hague summit. Ukraine's Zelenskyy met with Trump on the summit's sidelines; Russia launched fresh strikes on Kyiv hours before the two leaders sat down.

• AP: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is asking Sen. Mitch McConnell, the state’s most powerful figure in Congress, to disclose more about his condition after three weeks of silence from the 84-year-old since he was hospitalized in Washington. McConnell, whose physical condition has visibly declined in recent years, was hospitalized June 14. He has not released a public statement, photos or videos since.

• The Independent: Maine oysterman Graham Platner has dropped his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins after an allegation of sexual assault led to prominent Democrats abandoning his campaign. Platner continued to deny the accusations as he announced his decision to drop out the race Wednesday. Maine’s seat, currently held by five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins, is a must-win if Democrats they want to flip the Senate. Democrats in Maine now have until July 27 at 5 p.m. to replace Platner.

• ESPN: Justin Bieber will join Madonna, Shakira, and BTS as a headliner at the World Cup Final halftime show at MetLife Stadium on July 19, FIFA announced Wednesday — making it the most expensive entertainment lineup in the tournament's history and the first-ever halftime show at a World Cup Final.

• FT: Meta (nee Facebook) is testing a prototype of “super sensing” AI glasses that would use cameras and audio recordings to capture a wearer’s every moment. While Meta’s current AI smart glasses have an LED in the corner of the frame lights up to signal to others, executives are currently planning not to activate the LED when the super-sensing features are being used.

• AP: A Grand Canyon river rafting guide who aimed to become the first American woman to row across the mid-Pacific solo — and the fastest person, man or woman — has completed a record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii. Hundreds gathered to cheer on Kelsey Pfendler as she pulled into a Honolulu harbor Friday night on her 21-foot row boat, Lily, after nearly a month and a half at sea.

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I’m writing this on my laptop with the World Cup on television, my daughter next to me watching the game while also playing Roblox on her tablet, and my wife — away for the night — texting me about something else entirely.

Four screens, one room. Not a single screen-time guideline suggests we’re doing any of it right. But then, if you’ve raised young kids in the last decade, you know the advice isn’t exactly consistent:

No screens before two, and no more than an hour a day after that.

Or else, wait: It’s quality over quantity. And beware of blue light.

Oh, and you should co-view and keep an eye on what they actually do on screens, except that you also need to stop hovering.

Actually there’s also my new favorite contender: Kids should be off screens in school, except that maybe schools should also be embracing AI somehow.

A new study out of Edith Cowan University in Australia looked at what happens when parents actually try to follow that advice. It seems familiar.

The advice is the problem, not the parents

Researchers led by Dr. Stephanie Milford interviewed and ran focus groups with first-time parents of kids from birth to age four.

They wanted to know less about whether screens are good or bad, and more about how parents are actually experiencing the constant advice about them.

What they found: parents are getting contradictory messages constantly — strict limits from one source, relaxed guidance from another — and almost none of it reflects what a normal day with a toddler actually looks like.

“Parents are trying to do the right thing, but they’re getting mixed messages,” Milford said. “That contradiction creates a lot of uncertainty.”

Much of the messaging is also fear-based, and fear doesn’t help anyone parent better. It just makes people doubt choices they were already making carefully.

“That fear can make parents doubt their decisions, even when they’re making thoughtful choices,” Milford said.

What parents actually do

Most parents, the study found, don’t follow rigid screen-time rules at all.

They use screens the way most things get used in a house with small kids in it: flexibly — to settle a toddler down, to distract while making dinner, to share something together.

Or, in my case tonight, to let a kid stay occupied during a World Cup match while a parent finishes an article and a spouse texts about the weekend.

Milford’s team frames that flexibility as normal, and argues the guidance should reflect it instead of implying failure.

“Rather than telling parents to avoid screens, we should be helping them use them in ways that support learning and connection,” she said.

Their ask is simple: guidance that builds confidence instead of guilt, written for parents capable of making their own judgment calls.

Back to my living room

This is a qualitative study — interviews and focus groups, not a large survey. It measures how parents experience the advice, not what screen time actually does to kids.

Also, the parents involved were all Australian. (Maybe the over-sampled Bluey?)

My daughter is currently somewhere between the World Cup and Roblox, which is its own kind of multitasking I don’t fully understand.

None of this is what any guideline would recommend. It’s also just a regular day.

Bottom line: Guidance that doesn’t reflect real life in any likely way might be creating more guilt than anything else.

So, if you’re reading this on a screen with a kid nearby and a screen in their hand, too; well, maybe the advice is simply to do the best you can, and not let the onslaught of advice overwhelm you.

USA was up by two, by the way as I finished this article. I believe that we will win.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NYT: Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Senate from Maine, said he was taking time to “reflect” on his political path forward as his support swiftly eroded after a woman accused him of rape. He has until July 13 to withdraw from the race, and if he does the state Democratic Party has until July 27 to replace him on the ticket, according to Maine state law.

• CNN: Cuba suffered a nationwide blackout Monday as it faces an ongoing energy crisis worsened by an effective U.S. blockade on fuel shipments. The country has experienced several nationwide blackouts over the past few years as its aging electricity infrastructure struggles to meet demand; in March alone, it had at least two total blackouts within a week.

• The Athletic: The United States was eliminated from its own World Cup after falling to a timid 4-1 defeat by Belgium in Seattle. Mauricio Pochettino’s side lit up the early stages of this tournament with its freewheeling attacking style, but it fell apart against a vastly improved Belgium. The USMNT’s exit means all three host nations fell at the round-of-16 stage.

• Fox News: Bryan Johnson, a biohacker and longevity guru who has claimed “we may be the first generation who won’t die,” revealed he has an autoimmune condition causing his stomach to “eat itself.” The Los Angeles-based tech entrepreneur, 48, has previously said he hopes to live until 2140, when he would in theory be 160 years old.

• NYT: A large group of masked men wearing the markings of the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched with flags and chanted “reclaim America!” in Washington over the weekend, as the capital prepared for the main events celebrating the United States’ 250th birthday. The group of apparently several hundred people carried various flags, including the Confederate battle flag.

• Variety: Tilly Norwood, the AI “actor” who sparked a frenzy of anger in Hollywood in late 2025, is set to front her first feature film. “Misaligned,” announced by Particle 6, the AI-focused studio behind Norwood, is described as a comedy-drama telling a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos.”

