Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
Before we dive into this week's Free for ALL Friday, let me tell you what I've been up to every other day this week.
I'm finally almost ready to launch three new newsletter-led media brands ... one at a time. They'll be on weekly schedules, at least to start.
Important: We'll begin by inviting the premium members of Understandably as early O.G. readers of these new newsletters while I roll them out. You’ll also have the opportunity potentially to be featured in them.
The three newsletters are:
Better52 (health and habits)
Inspired Business (business and professional/career case studies and inspiration).
Life Story Magic (my long-deferred dream of helping people efficiently capture their families' best stories).
This is getting a bit long, so let me tell you about Better52 today, and I'll provide similar introductions to Inspired Business and Life Story Magic next week. Then, we’ll launch "for real" at the beginning of next month.
Better52
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are two pictures of me, each taken exactly 52 weeks apart. Notice anything different?
It all started after a conversation with my doctor:
Doc: "You need to lose weight."
Me: "How much do I need to lose?"
Doc: "That depends. How long do you want to live?"
I took this to heart. After some missteps, I figured out a combination of things that worked for me. Result: the Bill Murphy Jr. writing this today is much healthier, and 50 pounds lighter, than the one who started this journey 12 months ago.
In the process, after years writing about healthy habits, tough choices, and science-backed solutions, I found my way -- at least for now.
It’s not just weight loss, of course. There is so much to explore in this topic — and so many chances to share other people’s success stories, too.
If it’s backed by intriguing research and helps people live better lives, so that they might be able to say 52 weeks from now, “I’m really proud of what I’ve done over the last year,” I think it’s fair game for Better52.
Basically, if you’ve liked the health and habits content I cover for Understandably, I think you'll really like Better52.
I’ll tell you next week about Inspired Business and Life Story Magic ...
Key point: Understandably will live on, although by necessity on the days when I'm publishing these other newsletters, I'll have to step back.
Signups and links will come shortly -- again, starting with premium Understandably subscribers. I feel like that's the least I can do, since you all made the last few years of Understandably possible!
(If you aren't yet a premium subscriber and you would like to be included, here's the signup link.)
(There are some readers who were previously subscribed at the premium level but who had to pull back. If you’re in that group and would like to be included, email me; I appreciate your past support and I wouldn’t want to leave you out now!)
To paraphrase Confucius, Warren Buffett, and my mom:
"The best time to have branched beyond Understandably and started some new newsletters was a few years ago. The second-best time is now."
With that ... let's do some Free for ALL. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!!!
17 Ways to Cut Your Risk of Stroke, Dementia and Depression All at Once
A new study identified overlapping factors that affect your odds of developing these brain diseases late in life.
New research has identified 17 overlapping factors that affect your risk of stroke, dementia and late-life depression, suggesting that a number of lifestyle changes could simultaneously lower the risk of all three.
Though they may appear unrelated, people who have dementia or depression or who experience a stroke also often end up having one or both of the other conditions, said Dr. Sanjula Singh, a principal investigator at the Brain Care Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital and the lead author of the study. That’s because they may share underlying damage to small blood vessels in the brain, experts said.
Some of the risk factors common to the three brain diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes, appear to cause this kind of damage. Research suggests that at least 60 percent of strokes, 40 percent of dementia cases and 35 percent of late-life depression cases could be prevented or slowed by controlling risk factors.
No Route. No Rules. All Passion.
The Speed Project is unsanctioned, dangerous and not exactly legal. But for the runners who land a coveted invite, it’s everything.
Hours before they started one of the most secretive and dangerous unsanctioned races in the world, several hundred runners were summoned to a meeting at a dark warehouse on the west side of Los Angeles. The front gate was locked, and one of the runners peeked through a crevice before knocking. “We’re here for the Speed Project,” he said in a confused tone, and a security guard on the other side opened the iron door. Everyone walked in, gathered materials and sat outside on wooden benches facing an empty stool.
When the man who invited them emerged in a black hoodie, black pants and black shoes, everyone grew quiet. Nils Arend sat on the stool and ran a hand through his dirty blond mohawk.
“Don’t film this,” he told them. “This is just for us.”
This, he explained, was a welcome to the Speed Project, a 340-mile relay race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with no designated route, no specific rules and only one goal: to get there as fast as possible.
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars
I like the idea of sending people to Mars. I enjoyed watching “For All Mankind” on Apple TV. But I can’t remember seeing anyone write such a passionate and sort of convincing argument that it’s just plain impossible and a fool’s errand even to try. This goes on a lot longer than I’ve included here. What do you all think?
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.
OK, so you still want to talk about Mars. Fine. Let's imagine that Mars's lack of a magnetic field somehow is not an issue. Would you like to try to simulate what life on Mars would be like? Step one is to clear out your freezer. Step two is to lock yourself inside of it. (You can bring your phone, if you like!) When you get desperately hungry, your loved ones on the outside may deliver some food to you no sooner than nine months after you ask for it. This nine-month wait will also apply when you start banging on the inside of the freezer, begging to be let out.
