The IFOD Archives
The Interesting Fact of the Day Blog
The Parenthood Happiness Paradox
They look happy, but are they really? Having Children Decreases Happiness About a decade ago, I heard Havard professor and happiness expert Daniel Gilbert speak at a conference. His theme was that having children makes us unhappy. He understandably got pushback from...
The Resilience Rule of 2: Why Less is More When Making Life Changes
I worked with a swim coach back in my 30s when I used to compete in triathlons. During our first lesson, he told me that we would focus on one or two things, and only when I'd mastered those changes would we move on to the next area of focus. He said focusing on more...
How a Fictitious Town Became Real and Then Disappeared Again
Sometimes, mapmakers make small, intentional errors in their maps to thwart their competitors from copying them. These "copyright traps" allow mapmakers to sue for copyright infringement if the intentional error shows up on a competitor's map -- it's like a watermark...
Beefcakes vs. Dad Bods: Decoding Female Attraction to Male Muscularity
I was traveling this week and visited my hotel's gym yesterday morning. There was one other guy at the gym, and he was a total beast. Big, bearded, and super muscular, he was throwing around 50-pound dumbbells (the heaviest in the gym) like they were nothing. I...
Are Jobs Just About Paychecks? The LEGO Experiment Sheds Light on Work Motivation
Work as a Disutility Classical economics views work as a "disutility"—a negative that requires money to entice you to undertake. In this view, work is the opposite of leisure (the more you work, the less leisure time you have), and what people really want is more...
The Paradox of Preferring Busyness Yet Needing Justification for It
Having an abundance of free time sounds great, especially if you feel like you are constantly short on time. But it turns out that we dread idleness. Having too much discretionary time is associated with a lower sense of well-being. In fact, as I have previously...
The Cruel Curve of Forgetting: We Rapidly Lose Most Memories (But We Can Fight It)
A friend recently recommended a book by an author whose previous book I had read. She asked me, "What was that (prior) book about?" My response: "Uh. . . umm . . . I can't remember." I had drawn a total blank -- I couldn't recall the main characters or even the plot....
No Ordinary Moments: Amanda Knox’s Powerful Epiphany on Finding Purpose While in Prison
How would you feel if your life was derailed through no fault of your own, leaving a chasm between the life you wanted to live and the life you were stuck with? (Maybe you are in this situation now?) This is what happened to Amanda Knox after she was wrongfully...
Leap Day Explained: 5 Fascinating Facts About February 29th
Once (almost) every four years, February has a 29th day. Today's IFOD is about why the calendar needs this extra day, as well as a few other little-known interesting facts about Leap Day. 1. Why Leap Days are Necessary To get the obvious fact out of the way, leap days...
The Six-Word Mantra That Fights Uncertainty
We move through life in a fog of uncertainty. Most uncertainty is no big deal. Not knowing exactly how the weather will turn out today, whether your morning commute will go smoothly, or what you'll have for dinner are minor uncertainties that don't cause much angst....
Why I Prefer eBooks Over Print Books
Amazon released its Kindle ebook reader in 2007. Back then, pundits predicted that eBooks would kill off printed books because of eBooks' lower cost, greater portability, and instant delivery for ebooks. But that hasn't happened. Ebooks have remained at 10%-15% of all...
Navigating Success: The Art of Wandering According to Jeff Bezos
Warren Buffett's annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders are considered "must-reads" by the business and investment community. And for good reason -- they are chock full of wisdom and Buffett's worldview. But there is another set of must-read letters: Jeff...
From Groundhog Day Merriment to Parenting Insights: Celebrating 7 Years of The IFOD Blog
It's The IFOD's birthday and today's IFOD is about why I started writing The IFOD. But first, Happy Groundhog Day! I love Groundhog’s Day. Not because I actually believe that Punxsutawney Phil can predict winter’s duration but because I receive merriment from the...
The 1984 Super Bowl Commercial That Changed Advertising
Apple released the McIntosh computer 40 years ago this week. It cost $2,495 (about $7,500 in today's dollars), had 128k of memory (or 0.000131 Gigabytes), and no hard drive (you stored files on a floppy drive). Yet, even with these modest specs, the computer and the...
This Single Stock Turns 31 Years Old Today – And Changed Investing Forever
Happy birthday to the SPDR® S&P 500® ETF Trust (SPY), which started trading 31 years ago today (1/21/93). It's the original Exchange Traded Fund or "ETF" and is a single stock that tracks all 500 stocks in the S&P 500. What are ETFs? ETFs are baskets of stocks...
Rolling the Dice on Reality: The Ludic Fallacy and Life’s Unpredictable Risks
The book that probably has had the biggest impact on my thinking is The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb (I've read it 3x). The main theme of the book is that important events that have the biggest impact on our lives, so-called "black swans," are unpredictable—things like...
Segal’s Law: How Multiple Sources Can Complicate Our Grasp on Truth
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. -Segal's Law I think Segal's Law is brilliant as it gets to the heart of the difficulty of having multiple sources of information. It's easy to believe a thing if you have just one...
