Three quick stories to start your week.  The first, a year of reading recklessly a story about writers who are readers first and how much some of us love to be told what to do.  After that, we jump into the science of a cold plunge, and finally, Matt Damon explains how the movie industry changed in less time than you were in the cold water. 

A new Substack newsletter from Adam Sternbergh called Bang Flag launched this year.  Sternbergh is an author and journalist, and I was referred to his newsletter from somewhere, and he describes his newsletter as something about reading and sometimes writing.  That's all I needed; I should have hired Sternbergh to write the tagline for With A Shout; I often refer to myself as a professional reader.

My reading habits have transformed over the past several years for reasons I continue to explore.  I avoid being told what to do at the most basic level.  Many other forms of media, especially TV, always leave me feeling like someone is trying to tell me what to think, feel, and do.  Most of which I can't entirely agree with as I watch it.  Reading slows my processing down, and with all the new technology, I can follow a story or a writer or go deeper into an idea as I'm reading through it.  Similar to many other things I do, I feel better when I'm reading.

Back to Sternbergh, part one of his short essay on reading habits is also full of questions and second-guessing.  We both have enormous TBR (To Be Read) piles, and his writing on his year reading will be more thorough than my half-baked thoughts as I read his article and everybody else's.  Read On!

The WSJ has a video on the benefits of acting like a polar bear.  Journalist Daniela Hernandez takes it upon herself to plunge into the story.  Based on her reporting and the popularity of cold baths, there is a lot of science behind the cold plunge, but the science in this story is new; long-term health benefits or how often you should ice was more challenging to determine.  Ice and cold therapy have been used to reduce inflammation, which can be an added benefit to the cold plunge, but Hernandez talks to a scientist who talks about brown fat?

Turns out we have both white fat and brown fat.  White fat is bad and is persistent in people who are obese.  Brown fat is better; it can work with your metabolism and helps you when you can activate it.  How do you activate it?  Jump into a cold bath, and your body will produce Norepinephrine to respond to distress and start burning calories and fat, mainly brown fat.

More research and time will need to prove any long-term benefit.  Finding a cold plunge location is also challenging, especially if you don't live in the North.  A polar bear challenge to kick off your new year or to celebrate another milestone is enough for us; we will wait for more science to tell us if we need to install an ice bath next to our treadmill coat rack!

In under two minutes, Matt Damon tells the story of how DVDs allowed independent movies to flourish in the 90s.  And why they disappeared in the 00s.  Hint, so did the DVDs…

Coming on like three days.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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