What they catch when I'm not teaching.
My son told his brother he was "slammed." He's in elementary school. Kids don't copy our lectures; they copy the exhale.
Issue #12 · Jul 26, 2026 · 4 min
Notes
Medicine Longevity I'm optimizing for a Tuesday in 2050
When my oldest is my age, I'll be in my early eighties. Once you do that math you can't undo it. It changes what fitness is for.
Issue #11 · Jul 18, 2026 · 4 min
Habits Is it cheating?
At a graduation party, someone whispered that a friend was "on the shot." Then she turned to me: isn't it cheating? A doctor's honest answer, at the table.
Issue #10 · Jul 11, 2026 · 4 min
Habits Willpower is a story we sell.
A patient apologized for her weight before I'd said hello. She'd rehearsed it. Medicine taught her that her body was a confession worth opening with.
Issue #9 · Jul 4, 2026 · 4 min
Medicine I count backwards for a living.
Count backwards from one hundred. Almost nobody makes it past ninety-four. A note from the far side of the drapes on what people surrender when they go under.
Issue #8 · Jun 27, 2026 · 4 min
Training The drug you build instead of buy
My friend spends $340 a month on supplements and doesn't lift. My neighbor Ray is 66, takes nothing, and could carry him up the stairs. Which one is medicine?
Issue #7 · Jun 20, 2026 · 4 min
Longevity The number that predicts your death.
Before surgery I ask what sounds like small talk: can you climb two flights of stairs without stopping? The answer predicts more than almost anything else.
Issue #6 · Jun 13, 2026 · 4 min
Training Train for your last decade.
Two 84-year-olds, same surgery, same morning. One walked in and cut his own grass. The other took three of us to move. The gap wasn't luck; it was thirty years.
Issue #5 · Jun 6, 2026 · 4 min
Slow Saturday
Monday through Friday I hold my breath for a living. Saturday is what I built to put it down. A case for why one slow day a week isn't laziness; it's the point.
Issue #4 · May 30, 2026 · 4 min
Medicine Research only
A lifelong needle-phobe was quietly injecting himself every week at a backyard cookout. What GLP-1s are doing to how we talk about our bodies in public.
Issue #3 · May 23, 2026 · 4 min
Life Resort people
By the pool I figured out there are two kinds of people on a beach vacation, and I don't think any of us can help which one we are. A small theory.
Issue #2 · May 16, 2026 · 4 min
Life The waiter doesn't remember me
Every year I order the same eggs from the same waiter. His name is Sam. This visit he didn't know me. A note about small rituals, and the way time works.
Issue #1 · May 9, 2026 · 4 min