A fancy robe nearly destroyed a philosopher's life.

In 1765, Denis Diderot's financial means went from meager to extravagant. Soon thereafter, he came to own a fancy scarlet dressing robe.

Diderot liked the status that the fancy robe conferred on him but quickly felt the remainder of his possessions could not compare.

So, in quick succession, he purchased a new leather chair. New shoes. An elaborate wooden desk.

All of which seemed appropriately matched to his lovely scarlet robe.

Or, perhaps more important, appropriately matched to the type of person who wore such a robe.

I call this phenomenon the Scarlet Robe Effect: A single status purchase can create a new identity. Each new purchase chases the identity that the last one created.

In today's piece, I explored the perils of bought status games and shared a simple question you can use to cut through the noise:

Would I buy this thing if I couldn't show or tell anyone about it?

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

Everyone's asking: how do I stand out in the AI era? A 1968 German mathematician's traffic paradox holds the answer.

When everyone floods the new shortcut, the fast lane becomes the slow lane.

Here's how to find the open road... 

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

In the early 1900s, an aging Japanese steam train engineer named Yasoichi Hori was growing increasingly concerned about his deteriorating eyesight.

Hori's job relied on his ability to quickly read small track signals at a distance while moving at a high rate of speed. The cab he worked in was at the back of the locomotive, behind a large boiler, which meant that he often had to lean out a side window to catch the signals coming up on the track ahead.

In the small, cramped cab, it was just Hori and his fireman, who was responsible for shoveling coal into the firebox while also keeping an eye on the signals.

Hori's worst fear was missing or misreading a trackside signal, an error that could lead to a catastrophic crash.

Worried that he could no longer trust his eyes, he began doing something odd...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

I think I'm having a midlife crisis."

That's what my friend, who I'll call Joe, said to me at dinner a few weeks ago. Joe is in his early-40s. He's had a good career on a steady rising track in the world of finance. He's married with two kids, ages 7 and 4. He lives in the suburbs outside New York and commutes into the city for work.

In many respects, I think of Joe as something of an archetype of the dream. Good job. Good family. Good life.

So, naturally, his words caught me off guard...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

Why do you value the things you build yourself so much more than anything you can buy?

In this episode, I share a personal story from my first apartment and break down the fascinating science behind why effort is the secret ingredient to a meaningful life.

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

"So, what's your 5-year plan?"

That was the question posed to me by a mentor in January 2021. At the time, I was about seven years into my career, on the "track" in finance.

Climbing slowly up the mountain, I had started to wonder if it was the wrong one. I just didn't seem to have the same energy for the work as most of my colleagues.

All of the future mountains I envisioned were (at most) one degree of separation from the mountain I'd been climbing.

As I reflect back on that moment now, in July 2026, at the endpoint of that five year plan my mentor asked about, I have an interesting realization...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

On January 27, 1986, just 16 hours before the Space Shuttle Challenger was set to launch, an engineer named Roger Boisjoly presented data showing a catastrophic risk with the shuttle's O-rings in cold temperatures.

His warnings were overruled. The next morning, 73 seconds into its flight, the Challenger exploded, killing all seven crew aboard.

Sociologist Diane Vaughn coined the term Normalization of Deviance to describe what had happened—not a single moment of negligence, but a slow, systemic drift where unacceptable practices became accepted because they were repeated without immediate consequences.

In this episode, I explored how this concept applies directly to our lives. The minor repair you ignore. The hard conversation you avoid. The missed workout when you don't feel motivated. No explosion. No catastrophic failure. So you convince yourself they're fine.

But each day, with each tiny slip, you reset your own standard to a new, slightly lower baseline...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence.

The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information or evidence. It's not that they lack conviction in their beliefs, but more so that they've developed enough self-awareness to understand what it would take to change them.

The world will pressure you to stubbornly resist such change. To cling to every belief as though it might be your last. But there's immense power in resisting that pressure.

I like to think of it as a software update. The update is never perfect, but it's an improvement upon the older version. It's a reminder that the goal isn't to be right, but to slowly, consistently get closer to the truth.

When I'm getting to know people, I often ask them what they've changed their mind on recently. It's an interesting way to go deep in a conversation.

A friend recently flipped the question on me.

After a bunch of thought and reflection, here's my reply:

7 things I've changed my mind on recently...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

Last week, I ​wrote a piece​ about reinvention. Specifically, the myth of too late and how to reinvent your life at any age or life stage.

It clearly struck a chord.

I received thousands of replies in the days following the piece. One reader reply referenced a two-decade-old newspaper advice column segment that had resonated on the subject.

Me being me, I decided to try to find the column. After all, if something was still etched into my reader's memory 20+ years later, it must have been good.

​I did​, and it was even better than advertised...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

In colonial India, a bounty on cobras was supposed to reduce the snake population. Instead, people started breeding cobras for profit — and when the policy ended, they released thousands into the streets. The result? More cobras than ever. 

This is Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And it's not just a business problem — it's happening in your life right now. 

From sleep scores to morning routines to money, the things we measure can quietly start to own us. Here's how to spot it and fix it...

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This episode brought to you by:

• DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
• Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
• Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
• Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.