Do You Really Do More Chores Than Your Partner? The Availability Bias Says Maybe Not
How much do you contribute to housework relative to your significant other? This question was the subject of a 1979 study that asked married couples to select on a continuum their relative contribution to 20 activities around the house. Things like cooking dinner,...
The Surprising Best-Selling Motorized Vehicle of All-Time
Since it first entered production in 1958, an astounding 110 million Honda Super Cubs have been sold, making it the #1 selling motor vehicle in history. And it's competition for the best-selling honor isn't even close. The best-selling car, the Toyota Corolla, has...
The Best Books I Read in 2023
In 2023 I read 66 books, 35 non-fiction and 31 works of fiction. Here's the full list: Books I Read in 2023. Here are my seven favorites in no particular order: Whiskey When We’re Dry: A Novel, by John Larison. In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney...
Dry January: How Giving Up Alcohol for a Month Can Improve Your Health
"Dry January" is a public health initiative launched by Alcohol Change UK in 2013 that challenges people to give up alcohol for 31 days. It's been a successful campaign as Dry January is now a household term across the globe, and in 2023, 15 percent of U.S. adults...
Is Being a Father More Fun Than Being a Mother?
Being a parent is rewarding, but it's also tough. And, not surprisingly, the rewards and frustrations of parenthood fall differently on fathers than on mothers, according to a 2019 research study. Gender Differences in the Parental Experience The researchers compared...
Things Could Be Better
Absolute vs. Relative Value We value things both absolutely (does this thing work or not?) and relatively (is this thing better than other things?). For example, you value your car based on whether it gets you reliably from point A to point B (absolute) but also as...
Would You Buy It Again? The Ultimate Life Decluttering Hack
Our Overflowing Closets Do you have clothes in your closet that you never wear? That old college hoodie, the dress bought on sale that isn't quite your style, those jeans that are just a size too small? Even though we never wear these unused and unloved items, it's...
Fame or Infamy: The Herostratos Syndrome and the Quest for Immortality
On the night of July 21, 356 BC, the arsonist Herostratos destroyed the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. As noted by historian Albert Borowitz, Herostratos was "a shadowy figure of whose life nothing is known before he was...
Think ChatGPT Was All Hype? Not So Fast – This Concept Explains the Rollercoaster
On November 30, 2022--one year ago yesterday--ChatGPT was launched. I started using it about a week after launch and was blown away. For me, it was similar to when I first used the internet for the first time back in 1995. Yet, here we are a year later, ChatGPT hasn't...
After 30+ Years with PCs, I Made the Leap to Mac – And I’ll Never Go Back
Until last year, I'd been a PC guy for my entire life. And I've had a lot of PCs: IBM Thinkpads, Lenovo Thinkpads, Dells, HPs, an NEC, and back in the day, a Compaq and a Gateway 2000. My wife has had Macs for years, and whenever I'd use them, I'd feel lost. They made...
The Illusion of Moral Decline
People often feel nostalgia for the past, claiming that previous times were better. A common view is that general human goodness and morality are declining -- people are less kind, more selfish, and less moral than they were in the past. It's as if they view the past...
Behind Vibram: The Unexpectedly Interesting Story of Those Grippy Soles on Your Boots
Have you noticed that most hiking boots/shoes have "Vibram soles?" You'll also find Vibram soles on work boots, trail running shoes, and even some dress shoes. What are Vibram soles and why should we care? What Is A Vibram® Sole? Vibram soles were born out of a...
Are First Class Cabins Driving Air Rage Incidents?
Sometimes air travel sucks. Delayed flights. Crowded airports. Stressed and testy airline employees. And planes always seem to be packed to the gills. Maybe it's not surprising that air rage incidents are up, with the International Air Transport Association reporting...
Tasmanian Devils, Rainforests, Art Museums, Oh My! Why This Island is a Must-Visit
My younger daughter studied abroad this past semester at the University of Tasmania and loved it so much she is transferring there to finish college. I've just spent the last ten days in Tasmania checking it out, and I can see why she loves it so much. This IFOD is a...
NASA’s Voyager Probes Carry Earth’s Mix Tape to Aliens – But the Batteries are Running Out
Voyager 1 and 2 are spacecraft that NASA launched in 1977 to collect information about Saturn and Jupiter. After making notable discoveries related to Saturn's rings, and Jupiter's atmosphere, Voyager 2 then flew by Neptune and Uranus and collected information about...
Prestige vs Dominance: The 2 Ways Humans Climb the Social Ladder
We're Wired to Care About Social Status We're wired to care about where we stand in the social pecking order: seeking and protecting social status is a primary human motivation. Like other group-living animals, our desire for higher status is an adaptive survival...
Prohibition Bootleggers: How Outrunning Cops Led to NASCAR’s Creation
From 1920 to 1933, federal law prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” in the United States. This dark period of American history is known as "Prohibition." Even though alcohol was illegal, the U.S. didn't become a nation of...
