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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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....

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...

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? 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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%...

“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...

"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....

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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:...

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....

“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...

“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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

"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...

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,...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

Earlier this year United Van Lines released their 45th Annual Movers Study, which reports on state-to-state migration patterns. Here's the map summarizing the 2021 data. Note the legend -- blue states had more people inbound than outbound, while yellow states are...

I tend to get appreciative comments when I share things I'm enjoying currently. In that spirit, here are five things I've been digging lately. 1. Garmin Instinct Solar Watch I was in the market for a new watch this past fall. In terms of activity and sleep tracking, I...

My basement man cave with my analog stereo setup Japanese Tea Ceremonies The Japanese Tea Ceremony is a ceremonial way of preparing, presenting, and drinking a type of green tea called matcha. The process of making the tea and its presentation is considered an art and...

One day in 1972, Dr. Henry Heimlich, a thoracic surgeon, was reading an article in the New York Times Magazine about accidental deaths and noted that choking was number six on the list. About 3,000 people died each year from choking. Being a thoracic surgeon, Dr....

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity. -A. Edward Newton, author, publisher, and collector of 10,000 books. In...

The four symbols on the inside sleeve of Led Zeppelin's fourth album I discovered the band Led Zeppelin when I was in middle school.  I was completely blown away. Prior to then, I had mainly listened to what my parents listened to: 1970s soft rock and oldies from the...

They probably aren't arguing about Euclid's proof of infinite primes Gregory Benford's 1980 science fiction novel Timescape contained this line: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” This is known as "Benford's Law of...

According to legend, 15th century Japanese Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke a beloved ceramic bowl. His artisans attempted a repair which he rejected. He instead asked them to mend the bowl using gold. Thus was born the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is as much of...

"To make a long story short" is a commonly used idiom that signals that the speaker is about to summarize the information they are about to tell you. And the information doesn't need to be a story -- the phrase is commonly used prior to conveying all sorts of things...

For me, 2/2/22 is a day of converging events. It's "2's day" -- a meaningless yet fun string of 2's in the date (even 02/02/2022 is fun). It's Groundhog day (maybe my favorite holiday). A day of snow in STL (a foot or so is predicted). And it is The IFOD's fifth...

Vesna Vulović 50 years ago, on January 26, 1972, a DC-9 exploded at 33,000 feet over East Germany with 28 people on board. A bomb in the cargo hold placed by Croatian terrorists caused the explosion. Shockingly, one person, flight attendant Vesna Vulović, survived....

Being a bit nervous giving a speech is a good thing We tend to think of stress as bad. And it can be, as too much stress is associated with various health problems. But stress has an upside: up to a certain point it is associated with higher performance. The figure...

A few nights ago I had a bad dream (I won't bore you with the details) and woke feeling fearful and disoriented. It was a crappy start to my day and I felt a bit off for the next few hours. We've all been there. But maybe bad dreams have a beneficial purpose. Research...

How many ways can you combine six LEGO bricks of the same size and color? Before knowing the answer I guessed a few thousand and thought I was probably overshooting. It turns out that I massively underestimated the answer. In 1974, for whatever reason, LEGO computed...

Heavy Metal is a sub-genre of rock music known for its “distorted guitar ‘power chords’, heavy riffs, wailing vocals and virtuosic solos by guitarists and drummers” (Oxford Music Dictionary). The origins of Heavy Metal trace to the late 1960s and early 1970s....

We're all aware of the placebo effect -- a beneficial effect that occurs even though the drug or procedure is a fake. It turns out that there is a lesser-known opposite to the placebo effect called the "nocebo effect" which can happen when a patient has negative...

As the president of a successful multi-family office, I get tons of e-mails and voicemails every day from salespeople wanting to sell their products and services to our firm or our clients: investment managers, IT consultants, recruiters, HR consultants, private jet...

Looking for a good book to read? I read 51 books in 2021. Here's a link to that list: Books Read in 2021 Here were my favorite six of the year -- four fiction and two nonfiction (the numbers are the order in which I read them during the year): 5. Agent to the Stars,...

ANSWERS:1. Run aground. 2. A run in her stocking. 3. Take the money and run. 4. Run it up the flagpole. 5. Also-ran. 6. Run a fever. 7. Running on empty. 8. Runs in the family. 9. Home run. BONUS: "Along the riverrun" from "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce. Source The...

We're in week 16 of the NFL season and playoffs are close on the horizon. We're also in college bowl game season. With that in mind, let's consider a key decision that faces coaches multiple times a game: should they go for it when faced with fourth down? On fourth...

https://youtu.be/eTLJQwcec_8 My dog, Dylan, loves to ride with his head out of the window of the car. Even if it's freezing out he still wants his head out in the wind. But if we're going over about 25mph, I need to have more than just his window down to avoid that...

What is Unclaimed Property? There is a huge amount of unclaimed property in the U.S. -- an estimated $49.5 billion of it is held by the states, waiting to be claimed. "Unclaimed Property" is money or other property (like an insurance policy) that belongs to you but...

Last week I was at a St. Louis Blues hockey game (we won) and the guy sitting behind me asked his granddaughter a question I overheard: "How thick do you think that ice is down there?" Stop and think of your own answer. The granddaughter replied, "well, the way you're...

Bottled Water When bottled water was first introduced a few decades ago I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard of. Why would someone pay a dollar or more for something you easily could get for free from a tap? Of course, I was horribly wrong....