• AP: Mourners dressed in black flooded into Tehran Monday for a procession as part of the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with throngs of people calling for the death of President Trump. The massive turnout was encouraged by Iran’s theocracy as a sign of strength, and it came as the Islamic Republic negotiates with the U.S. over a permanent end to the war.

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It is 3:07 p.m. as I start writing this. I want to get to the gym by 4:30. My theory is that writing it under mild time pressure created by my own need to exercise was appropriate.

Reason: We’ll be talking about a study that shows why no matter how busy you are, even small habits of vigorous exercise can pay enormous dividends for your health.

A new study published in the European Heart Journal — in case you let your subscription lapse, I’ll summarize — analyzed data from nearly 96,000 people who wore wrist-based accelerometers for a week.

The researchers tracked not just how much people moved, but how intensely. They then followed participants for seven years, measuring their risk of developing eight serious conditions:

• major cardiovascular disease

• irregular heartbeat

• type 2 diabetes

• immune-mediated inflammatory diseases

• liver disease

• chronic respiratory disease

• chronic kidney disease

• dementia

Findings: Compared with people who did no vigorous activity at all, those with the highest levels of intense movement had a 63% lower risk of developing dementia, a 60% lower risk of type 2 diabetes, and a 46% lower risk of dying.

The key phrase there is “vigorous activity,” meaning movement that’s intense enough to make you breathless.

This is where the study gets genuinely useful, especially for busy people who have a hard time fitting everything into a 24-hour day.

“Adding short bursts of activity that make you slightly breathless into daily life, like taking the stairs quickly, walking fast between errands or playing actively with children, can make a real difference,” said Professor Minxue Shen of the Xiangya School of Public Health at Central South University, who led the research.

Even 15 to 20 minutes per week of this kind of effort was linked to meaningful health benefits — emphasis on per week, not day. The researchers also found that intensity mattered differently depending on the disease.

For inflammatory conditions like arthritis and psoriasis, intensity was the key factor. For diabetes and chronic liver disease, both how long and how hard people moved made a difference.

The consistent thread across all eight conditions was that vigorous activity outperformed moderate activity, minute for minute.

As for why it’s helpful, Professor Shen’s explanation is basically that during vigorous activity, your heart pumps more efficiently, blood vessels become more flexible, and your body improves its ability to use oxygen.

Intense movement also appears to reduce inflammation, which may explain the strong associations with arthritis and psoriasis specifically, and may stimulate brain chemicals that support cognitive health, which could account for the dementia finding.

This is observational research drawn from the UK Biobank, so a caveat: it can’t prove that vigorous activity directly causes these reductions in disease risk.

People who move more intensely may share other lifestyle traits — better sleep, less stress, and different diets — that also contribute. The researchers controlled for many of these factors, but residual confounding is always possible in studies like this.

Still, current exercise guidelines focus on total time — 150 minutes of moderate activity per week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity. This study suggests that the composition of that time matters, not just the volume.

If two people exercise the same total number of minutes, the one who occasionally pushes to the point of breathlessness appears to come out ahead, across multiple disease categories, by a wide margin.

Anyway — update in real time — I’m back from the gym and on my fourth pass, and there’s one thing worth clarifying. The 15-to-20-minutes-per-week figure refers to the minimum threshold where researchers began seeing meaningful benefits, not a ceiling or a target.

More vigorous activity continued to show stronger associations with lower disease risk throughout the study. So, 15-20 minutes is the floor, not the finish line.

The European Heart Journal has now given me three separate reasons to feel okay about my health and exercise habits — sleep, coffee, and now exercise.

I’m choosing to believe it’s the former.

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Other things worth knowing …

• Daily Mail: President Donald Trump, 80, is fixated on negative coverage of his swollen ‘cankles’ as his staff whisper about his ‘old’ age, a new book reveals. A White House spokesperson pointed a finger at Biden in response: ‘President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible President in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises.’

• CNN: Alan Greenspan, the jazz-playing Federal Reserve chairman who was celebrated as a "Maestro" for engineering a decade of prosperity but later shared blame for the 2008 financial crisis, died this week at 100. He served under four presidents across nearly 19 years at the Fed.

• AP via NBC Dallas: Even as it battled the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, the DEA permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, according to sources. "We poisoned our community to make cases," said DEA Special Agent David Howell, who filed a whistleblower complaint. One case he flagged: a 15-month-old toddler who died after ingesting burned fentanyl residue.

• CBS News Miami: Companies hired to run Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" were notified Monday to begin full demobilization of the facility, quietly ending a $1.2 billion experiment once hailed by DeSantis and Trump as a model for other states. Florida is still waiting on most of the $608 million in federal reimbursements it was promised, having received only $58 million so far.

• NYT: The United States plans to provide welcome gifts to white South Africans entering the United States as refugees, including an Android tablet, a report commissioned by Mr. Trump that downplays the role of slavery in history of the U.S., and a children’s book accusing South Africa’s government of “favoring the Black population.” Trump is welcoming the minority in South Africa, even as the U.S. bans refugees fleeing from war and persecution everywhere else in the world.

• U.S. News: The U.S. announced $17.5 billion in federal loans for 10 new large nuclear reactors across the U.S. — the largest single investment in American nuclear power in decades.

• ScienceDaily: Scientists discovered that kombucha's flavor, chemistry, and antioxidant activity vary dramatically depending on the tea used to make it — green and oolong tea versions emerged as the most biologically active. The finding matters because most commercially sold kombucha is made from black tea, which the study found to be the least potent.

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I got a sitter, drove into the city, and saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play Madison Square Garden for nearly three hours.

Somehow I’d been alive in the United States for five decades and lived in New Jersey for going on 15 years, and yet it was my first time seeing the Boss. Now that I’m fully compliant with New Jersey law on the subject, I’m going to tell you it was worth the wait.

I’m also going to tell you — based on a study published this week — that it may have been doing something to my DNA.

Researchers at University College London recently published findings in the journal Innovation in Aging in which they analyzed survey responses and blood test data from 3,556 adults in the United Kingdom.

Their goal: Comparing how often and in how many different ways those adults engaged with arts and cultural activities — things like attending concerts, visiting museums, reading, dancing, singing, making art — against seven different biological aging clocks derived from DNA methylation patterns in participants’ blood.

The pattern was clear:

* At least three arts and cultural activities per year a year: 2% slower aging

* Monthly: 3% slower

* Weekly: 4% slower

On one of the newer clocks, people who engaged at least weekly were a full year biologically younger than infrequent participants.