I’m 53 But Feel 35 – And Science Says That’s Good For My Health
Photo by Tom Hussey. Link. One of our interns this summer called me "Mr. Jennings" and the entire summer basically treated me like my age (53). It makes sense. He's 19, and his parents are about my age plus he's an intern and I'm president of the company. Yet, every...
The 4 Horsemen of Aging – And How to Outsmart Them to Add Decades to Your Life
Are you interested in not just living longer but living better? That is the primary topic of Dr. Peter Attia's excellent book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity. Dr. Attia is an interesting guy. He trained as a cancer surgeon, left medicine to be a consultant...
The Vegan Effect: How Labeling Food as Vegan Impacts Ordering
I've followed a vegan diet for 21 years. I love it when a restaurant menu labels items that are vegan -- it makes ordering easier for me. But it turns out that labeling items as vegan dissuades people from ordering those items. Researchers at MIT conducted a study to...
What’s Up With All The Carjacking?
I've been hearing about a ton of carjacking in St. Louis. Stories from people I know who know someone who was recently carjacked or witnessed a carjacking. Plus, there seem to be more media reports about carjacking these days. There Have Been More Vehicle Thefts and...
More Than Just Fun and Games: The 4 Types of Play
Our waking activities fall within the broad categories of work, leisure, and play. These categories are relative. What one person considers work, another might consider leisure or play. And the context matters: if you have to read a book for work or school, it might...
The Poster Child of Overconfidence and Greed: Reflecting on Lehman Brothers 15 Years Later
Lehman Brothers failed 15 years ago today. The Financial Crisis had been brewing for over 18 months, but Lehman's collapse was an epochal event that brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse. The root of Lehman's failure was excessive risk-taking....
Mystery Solved: The Real Reason Zebras Have Stripes
Ever since Charles Darwin and Sir Alfred Russel Wallace developed the theory of evolution, naturalists have been hard at work figuring out why various animals evolved as they did, including why zebras are striped. Over the last century, various theories have included:...
How Your Personality Predicts Your Life Events
Certain individuals are more likely to experience positive or negative events due to preexisting personality traits. In other words, personality is sometimes the cause of life events. Notably, people high in extroversion experience more positive events, and those who...
The Counterintuitive Wisdom of “The Geezers Paradox”
You don’t become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way to actually be cool. Call it the geezers paradox. -Author Unknown I'm 53. Not quite a geezer, but I can see my geezerdom from here. And now I do care less...
The Power of “Kieffer”: How Distanced Self-Talk Boosts Performance and Well-Being
About 15 years ago, I tried to change my name from John (common) to Kieffer (unique). It didn't completely take, but Kieffer lives on as my carryout name, and it's also how I refer to myself when I engage in self-talk. What do I mean by self-talk? Self-talk is our...
The Sheepskin Effect: Why That Final College Stretch Matters in the Job Market
Imagine that you are interviewing two candidates for a job at your company. They both went to equivalent-quality universities and had the same major. They achieved the same outstanding GPA and participated in similar activities. You like them both a lot. But there's...
Thinking Outside the (Pizza) Box: How Amazon’s Two-Pizza Rule Can Transform Your Meetings
It goes without saying that Amazon is one of the most successful companies in history. One of the keys to its success is that they keep their meetings small. "We try to create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas. We call that the two-pizza team...
Why You Might Be Smarter Than Your Boss
A recent study out of Sweden found that intelligence is correlated to higher earnings, but only up to a point. Sweden has compulsory military service for males, and intake into the military includes a battery of psychological and cognitive tests. The researchers...
Optimistic People Live Longer
Are you an optimist? If so, good for you. In addition to the positive emotion optimism brings, there are some nice benefits to being an optimist, including: More happiness; More stable personalities; Better marriages; Better interpersonal skills; Greater career...
The Empty Nest Happiness Boost
My wife and I became empty nesters three years ago when our youngest daughter headed off to college. We had a bit of trepidation. What would we do without having a child at home to focus our attention on? Would we have anything to talk about? Would we miss our kids?...
How to Do Nothing (Productively)
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. -Marthe Troly-Curtin Being busy can feed on itself until we feel guilty if we aren't being productive -- it can be like a drug that we're addicted to. Then, exhausted, we watch TV or scroll through social media. Not a great...
How To Master Your Goals: The Power of Rigid Planning Over Flexible Ambitions
Self-help books about developing better habits are all the rage. Some of the best ones are Atomic Habits by James Clear, How to Change by Katie Milkman and The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. These books are chock full of great advice about how to develop better...
What’s Your Positivity Ratio?
The age-old adage, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," is something we learn as children. While it's not a universal rule -- sometimes saying not nice things is necessary -- research on "positivity ratios" confirms there is truth to...
Turn in Those Rebate Forms!
Menards, the big-box home improvement store, advertises that everything in the store is 11% off. That sounds great! Who doesn't want to save 11%? The problem is that in order to enjoy the discount, you have to fill out a rebate form by hand and snail mail it with the...
The Anna Karenina Principle
Leo Tolstoy's 800-page masterpiece Anna Karenina opens with one of the most famous first lines in history: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. -Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina What Tolstoy means is that happy families share a...
