Life Hacks

The counterintuitive reading hack that uses your eyes and ears at once

What if that audiobook had subtitles?

The modern world really has done a number on our attention spans, hasn’t it? We have to be told to “stay till the end” of a 60-second video, and we usually don’t! So it makes sense that more people say they are struggling with longer-form media. And it does not get much longer-form than a book.

A large share of people who enjoy this newsletter call themselves voracious readers, and about 70% think audiobooks count, too. But, like peanut butter and chocolate, what if audiobooks and ‘real’ books are two great tastes that go great together?

“Immersion reading” has entered the chat. As Erik Barnes reports, the idea is simple: read along on the page as you listen to the book. I can almost feel you rolling your eyes, GOOD readers, but think of it a bit like turning on subtitles for The Office when you can’t hear the dialogue. Readers report surprising changes in both speed and retention.

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Health

Is that gnarly juice cleanse detox worth the squeeze?

Peel the ‘healing’ patch off your foot and tuck in for some science.

I get it, and I’m right there with you. Sometimes you just don’t feel healthy in your body. Too much drinking, too many snacks, just too much of everything. The idea of a cleanse can feel like the siren’s call of a shower at the end of a long day. Force yourself to reset and get right by… forgoing food for a week and subsisting on raw pressed juice? Or choking down charcoal supplements? Harsh options, but you feel so much better afterward! Or… do you?

The idea of a detox might not align with the science of health. As Dan Baumgardt and Katie Edwards share in this story, you may be messing with a system that is already set up to take care of itself. In this deep dive, they cover what isn’t going to move the needle on your health and more importantly, what will.

And what did we learn?

Yesterday, we celebrated Norway’s impressive transition to EVs.

What’s keeping GOOD readers in old school internal combustion engines? Like many things, it appears to be all about the money.

• A short walk to the garage (I already have one). (11.3%)

• My old gas car is still going strong, but I'll go EV next time. (25.4%)

• Cost of entry. I just don't have money for an EV. (39.4%)

• I'm actually that guy that drives 300 miles a day. Honest. (5.6%)

• Is "I just don't like them" a valid answer? (18.3%)

A question worth considering is: what if we approached this from the other assumption?

And!

We had a bonus little micro poll yesterday. Do audiobooks count as reading? 

67.5% of you said yes, with comments pointing out that it’s especially good for those with vision impairments.

Culture

Leonard Cohen found peace by making a pilgrimage that few of us would

It’s a story that, fittingly, could be set to his own music.

Leonard Cohen, perhaps best known for the hauntingly beautiful and enigmatic Hallelujah, was internationally famous, critically revered, and culturally influential in 1994. He was also depressed, dissatisfied, and convinced his time as a musician had come and gone. So Leonard did what any of us would do in his position (checks notes), he moved into a monastery for five years.

As Mark Wales reports, Cohen received instruction from a monk named Roshi that changed his understanding of, well, everything, and he shares his experience in a recently rediscovered documentary video.

On January 22, 1984, Apple treated the world to a dark, dystopian vision of the future and one orange-clad, hammer-throwing woman who could break everyone free. The tagline, “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984,’” ends the spot, which was directed by Ridley Scott and aired 42 years ago today during Super Bowl XVIII. The commercial became a phenomenon, earning millions in free media coverage (Apple insiders later pegged the long-tail equivalent near $150 million) and helping push Mac sales to roughly 250,000 units in 1984.

Before its airing, though, the spot was controversial. The Apple board tried to pull it, and CEO John Sculley asked the agency to sell back the time. Steve Wozniak even offered to pay half the airtime cost himself if that’s what it took to run it.

Though it famously aired in 1984, there was a secret single airing just before midnight on New Year's Eve in Twin Falls, Idaho, seen by fewer than a dozen people. The sneak release was to make the ad eligible for the 1983 ad awards.

The product teased was the original Macintosh 128K, an impressive machine at the time but a toy by modern standards; counting both CPU cores, a modern Apple Watch Series 9 has about 10,000× the CPU throughput of the 1984 Macintosh and about 8,000× more RAM (1 GB vs. 128 KB). Interestingly, the screens are roughly the same resolution, though the original Mac was monochrome. The price for all this “power” was an inflation-adjusted $7,783.

And the media buy? A 60-second spot cost Apple hundreds of thousands in 1984; the same length in this year’s Super Bowl would run around $14–16 million.

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