The effect size was comparable to what the researchers found for physical exercise.

As lead author professor Daisy Fancourt put it: “These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise.”

Variety was especially important. Fancourt went on:

“Each type of arts activity has different ingredients that help health — physical, cognitive, emotional, or social stimulation. So, engaging in a diverse range of activities — just like having lots of different plants in our diets — is most beneficial.”

Of course, this doesn’t prove that going to concerts slows aging.

It’s a UK sample, drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, so how directly it translates to other populations is an open question.

I mean, do people in England even like Bruce Springsteen?

Also, people who go to concerts regularly may also have other habits — more social connection, more disposable time, better baseline health — that could be doing some of the work.

Still, Steven Horvath, the UCLA geneticist who developed the epigenetic clock used in aging research, reviewed the study and told NPR he found it “very rigorous,” and that the finding of arts engagement being comparable to exercise “is particularly new to me.”

Which brings me back to the Garden.

The E Street Band’s remaining members from the 20th century — the drummer, the bassist, the guitarist, and the pianist — are all in their 70s — and they were playing ferociously, for three hours, to a packed house at Madison Square Garden.

Springsteen himself is 76.

I don’t know exactly what his habits look like off stage, but I’d guess he’s been engaging with music — as a maker, a performer, and a listener — nearly every day of his adult life.

Maybe it’s coincidence. But maybe a life built around creative engagement leaves a different physical signature than one that doesn’t.

Either way, I’m glad we got the sitter.

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Other things worth knowing …

• ArsTechnica: In an extremely odd case, a single 79-year-old patient was granted extraordinary early access to Eli Lilly’s powerful, still-experimental obesity drug retatrutide through the Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” program—raising immediate questions if that sole patient is President Donald Trump, according to a report by Stat News. The White House, HHS, and Lilly itself did not directly answer questions about the patient’s identity.

• Reuters via Yahoo Finance: The European Central Bank secured key parliamentary backing Tuesday for the launch of a digital euro, an electronic means of payment aimed at making the euro zone less reliant on U.S. credit cards at a time of fraying transatlantic relationships. Six years in the making, the ECB’s digital cash has become a more pressing issue since Donald Trump returned to the White House, amid fears that the U.S. could one day weaponize its dominance over payment networks like Visa and Mastercard.

• CNN: A U.S. fighter jet pilot rescued by special forces after being shot down over Iran in April described a shocking sight before ejecting: multiple Iranian drones hovering in the air, moving as one, in a formation that resembled a jellyfish, according to four sources familiar with the matter. If the airman really saw what he described — a formation moving in unison — it would be an alarming advance in Iranian drone capabilities.

• WSJ: What I Saw at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Monday Afternoon.

• NBC News, TechCrunch: A 76-year-old Texas woman, Martha Avila, is dead after a Tesla that authorities say was in autopilot mode crashed through her home. Tesla blames the driver, saying he overrode the autopilot system and crashed into the house at 73 miles an hour. The driver does not appear to have been charged with anything. (Interestingly, the rather horrifying video is posted on X.com, but sharing it seems not to work for some reason.)

• NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security changed its travel guidelines for Iran’s national soccer team Monday, allowing it an extra day in Seattle ahead of its third World Cup match. The team had previously been given just 24 hours in each host city — less than any other squad — and Iran’s soccer federation had planned to file a formal complaint with FIFA.

• ScienceDaily: SETI scientists aimed radio telescopes at 3I/ATLAS — the third interstellar object ever detected passing through our solar system, which was only discovered days ago — and found no signals that could indicate extraterrestrial technology, beyond human-made interference. Researchers say the absence of a signal was expected but that scanning interstellar visitors is now standard practice.

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It’s whatever time of day it is. Do you know how your kids are using AI?

I think most parents probably assume their teenagers are using AI chatbots the way they use Google—to look something up, finish an assignment, and maybe settle an argument about a movie.

A new national study suggests the reality is quite different.

Writing recently in the Journal of Adolescence, researchers at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire say they surveyed 3,466 American teenagers aged 13 to 17 about their AI chatbot use.

• Six in 10 teens have already used a conversational AI chatbot, and entertainment is the most common reason, cited by 85 percent of users.

• However, 65 percent use these tools for advice and guidance.

• Sixty percent use them for friendship.

• Nearly half use them for emotional or mental health support.

• More than one in three use them for romantic companionship.

Most parents, the researchers suggest, have no idea this is happening.

Nearly half of teens in the study reported at least one of 13 types of harmful interactions. About 23 percent said they felt manipulated or pressured by a chatbot.

Between 13 percent and 19 percent reported that a chatbot encouraged dangerous real-world behaviors, including self-harm or suicidal thoughts.

Thirteen-year-olds were the most exposed group across nearly every harm category—more likely than older teens to be asked for personal information that made them uncomfortable, pressured to reveal secrets, or nudged toward risky behavior.

“These systems engage, respond and even affirm users in highly personalized ways, which can make their influence especially powerful,” explained senior author Sameer Hinduja, a professor at FAU and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. “For adolescents—who are still developing critical thinking skills and a sense of identity—that can create a situation where they’re more likely to trust, internalize, or act on what the chatbot is saying without fully questioning it.”

This connects to something I wrote about earlier this year—a Danish study of nearly 54,000 psychiatric patients that found similar patterns in adults with serious mental illness.

The mechanism is the same in both cases: systems designed to be agreeable and emotionally validating are especially powerful precisely when the user is most vulnerable. What’s different here is the population.

The practical suggestions are less alarming than the findings. Conversations with your kids about what they’re using and why—more curiosity than interrogation—along with AI literacy in schools.

Society needs to demand more from the companies building these products too, including mental health guardrails and real age verification built in from the start rather than retrofitted after the fact.

Bottom line: When a product is deliberately engineered to feel emotionally responsive and human, what responsibility do its makers bear for what happens to vulnerable users?

That’s the question real humans need to be asking—no matter how agreeable AI tries to be.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NPR: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday that he will resign, paving the way for the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade.

• PBS News: JD Vance described U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in Switzerland Monday as "rocky but productive," saying negotiators had reached some agreements that set a "good foundation" for a deal. Iran's side contradicted him almost immediately, saying it had made no new nuclear-related commitments in the talks.

• AP: Australian authorities announced the discovery of nearly 2.7 tons of methamphetamine buried in plastic tubs hidden beneath three shipping containers in Sydney — one of the largest drug seizures in Australian history. Two Sydney residents were arrested and face potential life sentences.