How Often Do Passengers Die on Airplane Flights?
My wife, Tammy, was flying from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles this week after dropping my daughter off to study aboard at the University of Tasmania when a passenger two rows in front of her died. The decedent's wife told the flight attendants that he had taken...
Why Tipping Has Gotten Out of Control And What To Do About It
Tip someone who lets you pet their dog? LOL. This is a funny meme, but it captures how tipping expectations have changed I ordered takeout the other day from a restaurant's website. As I was checking out, I was prompted to leave a gratuity. I wasn't going to be waited...
Can You Have Too Much Free Time?
Do you feel like you don't have enough time in the day? Does your lack of time to get everything done leave you feeling stressed? If so, you're not alone, as about 70% of wage earners say they "don’t have enough time to be with their children, their spouses, or to...
My EV Experience at the One-Year Mark
Mr. Freeze One year ago, I bought a 2022 BMW i4 M50, which I've named "Mr. Freeze" (more on the name below). Over the past year, I've driven Mr. Freeze 6,519 miles with my longest trip being about 150 miles. Here's my perspective on owning an EV for the past year....
Why Aren’t Planes Getting Any Faster?
A TWA Boeing 707 Consider these two facts: In 1957, the first Boeing 707 took flight. It had a cruising speed of 600 mph (Mach 0.78). In 2009, Boeing unveiled its 787 Dreamliner. It has a cruising speed of 650 mph (Mach 0.85). Wow, two planes released by the same...
From Me to We: The Evolution of Success in Sports and Business
Michael Jordan Passing Individual Focus vs. Team Focus in Sports At a conference a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing a sports psychologist speak about his experience of playing Premier League football (soccer). In telling how his career progressed from...
We Can Tell A Person’s Social Class From Their Face
During the season 4 premiere of the HBO show Succession, Cousin Greg's date to Logan Roy's birthday party arrives carrying a Burberry tote bag that retails for about $3,000. To a family of Billionaires, counterintuitively the bag signaled she was of a lower social...
Causes of Death Vs. What We Google Vs. What Media Reports On
All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there. -Charlie Munger In 2019, students at the University of California San Diego examined whether the top causes of death lined up with what people search for on Google and what is reported by the media....
Four Exercise Myths I Learned About the Hard Way
I've exercised regularly since high school and I found that it has all sorts of benefits, including stress reduction/mental health benefits, added strength and endurance, and the overall feeling of being "in shape." But along the way, I've believed things that didn't...
What Would You Put On Your Centenarian Decathlon List?
Hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation) -The Who, "My Generation" Pete Townshend penned the above words when he was 20 years old (I wonder if he feels the same way now that he's 77). It's a common sentiment of the young (and relatively young)...
Should Fire Trucks Be Lime-Yellow Instead of Red?
As a child in the 1980s, something curious happened in the St. Louis area -- fire trucks switched from red to hi-vis lime-yellow. They stayed that way for about a decade and then switched back to red. Huh. This experimentation with a more visible color for fire trucks...
Did I Cause the Rams to Lose the Super Bowl?
The following is an excerpt from my book The Uncertainty Solution: How to Invest With Confidence in the Face of the Unknown. It's from a section about why investment experts and economists are so bad at predicting the future. A major reason is overconfidence, which is...
Axe Murderers: They Aren’t Common, So Why Do We Use That Phrase?
Shelley, a character in Booker Prize Winner Eleanor Catton's new book, Birnam Wood, points out to Tony, another character, that as far as he knows, she could be an "axe murderer." It's a curious phrase that is a common trope in culture and media (Exhibit A is the fun...
Do Clothes Make the Man? What A Jaywalking Study Teaches About Appearances
Imagine this scenario: you're a pedestrian waiting to cross a street, and there are no cars coming, but the indicator is displaying a "Don't Walk" image. Do you cross or do you wait? What if there is another person there -- would their actions affect your decision?...
Tend and Befriend: A Particularly Female Response to Stress and Threats
We've all learned about the "fight or flight response": In response to an event perceived as stressful or frightening, our sympathetic nervous system is triggered, which primes our bodies to fight or flee. We experience increased heart rate and respiration, increased...
Trends Aren’t Always Obvious: My Goose Story
It’s challenging to discern fantasy from reality in the early stages of an emerging trend or technology, and great ideas often seem outlandish near their inception. Here's a story about a flip phone and a goose that drives that point home for me. My Flip Phone Buying...
Roko’s Basilisk: Should We Support or Oppose Our Future AI Overlords?
In an IFOD a few weeks ago, I asked, "What if ChatGPT is like Calculators?" The point of the post is that instead of being threatening, AI may become a helpful tool, like calculators are, that will improve our productivity and allow humans to be more creative. Maybe....
The IFOD Hits One Million Page Views!
This weekend my blog hit a milestone: one million total page views! I began The Interesting Fact of the Day on Groundhog Day 2017, and since then, I've posted 958 IFODs (this is number 959). I am humbled that so many people have read my blog. Six years ago, the idea...
