Today’s newsletter is a simulcast. Or a backdoor pilot.
You know how Laverne & Shirley was a spinoff from Happy Days, and The Facts of Life was a spinoff of Diff’rent Strokes? (Do I know my audience or what?)
We’re kind of doing the same thing.
Because if you’ve signed up for the new Next Question by Life Story Magic newsletter, first, I love you. But second, you’re kind of getting the same thing in two places today.
But just today. Next week, it will spin off for good into its own thing. At least that’s the plan.
So if you’d like to be part of that journey, sign up! And if not, no worries. We’ll keep doing Understandably right here.
Key: If you already signed up for the Life Story Magic email but you can’t find it, please let me know by replying here. It might mean I need to fix something. I’ll be eternally grateful!
Tell me about your earliest memory
Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.
I’m Bill Murphy Jr. and this is something new: Next Question by Life Story Magic.
Each week, I’ll pose a question for you to think about, answer, and share here if you like. As an added bonus, you can send it to someone you care about and ask them to answer, too. (If someone did send this to you, sign up here.)
The questions are mostly the go-to ones I’ve learned to ask in about 100 live Life Story Magic interviews since last year.
My plan is to start with 13 weeks. If you stick with it and save and share your answers, you might find you’re well on your way to writing a life story.
How it works:
👉 I’ll give you the question below.
💬 Then I’ll show you some sample answers from people I’ve asked before (always with permission!). Sometimes, I’ll add some fun ones from public figures.
👀 At the end, I’ll give you a link to next week’s question if you’d like a sneak peek. If you answer ahead of time, your response might be featured in next week’s newsletter.
Pretty easy, right? Let’s see if it works as well as I hope. Here’s this week’s question:
🧠 Tell me about your earliest memory.
I guess technically that’s not a question; it’s more of a prompt.
(Fun fact: When I asked my wife to marry me, I also failed to phrase it as a question. It was more: “I think we should get married. Discuss.”)
But you get the idea.
Back to earliest memories: I like this question/prompt because it’s not something you think about every day.
You might even have to search for the answer. Often, it pulls up fragments — tiny little vignettes that we didn’t understand at the time.
Irony: I don’t usually ask it first. I like to build a bit of rapport. But almost all of the 700+ subscribers here on Day 1 came over from Understandably, so we already have rapport, right?
Loyal readers might recognize that I asked this question in that newsletter several years ago. About 100 readers replied, and the people quoted below said it was OK for me to republish their answers here.
These are edited for length; you can read them all here.
“I was 3 years old and my parents asked me to help select a name for my soon-to-be younger sister. ... I selected Kimberly for the girl’s name, and that is my sister’s name! I remember feeling very important. 🙂” — Nicole King
“I was 3 or 4 at my own birthday party in Martinsville, NJ. I remember my mom carrying me downstairs after a nap to join my own party and saying, ‘Look who I’ve got!’” — Arlene Milon
“My mom took me with her [to] go shopping for shoes. I was around 2 years old. The shop owner had a dog, what I learned later may have been a Norwegian Elkhound. Apparently that dog was the one that started my love of animals. ... I’m sitting here typing this with our two Miniature Australian Shepherds at my feet.” — Paul M.
“I was a baby and was having a nightmare that the mean ghosts from Casper were sawing my crib to get to me. I remember my mom picking me up out of the crib and hugging me and comforting me.” — Chris DeJohn
“My siblings and I got dropped off at the local swimming pool ... I would have been about 4. I got bored so I left. Stopped by a local park then started to walk the 7 miles back home. ... An off-duty RCMP officer came upon me about a mile out of town ... I knew not to talk to strangers, so he followed me along the highway until my parents caught up with him. Now in my 60s, I still like to walk and explore new places.” — Melissa Hunter
“My father was a photographer and took MANY photos when I was young, so it is possible my memories were actually from seeing those photos or at least prompted by them. I wonder how much that happens.” — Darrell Brotherton
“I grew up in the Louisville, Kentucky area. My first memory is of [trying] to pull the piggy bank off of the top of my dresser to add my money to a Kentucky Derby pool. I was almost 5. The dresser tipped over and I still have a scar on my forehead to show for the fall. Never been a big Derby fan since. :)” — Jackie Harbison
Oh, and I have three interesting ones from public figures:
“My earliest memory is of telling someone in nursery school that my father was famous, and not quite knowing why.”
— Reeve Lindbergh Brown, youngest child of Charles Lindbergh.“Being at my grandfather’s inauguration. My sister and I were in first grade, and we didn’t quite understand the significance. … We loved balloons and the parade.”
— Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of one president and granddaughter of another.“My earliest memory — I was probably 2 or 3 — is of being in my bedroom, complete with Baby Mickey Mouse bedding, forced to take a nap ... The worst part was not being taken seriously.”
— Jane Coaston, an opinion writer for the New York Times at the time she shared this. (I love the idea of an opinion columnist complaining that she wasn’t taken seriously as a toddler.)
O.K. Now it’s your turn. What’s your earliest memory?
(That link should open the comments at the new newsletter; please let me know if it doesn’t! First day and all that.)
Answer it, save it, share it in the comments or with friends and family — and maybe pass this free newsletter to somebody whose first memory you’d be interested to know. (Again, they can sign up here.)
I’ll dive into the comments and share my earliest memory to start us off.
Oh, and here’s a sneak preview of next week’s question: Check it out here, and maybe be included next week!
Other things worth knowing …
NYT: Little news trickles out from the besieged city of Oleshky, a frontline wasteland severed by mines and drones from the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine. Messages from some of the roughly 2,000 civilians who remain — including about 40 children — were shared with the Times: there is no food, no safety, and no escape. “In the autumn, we will definitely die,” one resident wrote this summer. “I am already dying. I am getting weaker with each day.”
WSJ: Flávio Bolsonaro dealt President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a bruising first-round defeat Sunday, finishing ahead of the leftist leader and putting Brazil’s right within reach of taking back power in Latin America’s largest nation. Bolsonaro received 47.3% of votes — short of the 50% needed for an outright victory — while da Silva got just 44.8%, leaving the 80-year-old incumbent fighting for his political survival ahead of an October 25 runoff.
Futurism: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world is going to have to suffer for the glories of AI. The world “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”
NPR: People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms.
WSJ: Here are the new economics of the Strait of Hormuz, where a wartime gold rush has pushed producers to swallow record freight costs just to keep crude moving. Shipowners are reaping some of the best returns the industry has seen in decades — up to $40 million per trip — and the sailors who make the dangerous crossing are being paid like never before.
NYT/The Athletic: LeBron James is now making four times as much from Polymarket as he is from playing in the NBA — $15 million a year against the $3.9 million he makes for playing for the Philadelphia 76ers. “To be clear, there is no evidence the Philadelphia 76ers had anything to do with the Polymarket agreement or that the deal breaks league rules.”
NY Post: How does a fashion influencer with no medical or nutrition qualifications bring down a $40 million diet empire with only a phone? Emily Gellis managed to do just that after accusing F-Factor dieting guru Tanya Zuckerbrot of poisoning people while subjecting her to years of relentless online attacks, calling her “the scum of the earth.” After a six-year legal battle, Gellis has now agreed to publicly apologize and pay Zuckerbrot $240,000.