• NPR: Colombia woke up Monday to a sharp political turn to the right as Trump-endorsed Abelardo de la Espriella held a slim lead in the country's presidential runoff — a result his opponent is challenging. A de la Espriella victory is expected to reverse the agenda of outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro on security, economy, and peace negotiations with armed groups.

• Futurism: Not that anyone in power is going to care, but there’s even more evidence that Americans are coming to overwhelmingly loathe AI — despite, or perhaps because, they’re using chatbots more than ever. In a sweeping new poll conducted by Pew Research, only 16 percent of respondents said they believed AI will have a positive impact on society — a number as dismal as the perception of the tech.

• People: Jill Smokler, the founder of popular parenting website Scary Mommy, has died at 48. The New York Times bestselling author and mom of three died on Monday, June 22, after a more than two-year journey with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

• The Washington Post” He made a career of saving animals: 16,000 so far.

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Tell me: Do these situations sound familiar?

• You’re telling a story, and right in the middle of it, the specific word you want simply isn’t there.

• You know exactly what you’re trying to say, but what comes out is “you know, the thing.”

• Someone asks you a question and you pause — genuinely pause — hunting for a word you’ve used a thousand times.

If so, you’re not alone. A new study from Baycrest, the University of Toronto, and York University suggests those moments might suggest more than we realized.

The study, published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, ran two experiments.

In the first, researchers recorded 67 healthy older adults, aged 65 to 75, who had to describe complex pictures aloud.

They also completed standard tests of executive function, the list of mental skills that govern memory, planning, and flexible thinking.

In the second experiment, they expanded to 174 healthy adults spanning ages 18 to 90.

Using machine learning, they analyzed hundreds of subtle speech features across all those recordings. These included things like pauses, filler words like “uh” and “um,” timing patterns, and moments of word-finding difficulty.

Then they compared those features to how people actually scored on the cognitive tests.

The connection was consistent and independent of age, sex, and education. The strongest signal came from speech disfluencies specifically — the pauses and stumbles that happen when a word won’t come.

Those predicted executive function scores across the full adult lifespan, not just among older participants.

“The message is clear,” said senior author Jed Meltzer of Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute. “Speech timing is more than just a matter of style, it’s a sensitive indicator of brain health.”

The practical problem with existing dementia screening is that standard cognitive tests are hard to repeat reliably.

People get better at them with practice, which makes it difficult to track whether someone is actually changing over time.

Speech doesn’t have that problem. Everyone produces it every day, naturally, without effort — even though another recent study suggests we’re all speaking a lot less than we used to. It requires no clinical setting and no formal test. It could theoretically be tracked over time, which is what makes it interesting as a monitoring tool.

“This research sets the stage for exciting opportunities to develop tools that could help track cognitive changes in clinics or even at home,” Meltzer said in a press release. “Early detection is critical for any cure or intervention, as dementia involves progressive degeneration of the brain that may be slowed.”

Heather Whitson, a neuroscience professor at Duke School of Medicine who was not involved with the study, noted in other coverage that language difficulty is one of the most consistently observed features across all dementia types.

“Difficulty finding common words is a feature that we look for, and that we know occurs,” she said.

The sample sizes here are modest — 67 people in the first experiment, 174 in the second — and both studies measured participants at only one point in time. The researchers are explicit that longitudinal studies, following the same people over time, are needed before any of this becomes a usable clinical tool.

So, this is promising early work, not a finished answer.

Also, I want to add a note of reassurance before anyone reading this spirals: Everyone stumbles on words sometimes.

A lot of people naturally speak with plenty of “ums” and “uhs” for reasons that have nothing to do with cognitive decline—nervousness, personality, speaking style, the fact that they’re genuinely thinking carefully before they talk.

The researchers here are looking for patterns, measured against an individual’s own baseline over time.

That’s also why a real longitudinal study would be so welcome. A single snapshot of how you speak today can’t tell you much, but how your speech changes over time compared to your own prior speech—that’s where the signal would live.

Oh, and remember that Meltzer specifically mentioned the hope for “cure or intervention” as opposed to just getting warning signs of cognitive decline.

“The single best thing you can do is go on a walk with your friend,” Meltzer told a Canadian television program.

Taken all together, that’s one of those things you might call — oh wait, what’s the word?

Hopeful.

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Other things worth knowing …

• Axios: President Trump’s Iran deal has opened an explosive second front in MAGA’s civil war, waged by hawkish allies who view U.S. concessions as an existential betrayal of Israel. Many of the critics are careful not to attack Trump himself. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called on “the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance,” to come before Congress to defend it.

• Bloomberg: In a little over a week, Elon Musk’s net worth has increased by more than $600 billion. That’s about the combined net worth of the second- and third-wealthiest people in the world — Google guys Larry Page at $317 billion and Sergey Brin at $295 billion. The SpaceX IPO is also “truly subjecting passive investing to an epic test” because ordinary Americans’ retirement and investment accounts are now so dominated by stakes in just a few enormous companies.

• NPR: UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited Port-au-Prince as a new international “gang-suppression force” prepares to deploy to Haiti, where gang violence has killed 2,300 people and led to another 100 kidnappings so far this year.

• NBC News: A Senate confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was abruptly postponed Wednesday after Trump said he was “cancelling it” over a political dispute with Democrats — an unusual intervention into his own nominee’s confirmation process.

• Fox News: Investigators examining Monday's fatal B-52 crash at Edwards Air Force Base are focusing on the bomber's engines and controllability; the aircraft had been undergoing a radar modernization test mission when it went down, killing all eight aboard.

• ESPN: The four World Cup matches on Tuesday set a new record for the most attended day in the history of the tournament. A new mark of 281,223 eclipsed the previous record of 277,070 set at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, which also featured four matches.

• ScienceDaily: Scientists used genome editing to block red pigment production in lettuce, causing other beneficial plant compounds to build up instead — and the lettuce continued growing normally. Researchers say the technique points toward a new way to engineer produce with boosted nutritional properties without affecting yield.

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One thing to know about me is that I talk to everyone, all the time.

Last summer, my family stayed at a motel on Cape Cod for a few days. On the first morning, we desperately wanted coffee. I remembered there was a pot going all the time in the front office, so I volunteered to go.