Where Do Lost Socks Go?
I love Bombas socks and recently treated myself to a few new pairs. Then the first time I washed them, one went missing. Ugh. Sucks. Unfortunately, losing a sock is common; the sock company Feetures says that socks go missing at the rate of 15 per person per year....
The Square and the Tower: How Networks are Shaping the Modern World
Historically, hierarchies -- empires, dynasties, governments, institutions -- were more powerful than networks. But networks have been gaining power and influence. Understanding the power differences between hierarchies and networks provides a useful model for viewing...
Nothing is as Bad or as Good as it Seems
In his book Algebra of Happiness, Scott Galloway notes that "nothing is ever as bad or as good as it seems" and sets this notion out as the formula above. While not an absolute rule, there's wisdom in his view. Raj Raghunathan, a happiness researcher at the University...
Were the Dark Ages Faked?
I love a good conspiracy theory, so I was excited to be told of one last week that was new to me: the "Phantom Time Hypothesis," which claims that nearly 300 years of history never happened. Under this theory, it's not 2023; rather, we're living in 1726. How fun! The...
What if ChatGPT is Like Calculators?
Handheld calculators were introduced in the 1970s. Here's what a popular mid-70s model looked like (for those of you of a certain age, this will be nostalgic): Canon Palmtronic 8 Mini Handheld Electronic Calculator Handheld calculators were a big deal. Prior to...
Happy Pi (and STL Day)!
Today is March 14th or 3/14, 3.14, or just 314. It's a day when all things Pi is celebrated. Now, hang on to your hat for some amazing 314 facts. Pi is a Really Long Number Pi, of course, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is an irrational...
To Improve Your Writing Avoid Weasel Words
Want to write better? Limit your use of weasel words. What's a weasel word? According to Josh Bernoff in his book Writing Without Bullshit, "A weasel word is an adjective, adverb, or noun that indicates quantity or intensity but lacks precision . . . they’re the words...
The Downside of the Quest for Financial Success
Most of us (all of us?) would rather be richer than poorer. This makes sense. Having more financial resources allows us to have nicer houses and cars, take better vacations, to access better education, and is associated with living longer. Plus, those with higher...
Cute Aggression: Why We Want to Squeeze, Smush or Pinch Really Cute Things
The other day, I heard someone say, "OMG, that puppy is so cute I could just squeeze it to death." On one hand, this is a really messed up sentiment. Why would you want to squeeze a cute puppy to death? On the other hand, I can relate because sometimes I also want to...
Heteronyms: Yet Another Reason that English is So Hard to Learn
There are about 7,000 languages spoken on our planet. English is the most widely spoken language in the world, with about 1.5 billion speakers. Note, however, that over 2/3rd of that number consists of non-native speakers. Check out this chart from the World Economic...
What Makes Us Happy (In the Moment)?
Determining what makes us happy is complex. Short-term unpleasantness (like studying for an exam) can lead to long-term satisfaction (being better educated or getting a degree). But life is a string of moments, so knowing what makes people happy in the moment is...
The Coming Demographic Cliff For Colleges
Being a wealth manager during 2008-2009 was unbelievably stressful. As I write in my upcoming book, "The Uncertainty Solution," the Financial Crisis of 2008 was "a watershed event that sliced my life into two parts and changed who I am professionally and...
Happy Groundhog Day and The IFOD Turns Six!
Groundhog Day is my third favorite holiday (behind Thanksgiving and Christmas). I love it not because I believe that Punxsutawney Phil can predict winter’s duration but because I think the notion that a large rodent has weather-predicting abilities is hilarious. It is...
Happy Backward Day!
Today is National Backward Day, a national holiday that has been celebrated since 1961. The point of Backward Day is to look at how we usually do things and consider doing them backward. My morning guided meditation -- the Daily Calm on the Calm app -- mentioned the...
The Surprising Origin of The Beatles Song “Come Together”
Come Together is the opening track on The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road. It's pretty catchy and is considered one of the band's top songs (Rolling Stone ranked it their ninth best). The song's origin is interesting. Its genesis involved Timothy Leary....
Is Barbed Wire The Greatest Modern Invention?
I'm on a ski trip, and one of my ski buddies claims that barbed wire is the most important invention of all time. While I'd put indoor plumbing, glass, and the clapper above barbed wire, he's not crazy to think that barbed wire ranks as a hugely important invention....
Do You Have a Job, a Career, or a Calling?
The Mega Millions jackpot for Friday's drawing is $1.35 Billion. If you won, would you quit your job? How you answer this question depends on your work orientation: whether your work is a job, a career, or a calling. Work as a Job A job orientation is a transactional...
Can You Inherit Fears and Phobias?
Human fears fall within two broad categories: prepared and learned. In other words, we are hardwired to have some fears while others must be learned through personal experience. Many fears are primarily learned. For instance, a plane flight with horrible turbulence...
Are New Year’s Resolutions Stupid?
Are New Year's Resolutions stupid? NO! New Year's Resolutions are a powerful way to make positive changes in your life. For why this is the case, this IFOD will draw heavily on the book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be...
