Hi friend!

Here's your forever-free email I send at 7 am every Friday.

Each week, I send you something cool you can watch, read, use, and listen to.

If you dig it, or if you have any suggestions, reach out to me and let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you hate it, cancel anytime. If you hate me, cancel me anytime...

Here's something for you to...

1) watch.

The Dangers of Vegetable Oil

10 minutes from a fascinating and nuanced JRE episode with Dr. Paul Saladino--physician and board-certified nutrition specialist.

"He’s a leading expert in the science and practice of the carnivore diet, a food regimen to which Saladino credits numerous health benefits seen in the patients under his care."

Nutrition seems to be one of those fields which no one has any universal certainty. The major authorities on our health/nutrition seem to change their minds every 10 years (remember the food pyramid??) because this is such a complex and versatile topic.

I certainly don't have the money to eat only grass-fed meat for a month. But, starting about 6 months ago, I cut out factory farmed and processed meats from my diet. With things like ButcherBox and Farmer's Markets providing me well-sourced animal protein, I have noticed a significant increase in energy, body function, and cognition.

(Obviously, there are a number of other factors which have contributed to these positive changes as well.)

This was an awesome conversation. Listen to the whole thing on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify.

2) read.

Mr. Money Mustache (Blog & personal finance guide)

A practical, actionable, and user-friendly blog and guide to becoming financially independent. For real.

Peter Adeney and his wife retired from their jobs in 2005 at age 30 (both with average American incomes) by spending only a small percentage of their annual salaries and consistently investing the remainder--primarily in stock market index funds.

The MMM philosophy is not one of intense frugality; it is one of Minimalism: finding the minimum amount necessary in order to be happy and fulfill one's values.

We are obsessed with spending, but so rarely does it provide us lasting and sustainable happiness. We usually just get over what we purchase only to eventually desire more.

This blog is an excellent guide for anyone who wants less financial stress, by doing simple and real-world practices which can be started today. Each post is short. Plus, he provides resources at the end of each post.

How Mr. Money Mustache describes himself:

"I never understood the joy of watching other people play sports, can’t stand tourist attractions, don’t sit on the beach unless there’s a really big sand castle that needs to be made, [and I] don’t care about what the celebrities and politicians are doing. . . . Instead of all this, I seem to get satisfaction only from making stuff. Or maybe a better description would be solving problems and making improvements."

Some of my favorite blogs of his:

• Your Debt is an Emergency!!

• Killing Your Grocery Bill

• Frugality: The New Fanciness

Also, the podcast he did on the Tim Ferriss Show is a great, all-encompassing listen.

3) use.

Reclaiming Conversation (Philosophy/Practice)

While reading Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism, I discovered the work of Sherry Turkle. She's a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, and author of NY-Times Bestseller Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.

As many of my readers will know, I've been recently focusing on eliminating unnecessary technology usage from my life. After watching The Social Dilemma and reading Digital Minimalism (a harmonious combo), I started to take intentional steps to remove social media use from my day to day. I wrote a blog or two about it.

Terry's refreshing voice has made this transition away from "connection" and toward conversation MUCH easier.

Some of my favorite takeaways from her work:

• "Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood."

• “Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. We attend to tone and nuance.”

• “When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits.”

4) listen to.

A Pandemic of Incompetence (Podcast)

Episode #222 of Making Sense With Sam Harris, with guest Nicholas Christakis.

Nicholas just published his new book, Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live.

The two discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of what COVID-19 has done to us, how we have handled it, and what the future looks like.

This was sobering to listen to--definitely not a barrel of laughs. But it was incredibly helpful to hear objective perspectives on what everyone is doing wrong--the Right and the Left.

They talk about: where we stand on the cure for COVID-19, the failure of our leadership, moral panic and protests, the politicization of masks, the timeline for "normal life," and much more.

It's an action-packed hour of useful and unfortunate information.

Listen on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify.

Extras.

Favorite blogs.

Learn to Code

On learning scary things, becoming a God, and...China?

Should I Be Using This?

On removing social media from my life.

Quotes.

“Every label is a reduction of the endless complexity of reality.”

-Seph Fontane Pennock

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you preclude the ability of human beings to question and challenge precepts and principles—especially the ones declared most sacred, most unchallengeably true—you’ve deprived humanity of one of its most powerful weapons.”

-Glenn Greenwald

Thank you as always for the support, friends! If you enjoyed this newsletter, I encourage you to forward it or invite your friends to subscribe. I hope you all are happy and healthy!

Much love.

Dill 💙