That was around 8:00 a.m. At 9:30, my wife came looking for me—and found me deep in conversation with the woman behind the counter:

• How she came to work at a motel …

• Where she was from, other jobs she’d had, how Cape Cod had changed …

• Her relationship with her kids …

I got caught up, as always happens. In fact, I have a business called Life Story Magic (you may have heard of it?), where the entire point is to interview people’s parents and grandparents on video to capture their life stories—because I love having conversations.

It turns out that I am apparently an even bigger outlier than I realized, and that the gap between me and everyone else is only getting wider.

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona analyzed audio recordings from 2,197 people between the ages of 10 and 94 across 22 studies conducted between 2005 and 2019, and found something that surprised even them.

Each year during that period, people spoke an average of 338 fewer words per day than the year before.

Over the full span, daily spoken words dropped about 28 percent, from roughly 16,600 to about 11,900.

Published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, the data was originally buried in a larger paper on gender differences in talkativeness. The researchers themselves almost missed it.

Multiply 338 fewer words per day times 365 days. That works out to 123,370 fewer spoken words per year.

That’s roughly the word count of To Kill a Mockingbird, Wuthering Heights, or the first Twilight novel.

Each year, the conversations we’re no longer having would fill a novel.

As I told the researchers in an email (asking to get the full text of their study and taking advantage of a rare opportunity to insert a Dad Joke into a discussion about Perspectives on Psychological Science), their work really spoke to me.

They say they can identify the trend but can’t fully explain it.

Technology is an obvious suspect, since the decline coincides with the rise of texting, social media, and smartphones.

But the fact that older adults are losing words suggests something broader is going on.

My own theories:

• More people are working from home, which eliminates the ambient conversation of offices and commutes.

• Fewer people are going out for lunch, alone or with others.

• Delivery apps remove the need to speak to anyone to get food.

• Add to all that the AirPod effect—the way headphones have made it socially acceptable, or even expected, to be unreachable in public spaces where strangers used to talk.

Do all of those factors combine to explain a 28-percent drop? Does it really matter, anyway?

“When we speak less, we connect less,” those researchers put it. “With every lost word we wear away our connections with others.”

In retrospect, that’s so on-the-nose. Lead researcher Valeria Pfeifer offered a fix at the time: “If each of us just talked to one more person each day, we could reverse this trend.”

You don’t have to get a stranger’s whole life story; leave that to me.

But a few words here and there might make a difference.

A final note, which made me laugh: The Wall Street Journal ended their coverage of this story with the line: “Do you think you’re talking less than you used to? Join the conversation below.”

Good advice, for more reasons than one.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NBC News: The U.S. and Iran have reached an initial agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The deal includes a 60-day negotiating window on nuclear issues, with $24 billion in frozen Iranian funds to be released during that period — and a requirement for the U.S. and its allies to present reconstruction plans for Iran worth at least $300 billion.

• WSJ: An emboldened Justice Department is ramping up efforts to investigate and prosecute more than four dozen of President Trump’s perceived enemies. “The entire premise of this article is laughable — the mainstream media turned a blind eye when Joe Biden weaponized his Department of Justice against his political opponents,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.

• Mediaite: UFC fighter Josh Hokit was slapped with a wave of backlash after he called former First Lady Michelle Obama a man following his match at Trump’s fight night on the White House lawn. Leading up to the event, UFC President Dana White had insisted the event was apolitical and merely a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.

• NBC News: Day 5 of the World Cup produced a string of upsets. Spain — a tournament favorite — was held to a scoreless draw by Cape Verde, the most stunning result of the tournament so far. Saudi Arabia drew 1-1 with Uruguay, and Iran tied New Zealand 2-2 in a match being played in the U.S. on the same day the war with Iran formally ended. The U.S. won its opener 4-1 against Paraguay last week and plays Australia on Friday.

• Inc: Women taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy were roughly 30 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than women who weren’t, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania.

• Science Daily: Beneath our feet lies a vast hidden fungal superhighway — and scientists have now mapped it for the first time. The mycorrhizal network stretching an estimated 68 quadrillion miles connects the roots of most plants on Earth, transferring nutrients and carbon between trees and other plants. Researchers say the map reveals which forests are most dependent on the network and most vulnerable to disruption from logging and climate change.

• MarketWatch: The current wave of spending by the wealthy looks so strong that companies are responding by raising prices and adopting business plans that cater to the elite — a dynamic that will make it difficult to bring inflation down. The tools the Federal Reserve uses to combat inflation typically have a more pronounced impact on low-income Americans.

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Not long ago, my daughter and her friends wanted to go to a playground at a nearby park on a Saturday.

I try not to say her exact age in this newsletter, but let’s just say they’re all are at a stage where they’re old enough to be at the playground by themselves, but maybe not quite old enough to get themselves there unaccompanied.

So, I was on duty. They did their thing on the swings and slides and whatever while I walked a half-mile path around the park six or seven times, working two things:

• My ongoing obsession—taking Life Story Magic from the “cool thing I was doing on the side” stage to the “hey this is an actual business delighting lots of customers” stage. (More to come on all of this soon, probably tomorrow.)

• And, scanning scientific journals and other sources to find interesting things to write about — like, for example, this newsletter.

Lo and behold, I drank two milkshakes with one straw (nicer metaphor than killing birds, I think), and came across a study of Penn State suggests I was also doing something clever for my brain in the bargain, without even realizing it.

Writing in Nature Neuroscience, a team led by Patrick Drew, a professor of engineering science, mechanics, neurosurgery, and biomedical engineering (quick aside: I suddenly feel like I have a thin resume), say they’ve discovered how the brain is linked to the abdomen through a network of veins called the vertebral venous plexus.

When abdominal muscles contract—even mildly, as they do when you sit up, take a step, or walk around a park track—they compress those veins. That compression sends a small wave of pressure upward into the spinal canal, which causes the brain to shift gently within the skull.

Why should we care about this? Because, the theory goes, this is how the brain cleans itself of toxins.

“Our research explains how just moving around might serve as an important physiological mechanism promoting brain health.

When the abdominal muscles contract, they push blood from the abdomen into the spinal cord, just like in a hydraulic system, applying pressure to the brain and making it move…. It is thought the movement of fluid in the brain is important for removing waste and preventing neurodegenerative disorders. […]

[A] little bit of motion is good, and it could be another reason why exercise is good for our brain health.”