Congratulations: You have now simulated—you have now died, horribly, within a day or two, while simulating—what life on Mars might be like, once you solve the problem of it not having even one gasp worth of breathable air, anywhere on the entire planet. We will never live on Mars.
Groundbreaking New Images Could Change Cancer Diagnostics. There's Only 1 Problem
OK, the problem is that ICE arrested the one Harvard scientist who supposedly can interpret the data.
A groundbreaking microscope at Harvard Medical School could lead to breakthroughs in cancer detection and research into longevity. But the scientist who developed computer scripts to read its images and unlock its full potential has been in an immigration detention center for two months — putting crucial scientific advancements at risk.
The scientist, the 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, worked at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Lab until her arrest at a Boston airport in mid-February. She is now being held at ICE’s Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, and fighting possible deportation to Russia, where she said she fears persecution and jail time over her protests against the war in Ukraine.
“I would call it a grinding machine,” Petrova, who spoke with NBC News from the Louisiana facility, said about being detained. “We are in this machine, and it doesn’t care if you have a visa, a green card, or any particular story. ... It just keeps going.”
At Starbucks, the Chairs Are Coming Back. Can It Become a 'Third Place' Again?
The coffee giant's new direction is all about recreating its old, homey vibe.
Starbucks has meant many things to many people: A convenient caffeine pit stop on the way to work, a place to gather with friends, a cozy nook for writers and creatives. But in recent years, the stores have seemed rather void — of meaning, perhaps, but definitely of furniture. And customers took note. In January, one TikTok user posted that her local Starbucks in San Francisco had been renovated and had half as much seating as it used to. “Another third place gone to the wind of maximizing the ability to get out as many mobile pick-up orders as possible,” the user wrote.
They’re not wrong. It’s all part of Starbucks’s evolution from lone coffee bean seller to beloved cafe to global convenience chain. Now the brand is trying to adapt after complaints from customers — and even its own founder — that it had abandoned its homey vibe. Here’s how the coffee giant’s look has changed over the years, and what it says about our shifting social landscape.
Ryan Coogler's Deal on the Movie 'Sinners' is Freaking Some Studio Executives Out
Coogler gets back ownership of the Michael B. Jordan film in 2050, which feels like it's at least 20 other Hollywood apocalypses from now.
We can’t imagine it takes much to make a movie studio executive nervous these days. The box office is still sluggish in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns; not even superhero movies can act as guaranteed slam dunks; and you know that smug bastard Seth Rogen is out there somewhere, just waiting to turn your latest public fiasco into a TV show. No wonder the Hollywood elite are so skittish that something as interesting as Ryan Coogler’s recent deal for his Southern vampires movie Sinners has some of them screaming “Hollywood apocalypse!”
It’s like this: Coogler, who was fresh off a very serious run of hits—including Creed and two Black Panthers—when he was shopping the Michael B. Jordan project around, had a number of requirements when he looked to hammer out a deal for Sinners with studios. Some of these were big asks, but not outside the realm of possibility for a guy currently riding a series of major box office wins: Final cut of the movie, and first-dollar gross. (That is, Coogler starts getting a portion of the film’s profits from the moment it opens in theaters, rather than having to wait for the studio to make back its money.)
The real biggie, though, was one that more than one studio reportedly balked at: Coogler wanted ownership of the film to revert to him after 25 years.
This is unorthodox, to say the least; Hollywood studios derive a ton of their value from the vast libraries of films they own, so losing even one—and all its attendant potentials for licensing, sequels, redistribution, etc.—is usually pretty unthinkable.
Go Delete Yourself From the Internet. Seriously, Here’s How.
Find your data, request removal ... and repeat.
Google updated its “Results About You” tool, and using it has been an eye-opening experience.
It uncovered my home address, phone number and email on so-called people-search websites, along with my birth date and grandma’s name—even though I requested removal from some databases years ago. It regularly sends emails alerting me to more exposed data.
And yes, your info is out there, too. Plug your data into Google’s free tool—the company promises not to use it for any other purposes—and wait a few hours for the alerts to roll in.
Why care? Easily available personal data can expose you to junk mail, identity theft or impersonation scams. For executives, government officials and public figures, the stakes are even higher. Attackers use people-search databases to increasingly target them for harassment or violence, according to a 2024 report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Even private individuals have become victims of doxxing, the malicious sharing of personal info.
If you’ve ever gotten a speeding ticket, bought a home, answered a census survey or registered to vote, those details are now a part of public record. Credit card sign-ups, magazine subscriptions and warranty cards are other reliable sources of personal information.
Looking good (or a least better LOL!). As a premium subscriber for years now and a daily reader, I admit to some confusion about what looks like now 5 products you are producing - Understandably, Big Optimism and now 3 new ones. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t tell what the plan is - keep all; keep some; some free, some not; some come on one day and others another? Maybe at some point you can clarify (I am a little worried as a business person that you have too many products with little differentiation between). Life was easy before - I open and read. Do I now have to recall Tuesdays are Better 52, and it’s one I paid for? Appreciate any clarification.
..."the company promises not to use it for any other purposes"...and all these tech companies always keep their promises, right? Forget it. The goog is collecting data on you around the clock...as are many tech companies.