It’s the newest trend on Tik Tok and doctors are now having their say

(SHE is a Utah State student)

What could go wrong?

And what it means for the rest of us

Ever sniff your smartwatch?

An amazing mountain climbing feat that nobody’s celebrating.

We’re getting into the weed(s) at the US Open.

We’re all under the control of BIG SANDWICH.

Donald Trump strikes a pose for the ages

I get all fuzzy when an expert is brave enough to say ‘em.

It’s not just me. NOBODY can.

After 50 years… listen to the LAST words spoken on the moon

Who’da thunk he’d be taking his talents to Sandy?

Could it get any worse for tourism?

They’re ready to swoop in on Lahaina… and chase out the pesky locals

Let's hope not.

In the famous words of Rocky "(...) it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

Remember the idea of giving 110%? A thing of the past. Say farewell to Hustle Culture.

Carrying a water bottle by your side is the new hot trend.

When the price of eggs and milk has dropped, why hasn't the price of cake? Answer? "Rockets and Feathers".

Elizabeth Braley explains why... and you won't believe this.

The saying goes  "Another year older, Another year wiser." But when does age hinder your ability to serve in politics?

The stigma attached to mental health therapy is disappearing.  Especially in the dating world.

Get ready for another member of the family. Amazon is working on an update to Alexa to give it a dose of AI.

Elon Musk is changing the name of Twitter to "X"

One of baseball's most imperfect players just knocked it out of the park. So to speak.

We all know that having a child is expensive. But did you know where you live could play a factor?

Before you donate your body to science... better listen.

Jeff rails against the worst baseball team in history, and their new future in sin city.

This is the story of someone who has honed the craft. This is the story... of  "Mr. Beast"

A mid-life crisis is always expensive. But when Jeff Bezos is involved, it quickly gets out of hand.

If you quit drinking diet coke... your jump shot might get better

Intermittent Fasting. Ever heard of it? This form of dieting has some benefits to your health and the practice goes back further than you might expect.

China slowing economy has left many young graduates bitter.  But they'd better not show it.

Jeff tackles the not-so-clear answer of if you should refrigerate the golden gooey goodness

Do you know who it is? Can you guess?

Let me read you the tag on my T-shirt.  Put on my reading glasses.   It was made by a company called Blue 84.  52% cotton 48% polyester. Made in Mexico RN#99659.  There are four little emojis.  An iron.. a cup.. a triangle with an X through it.  And a record player.  I have no idea what they mean… but THIS IS THE LAW. The shirt or blouse you’re wearing has to have a tag or label.  Your pants your dress… your underwear must be tagged with its fiber content… country or origin…and the name of the business that made it.  It’s the law… and violators face stiff fines.  These laws have been on the books for more than 50 years. But do you know what’s not required on the label? The size. Because size is subjective.  Anyone who shops Amazon knows an XL from China is really a large... or maybe a medium.   But for all the rules and regulations... there’s no need for big clothing tags with little letters anymore.  The fashion industry wants to save itself the aggravation… and just attach one little QR code on shirts pants skirts and blouses. You boop it with your phone… and it leads to a webpage with fiber content… care instructions… maybe even a coupon… if you’re scanning it at the store. Ralph Lauren is a leading advocate for QR codes… instead of the big itchy tags. But don’t a rules change anytime soon.   In Congress… they can’t even agree on a budget.  And politicians love labels.

It’s been years since American Idol actually mattered.  In my mind… it’s a show full of warbling wannabee divas … who can stretch out the word you… and make it last for 10 seconds of scales and trills and drama …and okay whatever.  But this season was different.  Iam Tongi is from Hawaii… moved to Seattle… and then straight into the hearts of viewers… because his talent isn’t flashy finesse.  It’s the emotional connection he creates.  This was his audition…  a little biography… …and then this. Just 18 years old… With his simple singing voice… he left the celebrity hosts in tears…  On social media .that clip is the most viewed audition in Idol’s history.  And in a season where this Tv show that’s way past its’ prime.  Where they’d resort to any trick to build interest…   for goodness sake… King Charles did a cameo the day after his coronation…  Nice down-to-earth fella… right? Contrast that artifice with the joy of Iam Dongi singing straight from his soul…. and you have American Idol’s new champion.  He doesn’t look like a star… he doesn’t sing like a diva… but for authenticity… he’s off the chart.  And on the chart.  This afternoon he's #1 on iTunes.