Francesco Costanzo, a similarly credentialed professor of engineering science and mechanics who led the computational modeling in the study, offered an analogy—the brain as a sponge:

“How do you clean a dirty sponge?” Costanzo said. “You run it under a tap and squeeze it out. In our simulations, we were able to get a sense of how the brain moving from an abdominal contraction can help induce fluid flow over the brain to help clear waste products.”

One thing to know about me is that I’m all about brain cleaning—at least since I learned that it was a thing.

It’s a niche interest, but fascinating to me, and it first developed after I came across a study (not while walking in a park) that suggests sleeping on your side, rather than on your back or stomach, appears to make glymphatic clearance more efficient.

Mind blown, at the risk of making a terrible pun. I found it fascinating that brain-cleaning could work in such a literal, physical way.

Then earlier this year, I covered another Nature Neuroscience study from MIT and Boston University showing that when sleep-deprived people lose focus momentarily, what’s happening is that their brains are forcing those same cleaning cycles during waking hours.

“If you don’t sleep, the CSF waves start to intrude into wakefulness where normally you wouldn’t see them,” said study co-author Laura Lewis. “However, they come with an attentional tradeoff, where attention fails during the moments that you have this wave of fluid flow.”

In other words, the brain gets so desperate for maintenance that it hijacks your attention to perform it.

Quick caveats:

The researchers in the walking study were working with mice, not humans. They used two-photon microscopy and Micro-CT imaging to watch living mouse brains shift in real time.

It’s hard to imagine replicating that with human beings walking park trails, building businesses, and looking for writing inspiration on their phones.

The team also built computer simulations to model how that movement drives fluid flow, and the physics are well-supported. However, whether the same mechanism operates at the same scale in humans hasn’t been confirmed yet.

So, don’t treat this as definitive proof that a 20-minute walk prevents neurodegeneration. It doesn’t establish that.

Still, it adds to a growing body of evidence that the brain’s maintenance systems are more physical, more mechanical, and more responsive to ordinary daily behavior than most people realize.

So, my daughter and her friend had a great afternoon. My business got a bit more efficient. And apparently, so did my brain.

All in all, a pretty nice Saturday.

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Other things worth knowing …

• WaPo: The U.S. military launched retaliatory strikes against Iran on Tuesday evening after an Iranian drone downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz — the most serious military exchange since the ceasefire.

• CNBC: The Trump family received about $500 million from their crypto venture World Liberty Financial — but the investors who bought in saw steep losses.

• Fortune: OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC on Monday, joining rival Anthropic — which filed last week — in a race to the public markets. “We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it,” the company said. OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion; Anthropic at $965 billion.

• AP: Apple's WWDC keynote Monday introduced Siri AI — a rebuilt conversational assistant powered by Apple Intelligence in partnership with Google — rolling out to iPhone 11 and newer devices with iOS 27. New features include natural back-and-forth dialogue, on-screen contextual awareness, and a dedicated Siri AI app with conversation history.

• Al Jazeera: Sudan's civil war, now entering its fourth year, has created what the UN is calling the world's largest hunger crisis — with 25 million people facing acute food insecurity and aid organizations warning that famine has taken hold in at least five regions.

• US News: U.S. power consumption hit its second straight record high in 2025 and will rise further in 2026 and 2027, the Energy Information Administration said. Demand is surging in part due to data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, and as homes and businesses increasingly use electricity instead of fossil fuels for heat and transportation.

• NPR: With only days remaining before the U.S. men’s national team opens its World Cup campaign against Paraguay, tickets for the match are not sold out. FIFA dramatically jacked up prices — the most expensive regular seats for the U.S. opener are priced at $2,735, more than the final cost for the 2022 World Cup final, while the cheapest are $1,120.

• AFP via Yahoo: Killing the mood: smartphones are reducing birth rates, multiple studies say.

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Unpopular opinion: Bananas are kind of gross.

I know they’re among the most universally liked foods in America — a YouGov survey of more than 2,200 adults found that 82 percent of Americans like or love them. But I’m in that 18 percent, and I couldn’t change it if I wanted to.

In fairness, I’ve wanted to, especially when I got really into running and every third person you meet wants to give you a banana to restore your potassium.

It’s not the taste. It’s the texture — the way a ripe banana sort of collapses into itself, as if I were to take a bite out of one of my daughter’s Nee-Doh squishies.

Food psychologists apparently have a clinical term for this: the “gel-like matrix” that forms from pectin breaking down during chewing. I just call it unpleasant.

Sure enough, a separate study says roughly one in five people may avoid bananas primarily for textural reasons, which tracks almost exactly with the YouGov numbers. It’s not quite the same as the cilantro-tastes-like-soap phenomenon, which is genetic — and which I also have, for what it’s worth.

Banana aversion is more psychological and sensory, rooted in associations the brain locks in during childhood and then stubbornly refuses to update. Mine have apparently not updated.

The reason I’m oversharing all of this is that a new study just came out of UC Davis that made me feel vindicated in a way I never expected.

Food and function

Published May 24 in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Food & Function, the research found that adding a banana to a berry smoothie reduces the body’s absorption of flavanols — that’s not a good thing — by 84 percent.

Flavanols are natural plant compounds found in berries, grapes, apples, cocoa, and other common smoothie ingredients, and they’re linked to heart and cognitive health. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends 400 to 600 milligrams per day for cardiometabolic health.

The culprit is an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, or PPO — the same one that turns a cut apple brown or darkens the flesh of a peeled banana left on the counter. When you blend a banana with berries, PPO activates and degrades the flavanols before your body ever gets a chance to absorb them.

“We were really surprised to see how quickly adding a single banana decreased the level of flavanols in the smoothie and the levels of flavanol absorbed in the body,” said lead author Javier Ottaviani, director of the Core Laboratory of Mars Edge and an adjunct researcher with the UC Davis Department of Nutrition.

The researchers had participants drink three things: a banana-based smoothie, a mixed berry smoothie, and a flavanol capsule used as a control. Then they analyzed blood and urine samples to measure absorption.

People who drank the banana smoothie had flavanol levels 84 percent lower than the control. The berry smoothie produced levels similar to the capsule.

A second part of the study found the effect may continue after consumption — possibly in the stomach — suggesting PPO activity doesn’t simply stop at the blender.

Mangoes, pineapples, and oranges

If your smoothie goal is to get more flavanols from your berries, grapes, or cocoa, the answer is to replace the banana with a low-PPO ingredient. The researchers specifically recommend mango, pineapple, orange, or yogurt. All of them provide creaminess or sweetness without triggering the same enzymatic reaction.