One Dietary Habit That Will Improve Your Health and Help You Live Longer
This picture was created with OpenAI's Dall E 2 Artificial Intelligence program. I asked it to "paint a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, and beans." What's the one dietary habit? Eat more fiber. There is a lot of confusing information about what healthy eating looks...
Favorite Books Read in 2022
So far in 2022 I've read 69 books: 37 fiction and 32 non-fiction. Here's the full list: Books Read 2022. All but one was published in 2022. Below are my six favorites in no particular order. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel, by Gabrielle Zevin. This was...
Does the Constant Snapping of Photos Undermine Our Happiness?
The rise of the digital camera and then cameras on our phones has led to an explosion of picture-taking. Having a high-quality camera in our pockets has led to our snapping pictures to memorialize or share nearly every experience we have. Here are some stats: on...
Five Holiday Gift Ideas
Christmas is less than two weeks away and Hanukkah is in six days! Are you done with your shopping (or maybe you haven't started)? Fear not -- below are some ideas that may make good gifts. 1. Charging Station for Electronics Modern life involves charging a lot of...
Why Soccer Goalies Should Just Stay in the Middle Against a Penalty Kick
Soccer goalies almost always dive to one side or the other when defending penalty kicks. Instead, they should just stay put. This is the conclusion by Israeli academics after analyzing 311 soccer penalty kicks in their fantastic paper "Action Bias among Elite Soccer...
Why Do the Wealthy Live Longer?
There's a strong correlation between wealth and longevity. For example, a study out of the University of Wisconsin that tracked nearly 5,500 adults over 24 years found that every $50,000 of additional net wealth accumulated in midlife was associated with a 5%...
The World Cup is a Drag on Worker Productivity
“Amongst all unimportant subjects, football is by far the most important.” -Pope John Paul II If you happen to live in Saudi Arabia, you have an unexpected day off today: King Salman declared Wednesday a national holiday in celebration of the Saudi soccer team's...
Do You Know What These Common Acronyms Mean?
"An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in NATO, but sometimes use syllables, as in Benelux. They can also be a mixture, as in radar." Source....
The Different Types of Sports Fans
ABC's "Wide World of Sports" was basically ESPN before ESPN was a thing. Starting in 1971, the intro to the show featured clips of various sports with announcer Jim McKay saying the below: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport…the thrill of...
The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
About ten years ago, I, and other members of our management team, read a book that changed the course of our firm: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. In Drive, the author lays out research detailing why traditional methods of...
Toothaches and Gratitude
Yesterday I had a root canal. The first question the endodontist asked me was, "what caused your toothache?" My response was, "well, I think my body is falling apart, and this is just the latest thing to go wrong." LOL. The whole experience (including the weeks of...
The First Item Purchased on eBay and Other Unknown Firsts
Some firsts are historic and widely known, like the Wright Brothers' first flight, Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, Edison's light bulb, and Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call. Most firsts, even when they signal the introduction of important new...
The Abilene Paradox: How Group Decisions Can Go Off The Rails
The Abilene Paradox refers to the inability of groups to manage agreement. Coined by management professor Jerry Harvey, it is based on an ill-advised car trip. Here's the story: In the 1960s, on a scorching hot afternoon in Coleman, Texas, Jerry, his wife, and his...
Whatever Happened to Hitchhiking?
One of my favorite books is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Notably, the cover of the fictitious guide contains the admonishment, "Don't Panic!" which is especially good advice these days.) In 1979 when it was published, hitchhiking was still a thing; now...
More Money Is Spent Eating Out Than At Grocery Stores
When I was a child, we ate almost every dinner at home; eating out was a treat. Our family wasn't unusual -- eating in was much more common than eating out. But things have changed. Americans now spend more at restaurants than they do at grocery stores. A study by...
Are Mushrooms Nutritious?
I know a lot of people who don't like mushrooms. I get it. The idea of eating a fungus does seem weird. Yet humans have been eating mushrooms for thousands of years. Fruits and vegetables are obviously good for you, but how about mushrooms? Does eating a fungus have...
Beware the False Consensus Effect
A few months ago my nephew sent out the following question to a text group: Out of these topics, which of these are the most important for you? 1. Pro life/ pro choice 2. Climate change 3. Wealth inequality 4. Social justice(Racism/sexism/etc.) 5. Gun...
A Shockingly Small Percentage of Books Account for Most Sales
The "Big Five" publishing companies control approximately 80% of the trade book market. These five are Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. Two of the five, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, are in the...
What’s the O-Negative of Music?
Fleetwood Mac O-negative blood is considered the "universal blood type" because O-negative blood can be safely transfused into a person with any other blood type. I'm a big fan of music (here's my IFOD on the 100 Greatest Alternative Bands) and for about a decade I've...
Beware of Franklin’s Gambit when Making Decisions
Benjamin Franklin is famous for many things, including inventing the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin Stove. Plus, he was the only Founding Father to sign all four of the key documents establishing the U.S.: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty...
