The Expedition: March '26 Edition
23 new ideas to make you smarter, healthier, and wealthier this month.
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The Expedition is our 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 better and longer.
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.
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In this month’s Expedition, you’ll learn:
Numbers on:
Protein madness.
How many things a great doctor thinks will actually help you live longer.
The real number of people on Earth.
Why internet relationship advice needs boundaries.
The power of dogs for cancer survival.
A big advance in animal welfare.
A troubling reason two-thirds of young adults aren’t dating at all.
The greatest endurance feat ever.
March Madness.
The most Girl Scout cookies ever sold by one Girl Scout (and a ranking of Girl Scout cookies).
White noise and sleep.
New data on how fasting impacts weight loss.
How sugar affected the obesity crisis.
A no-excuses way to get in exercise when you have zero equipment and zero time.
New heart rate and lifespan science.
The science of why AI confidently makes shit up, and why “just build smarter models” won’t fix it.
The cheapest grocery stores in America: a power ranking.
The optical illusion that broke my brain.
Apple’s crusade against Two Percenters.
Important new data for parents who want to raise resilient kids.
Wild data on microbiome tests.
An important parting quote.
Let’s roll …
By the numbers
4
Grams of protein per serving a salad kit I recently bought advertised on its packaging.
We have apparently reached the point in the protein craze where we’re slapping protein counts on lettuce mixes. For context, bread has more protein.
5 to 10
Things that will actually make you live longer. The wise Adam Cifu, MD Tweeted this:
Up to 1 Billion
More people on the globe than we thought.
Scientists believed that 8.2 billion people live on this rock spinning in the cosmic abyss. But a new report found there are probably far more of us.
Researchers in Finland used new survey methods and think we’ve vastly undercounted the number of people who live in rural areas. There may be up to a billion more people on Earth.
50
Percent of all current relationship advice on Reddit is to “end relationship (break up/divorce/cut contact).” In 2010, that figure was only 30 percent.
From 2010 to 2025, researchers found, “Communicate” dropped from 22% to 14%. “Compromise” collapsed from 7% to 3%. “Give Space” fell from 25% to 13%.
I.e., Every category that requires the uncomfortable work of patience, communication, and accommodation lost ground every single year. We may need boundaries on boundaries.
Something making this worse: Reddit is currently the top source for LLMs. So if a person asks ChatGPT for relationship advice, they’re more likely to be told to end the relationship.
64
Percent lower relative risk of death in cancer patients who spent time with dogs.
The reasons are likely complex, but the researcher theorized that they include “increased physical activity, psychosocial support, and microbiome modulation.” Dog owners may also have a greater sense of purpose, a reason to get out every day, and more human interaction.
Of course, the findings could also be because the sickest people give up their dogs. But, either way, dogs are good. You can’t argue with that.
50
Percent of eggs are now cage-free. In 2012, that figure was 10%. This, Kenny Torrella, who covers factory farming for Vox, wrote, “shows just how much the (tiny) animal advocacy movement can punch above its weight.”
66
Percent of young adults are not dating regularly. The biggest reason: lacking confidence and not knowing how to approach possible dates.
Sociologist Brad Wilcox told the Washington Post: “If trends continue, 1-in-3 young adults will not get married. The implications are staggering: a generation of permanent bachelors—& bachelorettes—untethered from the bonds that have given life its deepest meaning.”
8,425
Miles a bar-tailed godwit flew from without stopping. That’s 13,560 kilometers for you readers who are not in the United States, the UK, Liberia, or Myanmar.
The bird, known as B6 and tagged with a tiny solar-powered satellite tracker, began its flight in Alaska and ended it in Tasmania. The journey took 11 days.
“This trip represents the longest documented non-stop flight by any animal,” said the USGS, which was part of the team of scientists tracking these birds.
1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808
That’s the odds of having a perfect March Madness bracket if you guess or flip a coin.
Your odds improve to an estimated 1 in 120.2 billion if you know something about college basketball and try to make educated picks.
100,000
Boxes of Girl Scout cookies sold by Pim Neill, a six-year-old girl from Pennsylvania.
Each Girl Scout now gets their own website for customers to place orders. Pim’s sales took off when she posted a video to TikTok saying, “Hi, my name is Pim. Do you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”
Also, an inarguable ranking of Girl Scout cookies:
Thin Mints
The cookie formerly known as Samoas
Everything else
67
Percent that wakeups decreased when an ICU added white noise to patient rooms.
Wakeups dropped from an average of 48.4 an hour to 15.7 an hour.
This is why I fall asleep to The Sopranos most nights. Nothing induced REM sleep like Paulie Walnuts saying, “Whattya hear, whattya say?”
0
Difference in the reduction in body weight, body fat, or metabolic risk factors among people who fasted compared to those who reduced their calories but didn’t fast.
Takeaway: Eating fewer calories than you burn drives weight loss and its beneficial impacts. Fasting can be helpful if it helps a person eat less than they burn, but it’s not any more beneficial than other methods that help people eat less.
15
Percent decrease in sugar consumption among Americans from 2000 to 2015. During the same period, obesity grew by about 15 percent.
This suggests sugar did not cause the obesity crisis.
2 to 3
Hours that Brady Holmer often spends riding his Zwift Ride bike trainer. He Tweeted:
People always ask me how I spend 2–3 hours sitting on an indoor bike trainer.
Have you ever sat on your couch and watched a 2+ hour movie?
Ok. So do that. And add a bike.
Lifespan and the human heart rate
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