Bananas aren’t unhealthy. They provide fiber, potassium, and other nutrients, and there’s nothing wrong with eating one on its own.

But they may be the wrong partner for berries when the goal is to maximize what your body actually absorbs.

Granted, this was a small study, and nutrition experts commenting on the research have urged people not to overreact.

A banana smoothie is still nutritious even if some of us find the texture revolting.

Individual digestion and overall diet patterns matter, too.

“This is certainly an area that deserves more attention in the field of polyphenols and bioactive compounds in general,” Ottaviani said.

The team noted that tea — another major source of flavanols — could be affected by preparation methods in ways that similarly change how much your body absorbs.

About the 18 percent

Most of us who enjoy smoothies make them on autopilot. We — well, other people — put bananas in smoothies because it makes them creamy. But there’s only so much time, and the science on what these kinds of habits do to nutrient absorption is still catching up.

Still, for years, I’ve watched other people slice bananas into things and felt like I was missing out on something I should probably want. I’ve tried, but the texture just defeats me every time.

When it comes to smoothies, however, it seems I’ve been doing this right by accident for years. I’ll take it.

Just don’t get me started on mayonnaise.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NPR: Israel and Iran traded long-range missile strikes for the first time since the ceasefire went into effect two months ago — the most significant exchange of fire since the war was put on pause in April. By Monday afternoon both sides said they were halting attacks, but each cited conditions that could lead to a resumption.

• Reuters: The SpaceX IPO roadshow kicked off this week, with pricing set for Thursday and trading on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX expected to begin Friday. The company is targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion and a raise of $75 billion. Elon Musk will retain about 85% of the voting control through super-voting shares.

• NPR: The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading at an unprecedented pace, Africa CDC warned Monday, with 27 new cases confirmed in a single day.

• AP: As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional. Only about one-quarter of Americans now say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, while about two-thirds say a democratically elected government is highly important to the country’s identity — down from 80% in 2021.

• NPR: Pope Leo XIV became the first pope in history to address the Spanish parliament Monday, calling for “moral renewal” in public life and demanding respect for migrants, the unborn, and international law. The American pope received a seven-minute standing ovation, with lawmakers chanting “Long live the Pope!” — a striking scene in one of Europe’s most secular countries.

• ScienceDaily: South Australia’s koala population has grown so large that it may be heading toward a self-made disaster, with forests struggling to support the animals. Researchers say targeted fertility control could prevent widespread starvation — an unusual conservation problem in which there are simply too many koalas.

• UPI: Ontario organized the world's largest game of human foosball ahead of the FIFA World Cup, with participants strapped into rotating poles on a massive field to recreate the table-top game at human scale. No word on whether any of them crashed into each other trying to spin.

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About a year and a half ago, I started taking a GLP-1 drug.

I dropped about 50 pounds — basically all the weight I’d put on during the pandemic and then some. I’ve kept most of it off. Yes, it’s changed my life in ways that go well beyond the scale.

I coach my daughter’s soccer team, and I play on the field as a defender during scrimmages.

I skied constantly last winter (well, constantly by my standards; there’s always some other guy you meet talking about how he did 50 or 75 days). Honestly, it would have been a different and less enjoyable experience at my previous weight if it were even possible.

I’ve become a four-to-five-times-a-week gym regular for the first time in decades.

Has it helped my mental health? Absolutely.

But in truth, I can’t tell you how much of that is the drug directly and how much is everything that followed from losing the weight — feeling better, moving more, doing a lot of things that were frankly getting a bit more difficult.

The second-order effects are unmistakable, but the first-order mechanism? That I can’t fully untangle.

As it turns out, that’s almost exactly the question a major new study is wrestling with.

Nearly 100,000 people

Published in The Lancet Psychiatry, the study tracked nearly 100,000 people with depression or anxiety in Swedish national health registers from 2009 to 2022.

About 22,000 of them used GLP-1 drugs.

Rather than comparing GLP-1 users to non-users, the researchers compared each person’s own periods on the medication versus off it — a within-individual approach that controls for a lot of the variables that usually muddy this kind of research.

During periods of semaglutide use, psychiatric hospital care and sick leave dropped 42% overall. Depression risk dropped 44%. Anxiety dropped 38%. Substance use disorders dropped 47%.

The mechanism nobody fully understands

GLP-1 receptors exist not just in the gut and pancreas but in the brain.

Some researchers think these drugs may be doing something directly neurological — dampening reward-seeking behavior, reducing impulsivity, affecting dopamine pathways.

That would help explain the substance use finding, which is hard to attribute purely to weight loss or improved self-image, but it could also be almost entirely downstream.

If you lose significant weight, feel better in your body, start moving again, sleep better, and do things you couldn’t do before, your mental health can improve for reasons that have nothing to do with the drug’s direct action on the brain.

A few things worth knowing before you forward this to everyone you know. First, all the participants in the study already had depression or anxiety, plus diabetes or obesity. So, it’s possible the findings may not translate to people without those conditions.

Three of the authors disclosed receiving research funding from a pharmaceutical company, though the study itself was funded by Finnish government and foundation sources.

Also, this is observational research — the within-individual design is methodologically strong, but it still can’t prove the drug caused the mental health improvements.

Tens of millions of people are now taking GLP-1 drugs, or thinking about it, or have someone close to them who is.

Most of the conversation has centered on weight, cardiovascular risk, and side effects.

This study suggests there may be a mental health dimension to the conversation that hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention.

I can’t tell you whether the improvements I’ve felt came from the drug, the weight loss, the skiing, the scrimmages, or some combination of all of it.

Probably the last one, but whatever the mechanism, I’ll take it.

Anyone want to play soccer?

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Other things worth knowing …

• NYT: Inside the secret deal to drop Trump’s $10 billion suit against the IRS.

• CNBC: Financial pressures pushed more savers to tap their retirement accounts in the first part of 2026, new data shows — potentially locking in losses during the early weeks of the Iran war. The average 401(k) balance fell by 4% to $141,000.

• NYT: Iceland, rattled by Trump, weighs joining the E.U. The country has long stood apart from the rest of Europe, but President Trump’s threats to Greenland have provoked a reconsideration.

• WSJ: Vladimir Putin’s $26 billion quest for longevity: from mini-pigs and organ printing to cryotherapy and genetics, Russia’s president has turned antiaging research into a Kremlin priority.