How Important is Your Choice of College Major?
Washington University A particular passage in Catcher in the Rye has stuck with me over the years. It's the part where the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is discussing with his favorite teacher, Mr. Antolini, whether he should go to college. What Mr. Antolini tells...
Same Same but Different – Things We Think are the Same but Aren’t
Sweet potato on the left, Yam on the right Today's IFOD is authored by my friend and colleague, Klaire Whiteside. I think it's super interesting! One of the many perks of working at St. Louis Trust & Family Office is FREE SNACKS. Earlier today as I enjoyed a...
A Simple Hack for Building Positive Habits
I have a list of things that I know I should do, but I can't seem to make them a habit, such as flossing, meditating, and doing yoga every day. I also have a list of things I want to stop doing, like late-night snacking. My lack of success in these areas results in my...
Do Religious People Tip More?
Does consistent church attendance make people more helpful and generous? It's a hard question to answer because researchers don't have an opportunity to follow around people of varying religiosity and score their behavior. We each likely have our own answer to this...
The Beauty of Unmeasurable Goals
Huh. I would have thought that the world's greatest dad would have a "dad bod." Once when I was out and about with my daughter Claire we saw a guy with a t-shirt that said "World's Greatest Dad." Claire asked me, "Do you think that guy is really the world's greatest...
A Dose of Peloton Wisdom
I've written previously about the cult of Peloton and how I'm a card-carrying member of said cult (speaking of cults, this book on them has been getting great reviews). Peloton instructors are top-notch, and in addition to leading you through challenging workouts,...
How Do Drugs Get Their Complex, Hard-to-Pronounce Names?
I've long wondered why generic drug names (and some brand names) are so complex and hard to pronounce. I'm always impressed when the pronunciation rolls off a doctor's or pharmacist's tongue. How do these drugs get their complex generic names, and how do they get...
The Most Deadly Predator in the World
Recently I read in Maria Konnikova's excellent book The Biggest Bluff about the concept of predator success rate and which predator is the most deadly. Predator success rate is the percentage of time a predator catches and kills prey that it stalks. While we might...
Why The Future of Cars is (Probably) Electric
At the turn of the 20th century, a third of all cars on the road were electric. Electric cars had advantages over their internal combustion engine rivals: According to the US Department of Energy early electric cars "were quiet, easy to drive and didn’t emit a smelly...
What is the “Wicked Bible”?
In 1631 Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, royal printers to King Charles I of England, printed about 1,000 copies of the Bible that had a curious mistake in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 20: 3-17. Here's the list from the Wicked Bible:...
How to Live Longer
Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, one of the world's foremost experts on aging, thinks aging is a disease that someday can be cured. In the meantime, there are treatments that can add years (or even decades) to our lifespans. The information for this IFOD....
Failure is Just the First Step on the Road to Success
“Success is failure in progress.”-Albert Einstein In 1953, fledgling start-up Rocket Chemical Company's three employees sought to create a rust-prevention and degreaser for the aerospace industry. Their first 39 "water displacement" formulas didn't work but the 40th...
Doing Without Doing: The Law of Reversed Effort
“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed.”― Aldous Huxley I've recently written a book which will be published in the spring of 2023. While overall the experience has been deeply satisfying, at times it was incredibly...
What is “Chekhov’s Gun?”
A few weekends ago, I watched Lethal Weapon 2 with my daughters and nephew. Early in the movie the main characters, Martin Riggs (played by Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), are startled by a worker at Murtaugh's house using an air gun. Riggs and Murtaugh...
Six Books That Have Had a Huge Impact on My Worldview
I love to read both fiction and non-fiction (and do so in about equal amounts). While I think fiction is hugely important and beneficial, non-fiction books have had a bigger impact on how I view the world. (For the IFOD on the special benefits of reading fiction,...
Ikigai — The Japanese Approach to Cultivating Life’s Purpose
What's your life's purpose? It's a big question, and finding an answer is hard. It's common to think of purpose with a capital "P" -- an overarching reason for being. The Japanese have a different approach -- they look for "purposes" with a little p rather than a...
Does “Hair of the Dog” Work as a Hangover Cure?
Here's my now 13 year old dog Dylan as a puppy. Back in the middle ages, there were all sorts of crazy and ineffectual medical treatments: blood-letting to cure sickness, drilling holes in the skull to treat head pain and other brain maladies, and the use of astrology...
Why It’s Important to Know the Difference Between Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
Source By the time you're an adult, you've acquired a ton of knowledge, from interesting facts about the thickness of hockey rink ice to knowing how to safely drive in the snow. How have you learned all that you have? Some things you learned formally through explicit...
How to Battle Decision Overload
That's a lot of colors to choose from! [This IFOD is guest-written by my friend Jill Gaither, brilliant polymath and autodidact. She lives in St. Louis and is the Regional Business Manager for Aadi Bioscience. She has a love for reading and a degree in journalism. You...
Improve Your Google Searches With These Seven Tricks
The main way I've always used Google is to go to the homepage and just type in what I want to search for. For example, if I want to read reviews of Joy Division's 1979 album "Unknown Pleasures," I'd just do this: That search gave me 5.6 million results. The top...
