The Expedition: A core strength test, alcohol and cancer, recommendations, and more
18 ideas to improve your life this month.
Housekeeping:
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Podcast/Audio Edition
The post
The Expedition is a monthly journey into thoughts, opinions, ideas, observations, studies, facts, figures, etc.
Good ones, insightful ones, interesting ones, weird ones, and ones you can use to live well and long.
It’s a roundup of all the worthwhile stuff I’ve discovered in the last month. The Expedition is a bit of an island of misfit toys. But, hey, the greatest journeys are winding.
This month, we’re covering:
A quick poll about a possible Two Percent Book Club.
Numbers on:
How much more likely cancer patients who choose alternative therapies are to die prematurely.
How Ozempic alters alcohol consumption.
Alarming changes in vitamin and mineral deficiencies in developed countries.
The whiskey market.
Time of a record-setting plank.
Female executives who played sports.
The truth about alcohol and cancer rates.
How Jimmy Carter highlights modern progress.
A new sports betting service designed to bleed you dry.
A case for rewatching old TV.
A test to see if your core is “strong enough.”
A study on the most hydrating drinks (a comparison of 13).
A gear recommendation.
A big new change in packaged food that may(?) make you healthier (it’s not the red dye ban).
Does social media accurately represent public opinion? A study.
Something fun and positive on the internet.
A good parting quote.
A quick poll
A few of you suggested we do a Two Percent book club. Here’s how it could work:
We select a book and take 4 to 6 weeks to read it.
We open a chat to discuss the book and submit questions about it.
I (try to) bring the author on for a video chat and ask them our questions.
I’m open to other ways to do it (suggest other ways in the comments).
Let me know if you’re interested and would participate:
Also, while we’re at it, feel free to email me any other ideas you have for Two Percent.
By the numbers
2.5
Times more likely people with cancer who choose alternative therapies instead of taking their oncologist’s advice are to die prematurely.
45
Percent of people taking a GLP-1 medication reduced their alcohol consumption. Meanwhile, 52 percent of GLP-1 users maintained their pre-GLP-1 level of drinking, and 2 percent increased their drinking.
10
Times more hospital admissions in England for vitamin and iron deficiencies today compared to 1999.
Micronutrients are critical, and there are a various reasons some people aren’t getting enough of them today. Read why we often don’t get enough vitamins and minerals here, and the Two Percent Guide to Vitamins and Minerals here.
4
Percent decrease in whiskey sales in 2024.
From 2015 to 2022, whiskey sales grew 3 to 9 percent annually. In 2023, sales began slumping, signaling and overall decline in alcohol sales.
4 hours, 28 minutes
Time that Tom Hoel held a plank for in 2015, setting a world record.
Good news: You don’t have to hold a plank that long for a strong core. In fact, going beyond a certain amount of time is basically “useless” and could detract from other fitness qualities, according to one renowned trainer.
I have a timed plank test below that tells you when your core is strong enough.
94
Percent of women in C-suite positions have played sports.
Roughly half of those female C-suite executives played at a university position. Only 3 percent of women in C-suite positions have never played a sport.
75
Percent of all alcohol-related to cancers occur in the 7.2 percent of drinkers who qualify as “heavy drinkers.” Heavy drinking is defined as consuming an average of more than 14 drinks a week for men or more than 7 drinks a week for women.
The thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote (caps and emphasis his):
“The Surgeon General declared ALL drinking=cancer. They can’t read their own data! Risk ratios are TINY for LIGHT drinkers, offset by a walk in the park listening to Rachmaninov. Cheers!”
My take: Drinking heavily is a bad idea for many reasons beyond just cancer. Light drinking is likely something you don’t have to freak out about.
11
Age that Jimmy Carter finally got running water and electricity in his home.
The Boston University anthropologist Luke Glowacki pointed out, “If you want to understand how profound the changes in the 20th century were, look at the life of Jimmy Carter. He grew up plowing fields barefoot behind a horse and didn’t have running water or electricity until he was 11.”
20
Dollars per month you’ll pay for a subscription to Draft Kings sports betting that gets you “better odds.”
Fact check: The better odds are for parlay bets, which rely on outcomes of multiple games and inherently have worse odds. The best odds boost in the Draft Kings subscription is for a parlay bet that includes 11 legs/games.
The odds of winning an 11-game parlay—if each game had -110 odds (standard for point spread bets)—are 0.08. This means you’d have to make that bet 1,250 times for it to hit once.
Saagar Enjeti, the journalist and host of Breaking Points who put this on my radar, put it this way: “This is just to bleed general population parlay addicts dry even more.”
A recommendation: Rewatch old TV shows
Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Paramount and other streaming platforms seem to be in an arms race to crank out new television shows.
Most of them suck. I feel like we’re begging to cede quality for quantity.
That was my conclusion after recently rewatching all seven1 seasons of The Sopranos.
The show is so much better than anything I’ve seen in the last five years—and it’s still relevant 26 years after its debut.
I’m now going to start rewatching all the classic shows. Next up: The Wire. Shiiiiiiit.
Is your core strong enough? Take this test.
Ok, so you don’t need to hold a plank for four-plus hours like the guy we mentioned above.
But what is a good standard for holding a plank? When I was an editor at Men’s Health, we spoke to a different thinkers and researchers and developed the following test.