• The Telegraph: A lack of sleep could be fueling a surge in cancer among the under-50s, according to the largest study of its kind. Insomniacs are up to three times more likely to develop some forms of the disease than those without diagnosed sleep problems.

• WSJ: A famous math problem stumped humans for 80 years. AI just cracked it.

• NY Post: Escort demand surges ahead of NYC and NJ World Cup matches — as a $10,000-per-day sex worker reveals what it’s like.

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Are you having a hard time making a a big decision?

Good news: There’s a simple question you can ask yourself that can guide you through indecision, overcome analysis paralysis, and ultimately help you make better, bolder choices.

The question is simply, “What is the worst that could happen?”

And while some of us probably ask ourselves this question when facing tough choices, that’s not quite enough. Instead, it’s a matter of understanding the emotional and mental processes that lead to indecision, and why focusing on this question works.

To explore the concept, I sat down a while back with Denise K. Shull, a top performance coach with a graduate degree in neuropsychoanalysis from the University of Chicago. Shull has worked with top performers from traders managing multibillion dollar portfolios, and elite professional athletes competing in Major League Baseball, the NFL, and the Olympics.

The theory behind why this question works so well in a structured context, she explained, is that human emotions are predictive, not reactive:

“Our brains are always trying to predict what’s going to happen next. Take, for example, picking up a cup of coffee. If you’re not sure whether it’s hot or cold, it takes a moment for your brain to process the temperature.

But if you know it’s a hot cup of coffee, you instantly feel the heat.

…

It’s not just the prediction of the thing itself, but the prediction of how that thing will make us feel. …

Confidence is essentially a prediction that whatever we’re doing is going to work out, while fear is the belief that it won’t. When you analyze people’s behavior and decision-making in terms of these predictions, you open up a broader understanding of their actions and motivations.”

I should point out here that Shull cited the work of Brian Knutson, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University who is the director of Stanford’s Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience.

“Twenty years ago, when I first started in this field, I knew about the importance of emotions in decision-making,” she said. But it was only when I discovered Knutson’s work on anticipatory emotions that everything clicked into place.“

Anyway, let’s see how it works in practice. I asked Shull to share with me the experiences of clients whom she had guided through decision-making processes. Obviously we can’t name them specifically, but I hope the descriptions will suffice.

“My boss might think I’m stupid”

An HR director at a major financial firm wanted to ask for a promotion. He believed he could do the job and that he’d learn whatever he needed to fill in the gaps. But he had a hard time bringing himself to ask for it.

• What was the worst that could happen? He eventually realized he was concerned that his boss didn’t think enough of him, grow angry at him, or think he was “stupid.”

• Result: He realized that the more likely outcome was that his boss might actually want him to step up, and would likely be supportive. And even if this were wrong, how did fear of his boss compare to believing in himself?

“It might not work and I’ll embarrass myself”

A Major League Baseball pitcher talked with Shull about his inability to commit to learning a new pitch that might improve his game.

• What was the worst that could happen? He realized his fear was that he might not learn it or be good at it, and that he’d embarrass himself if he tried throwing it in a game.

• Result: He reminded himself that he didn’t actually have to try the new pitch in a game until he developed confidence in his ability to throw it. The upside was that if he DID develop confidence, it would add confusion for the batters he faced.

“My coach will be angry”

An Olympic snowboarder wanted to sit out a pre-Olympic competition, but was afraid to tell the coach.

• What was the worst that could happen? The snowboarder realized that it was fear of the coach simply being angry.

• Result: The snowboarder determined that the coach would get over it, and that the upside was the extra rest and lack of risk of injury before the biggest race of all was worth it.

“I’ll be upset that I didn’t believe in myself”

A portfolio manager at one of the world’s biggest hedge funds was down on the year, and holding back on a huge trade they wanted to make in December.

• What was the worst that could happen? He could wind up down even further if the trade didn’t work out. But, there was also the other side: What was the worst that could happen if he didn’t make the trade, and it turned out to have been a good one?

• Result: “I will be SO much more mad at myself, and feel SO much more like an idiot if I don’t listen to my conviction and it ends up working out – than I will be if I am wrong.”

Downplay the anticipated emotion

Look, I’m like the shoemaker whose kids are barefoot when it comes to telling other people to get over their anxiety and be more decisive.

But that’s also probably why I’m so open to these kinds of ideas, and so eager to seek out coaches and other professionals who can help work through it.

In short, when you’re faced with indecision, ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen. Then, look for the indications that (perhaps) it’s not your fear of the outcome that stops you from acting, but instead, your fear of how you might feel, if that worst-case scenario comes to fruition.

If you sort of inoculate yourself against that anticipated emotion, you might just be able to make the decision.

Give it a try? Why not? What’s the worst that could … well, you get the idea.

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Other things worth knowing …

• CNN: The U.S. and Iran are closing in on a memorandum of understanding that would open a 60-day negotiating window — during which the Strait of Hormuz would reopen while both sides work out final terms on sanctions and Iran’s nuclear program.

• Bloomberg: As Americans confront a surge in prices at the pump, another inflation wave is headed for the grocery store. "It's going to be a challenging year," said Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at the USDA's Economic Research Service. "Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it."

• Mediaite: Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said his department is "drawing up" plans to prevent inbound international flights from landing in what he called "sanctuary cities," especially Newark, New Jersey, because of ongoing protests at Delaney Hall, a detention facility holding up to 1,000 immigrants. He said local law enforcement is not assisting federal agents there.

• NASA: NASA awarded nearly $1 billion in contracts Tuesday to Blue Origin, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost, and Firefly Aerospace to build rovers, landers, and drones for the first phase of a permanent moon base near the lunar south pole. "The Moon Base will be America's and humanity's first outpost on another celestial world," said Administrator Jared Isaacman.

• CNBC: Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 sued to block the Trump administration's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund," calling it "potentially the most corrupt act of presidential power in American history."

• WUSA9: A wave of '90s nostalgia is headed for the National Mall this summer as part of a 16-day celebration marking America's 250th birthday. One of the highlights is a June 26 lineup billed as "I Love the '90s," featuring C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, and Young MC.

• The Telegraph: Restaurants and hotels in Italy have no obligation to serve customers tap water instead of bottled water, Italy's highest court has ruled. The decision came after a long-running legal saga that began in 2019, when a tourist asked for tap water during a stay at a five-star hotel in the Dolomites but was told she had to buy a bottle of mineral water costing €7.

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