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The most confident person in the room is invented
The exact salary "comfortable" costs in 100 cities, the voice actor blaming John Krasinski for modern commercials, and a cat named Lefty.
Greg Sullivan
August 14, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 5 minutes
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“But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack.”
― Brandon Sanderson
In this Friday issue of The Daily GOOD, psychologists make the case for inventing a braver version of yourself, SmartAsset puts a shockingly specific price tag on "comfortable" in 100 US cities, and one voice actor traces the sound of every modern commercial back to John Krasinski.
Well-being
Beyoncé had Sasha Fierce, Eminem had Slim Shady, and you could use one too.
My son and I are catching the new Spider-Man movie this weekend, and if it's as good as they say, I imagine he'll bounce around for a few days happily pretending to be the wall-crawling hero. Psychologists say that might actually be good for him. It might be good for the rest of us, too. Most people wait to feel brave before doing the scary thing, and Kat Grassetti, clinical director and co-founder at Monima Wellness Center, told GOOD that an alter ego works by giving an individual permission to act before their confidence catches up.
Child psychologist Rachel E. White found that kids who took on a character stuck with a tedious task noticeably longer than kids who talked themselves through it as themselves. Same boring job, same children, completely different stamina the moment one of them decided to be Batman about it.
Grown-ups run this play constantly. Beyoncé built Sasha Fierce to walk onstage so she didn't have to. Stephen Colbert spent nearly a decade inside a blowhard pundit persona who could say things the real Colbert never would, then quietly retired him once he no longer needed the armor. That retirement is the part most people skip, and, as Erik Barnes reports, Eminem found out what happens when Slim Shady sticks around longer than he was invited to.
GOOD reader Mary Lesslie sent in this idyllic image of sunset boating on her pond in Ottawa, Kansas. The clouds, the composition, the ripples in the water, the sun rays? What’s not to love?
Do you have a GOOD picture to share?
Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.
Smart starts here.
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Who's your emergency alter ego?For when confidence needs a costume. |
And what did we learn?
I had to ask: Which payphone-era survival skill do you miss most?
Memorizing phone numbers by heart (43.8%)
Making plans and just... showing up (15.0%)
Carrying exact change like it mattered (12.5%)
Ending a call with a satisfying slam (28.7%)
The vote says you miss memorized numbers, but the comments were all about that slam! Reader Lady Snow (m’lady, I appreciate your royal patronage of this most humble newsletter!) shared this story. “My sister and I got in a fight. I hung up on her with a slam. She called me back and yelled you can’t hang up on me like that. SLAM. So I called her back and SLAM. All of a sudden she was laughing and so was I. Neither of us could remember what the fight was about.”
Generations | Courtesy of Upworthy
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A voiceover artist says John Krasinski helped define the literal "voice" of a generation. | ||
Voice actor says John Krasinski is single-handedly responsible for changing how every TV commercial sounds | ||
The ‘Millennial Voice’ redefined TV voiceovers for a generation. | ||
By Evan Porter | ||
It turns out “the voice of a generation” isn’t just a metaphor. Different generations have different ways of speaking, and nowhere is it more obvious than in our television, commercials, and other pop culture. | ||
Even more interestingly, the way people talk in these cultural artifacts sometimes says more about culture in general than the way real people actually speak. For example, the classic “old-timey” accent you hear in films and radio from the early 1900s, called Good American Speech or the Transatlantic accent, wasn’t exactly a reflection of how real people talked. It was adopted by actors to sound more refined and elite, but it’s how many of us often remember the period sounding. | ||
So, too, do modern Millennials have their own distinct voice. And one voice artist says it’s all Jim Halpert’s fault. | ||
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Everyday Economics
A new ranking puts a very specific price tag on your zip code.
"Comfortable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting lately, so SmartAsset decided to define it in dollars. Using the 50/30/20 rule (half your post-tax income for needs, 30% for wants, 20% for the future), the firm calculated what a single adult and a family of four actually need to earn in 100 of the largest U.S. cities. In New York, one person needs $158,954 to clear that bar. In San Antonio, the same life runs $83,242.
As Jaclyn DeJohn, a certified financial planner at SmartAsset, lays out, income only means something next to local costs, and the Bay Area has made that its whole personality. Two working parents in San Francisco need a combined $407,597, with San Jose, Fremont, and Oakland close behind and Boston rounding out the top five at $368,742. Suddenly splitting a two-bedroom with a roommate starts to look less like a phase and more like a strategy.
But the ranking is not all bad news, and the cheapest end of the list is genuinely surprising. One major East Coast metro lands in the 10 most affordable cities, alongside a Texas suburb where the median household already earns 63.1% of what comfort there costs, the closest almost anyone in the country gets. It is a useful gut check whether you are eyeing one of the happiest cities in America or just wondering why your paycheck evaporates by the 20th.
Who’s a GOOD boy/girl?
Image of the Day has its own lane, but the pet pics keep arriving, and I am not made of stone. So every Friday, I’ll share one reader-submitted photo of a favorite pet. Want yours featured? Send it along.
Meet Lefty, whom I am guessing scored the fun name from that big white left paw. GOOD reader Mike Glasgow says Lefty is “contemplating Life, or possibly Patiently Waiting!”
On August 14, 1888, Oliver Shallenberger, chief electrician at Westinghouse, was granted patents for his alternating-current electric meter, a device that helped make it practical to sell electricity based on how much customers actually used.
He got there largely by accident. Months earlier, Shallenberger had been tinkering with a new lamp when a small spring popped loose and landed on a ledge inside it. Anyone else might have fished it out and moved on. He noticed the thing was quietly rotating on its own, moved by the lamp’s alternating electromagnetic field. Within weeks, he had turned that observation into a meter that used the same principle to measure electrical use.
This was a major piece of the puzzle. Early electric companies had experimented with everything from flat rates per lamp to cumbersome chemical meters. Shallenberger’s meter gave Westinghouse’s alternating-current system something it badly needed: a practical way to bill customers, helping make AC commercially viable as it spread across the grid.
The familiar spinning-disc meters that later appeared on the sides of houses worked on a related induction principle and lasted for generations. So while your summer power bill can’t be blamed entirely on one loose spring, the family resemblance is hard to miss.
Do you have something GOOD to share?
We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!
💬 From the group text…
Pottery, a kitten named George, a fantastic voice, and a great plug for the archery team’s trip to Botswana. I did not realize those would be the ingredients for my favorite social media post of the week, but here we are.
Join the Group Text! Send us your social media gold.
Until next week, go ahead and adopt an alter ego; it’s good for you!