The Unknown Story of America’s First Swimming Champion
Charles Daniels I just finished a book written by a friend of mine: The Watermen: The Birth of American Swimming and One Young Man's Fight to Capture Olympic Gold. It is along the lines of Boys in the Boat and Unbroken -- a story of perserverance and grit. America is...
Jordan Binnington on How to View Life’s Challenges
On January 2, 2019, the St. Louis Blues had the worst record in the NHL. Five days later rookie goalie Jordan Binnington made his first start and went on to lead the Blues to their first Stanley Cup. He's a quirky guy (as most NHL goalies are). In the midst of the...
Most Things We Worry About Never Happen
Yesterday I was on the phone with my wife and I accidentally hung up on her. She was on her way home from running an errand so I didn't call her back thinking she'd be home soon. A few minutes later she called me and said, "you didn't call me back -- I was worried you...
What’s the Problem?
About a decade ago my firm bought a CRM software system (CRM = "customer relationship management"). After we implemented it, we noticed that almost nobody was using it to record client interactions or to keep track of to-dos. Given that was the main reason we bought...
The Fire That’s Been Burning for 60 Years
Smoke rises from a crack in the road in Centralia Pennsylvania in 2010. Centralia, Pennsylvania was a mining town home to over 1,500 residents. The town had a problem: illegal trash dumps that created odors and rat infestations. To solve the problem, in 1962 the city...
The Mysterious and Amazing Number 23
My eldest daughter, Claire, turns 23 today. On one hand, it totally feels like 23 years have passed. Yet, her birth also seems like it just happened. The vagaries of time are interesting. Claire hates to flip the page to a new age. When she turned four she cried...
YouTube is a Big Deal
YouTube is awesome. I use it to watch music videos, movie and TV clips, cat videos, tutorials for fixing things, and all sorts of things people post via social media. Speaking of cat videos, check out this adorable one: cats sharing food. YouTube is huge. It is the...
How to Train Yourself to Like Something You Don’t Enjoy
We've all been there: contemplating doing something that we think would be good for us but not liking the particular activity. A great example is running. I love to run (but I'm not supposed to anymore which makes me sad). I've talked to all sorts of people who'd like...
Do Women Really Talk More Than Men?
That women talk more than men is a common stereotype. A 2007 research study on this question summarized the usual view and its source: The stereotype of female talkativeness is deeply engrained in Western folklore and often considered a scientific fact. In the first...
Video Killed the Radio Star
"Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n' roll." Those were the first words said when MTV went live on August 1, 1981 at 12:01 a.m. On the screen was an image of an astronaut planting a MTV flag on the moon. The first video played was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the...
The Trouble with Expectations
Years ago I attended a leadership and self-improvement retreat where one of the leaders said something that knocked my socks off. He said: "expectations create unhappiness." I've thought a lot about this and I think he's correct. Think about when you've been angry,...
Six Life Lessons From Dogs
Dylan at 4 years old (he's 13 now) -- He's an Andorran Retriever.* Lately, I've been paying special attention to my dog, Dylan, and noticing how he approaches life. From my observations, I think there's a lot we humans can learn from dogs about how to live our lives....
Plant Roots Can Be Thousands of Miles Long
A previous IFOD covered the Coastline Paradox -- the notion that you can't really know the length of a border or coastline. That's because the size of the ruler you're using matters: as the size of one’s ruler gets smaller, the length of the coastline or border gets...
Don’t Tear Down Chesterton’s Fence
I've been on quite a few charitable boards over my career. Early on, when I joined a board I was an eager beaver. Right away, I typically had all sorts of suggestions about what the organization should start doing and stop doing. But with rare exception, my ideas...
52 Life Thoughts
I'm 52 today. Younger than some. Older than most. Older but not old? Regardless of the categorization of my age, I have 52 thoughts about life I’d like to share. Things I've been collecting for some time now. 1. Life is both tragic and hilarious. Sometimes at the same...
The Third Leading Cause of Death May Surprise You
Charlie Munger is quoted as saying, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." I guess Charlie should avoid the hospital given that's where about 68% of Americans die. Based on the causes of death listed on death certificates, the top...
How Many Thoughts Do We Have A Day?
Our minds are constantly abuzz, flitting from one thought to the next and back again. How many of these flitting thoughts do we have in a day? Research out of Queen's University in Canada found that humans have around 6.5 thoughts per minute or about 6,000 per day,...
What We Can Learn From Albuquerque’s Big Miss
I've never been to Albuquerque, but I feel like I've been there after watching all five seasons of Breaking Bad. It seems like a lovely city and a nice place to live. As of 2022, the Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area ("MSA") is about 900,000 people, making it...
How Many Birds Die By Crashing Into Buildings?
Being a bird probably is pretty cool -- mainly due to the whole flying thing (eating worms, not so much). But being a bird has its downsides, namely all the manmade stuff they crash into. And then there are the cats. Here are the non-natural causes of bird deaths each...
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