Cottage cheese ice cream.  Frozen curds of bland… in a creamy swirl of honey.  Delicious ice cream and chocolate chips punctuated by little icy curds of flavorless lumpage? Does it sound good?  Are you wondering why anyone would go through all the trouble to make such a weird ice cream recipe? I’m glad you asked.  The short answer is … what goes round comes round. Back in the 1950s… cottage cheese was a diet fat.  Your grandma would eat gobs of the stuff because it’s low in fat and has protein.   In the 1970s… when you go on a diet… you’d load up on cottage cheese to the point where the average American ate five pounds of curd…  per year.   But tastes change and cottage cheese consumption fell for decades … to the point where each of us - on average - ate half what they used back in the day.  Over the generations… the snow white curds were slowly replaced by low-fat yogurt.   But these kids! Always seeking the more vintage experience… they’ve circled back to what your grand… and great grandma knew back in the days of black and white tv… that cottage cheese is good for you and is being reborn as a superb health food.  Consumption is rising both straight out of the container… and as part of exotic health recipes… like Cottage Cheese Ice Cream.  Not to lose weight!   Millennials add the white clots of cottage cheese to Scrambled Eggs… and whip up a dip for their chips… always looking for that little hit of protein. Making use of grandma’s bland little secret… and adding a swirl of peanut butter.  a drizzle of honey… and a millennial twist.

Here at work, I said something about work-life balance.  And one of my friends said … I don’t do work-life balance.  I do work-life chemistry.  Because there's always changing mixture of work and life Sounded profound… but chemistry can be dangerous A lesson learned by a couple of  CEO’s who added just a little too much work… and not enough life to the chemistry equation.   —  This is Andy Owen… the CEO of a fancy furniture company….called Miller Knolls.  Times were tough … in an employee Zoom meeting… here are her comments about not getting bonuses… After the internet blowback… the CEO apologized.  Meantime in Draper… they’re doing damage control at Clearlink… where CEO James Clarke complained about quiet quitters in a staff meeting…  — It’s a problem.  But to motivate them… he told them what a good employee looks like in hard times. The best employee sells the family dog… to make the boss smile.  Clearlink has instantly become a case study of how not to motivate the staff.   These particular CEOs don’t understand what any fourth grader knows.  If you mess with chemistry…Kaboom.  stuff blows up.

Humility oozes from every pore.  And why wouldn’t it.  Michael Block is just a golf pro at a public course in California.  Here he is doing a commercial for the gift shop  He makes his living giving lessons for $150 bucks an hour.  And if you don’t follow golf.  There are loads of club pros just like him.  Good enough to teach but not great enough to show up on TV.  Til last weekend. Michael Block qualified for the big PGA Championship… and by luck of the draw… he was paired with one of the greatest…. Rory Macelrow.   Block was stunned he’d be breathing the same air. —  are you serious Out on the course… he blossomed…playing top-notch golf.. keeping up with the greats … while blinking back tears.  Sunday… he even had a hole-in-one.  But not the kind where the ball dramatically inches toward the cup.  No … Block’s hole-in-one was a slam dunk that started on the tee… and divebombed straight into the hole.  Listen to his reaction… — he can’t believe it.  As he walks toward the green… he still doesn’t believe it  — Back at his home golf course in California… they watched the hole-in-one on TV and went insane. In the golf world... today… Michael Block is suddenly a household name after living every "weekend duffer's dream… pushing back tears of disbelief…. In four short days.. the guy who hustles golf lessons for a buck-50 an hour… earned $280-thousand dollars… and the hearts of weekend duffers all over the world.  And the best part.  After it was over Michael Block was invited back for NEXT year’s PGA championship.

This is sorta satisfying in a world where nobody takes cash.  According to Credit Karma… Gen Z is discovering the joy of the crisp green "hold-it-in-your-hand”  bona fide Dollar Bill.  Apparently…. these younger adults are a bit befuddled by the game of life… in this electronic world…   and they’re coming to realize that nothing says “dolla dolla dolla… quite like an actual dollar.  buck a bill a greenback a physical financial rectangle with George on the front ..and the words in g-d we trust on the back.  Think about it.  These people ages ..say 18 through 26… are experiencing financial baptism in a world of runaway inflation … soaring interest rates… and a stock market that bounces around like a ping-pong ball.  Sure… when you’re young…  the standard solution is to put everything on your credit card.  But then you learn the rude truth about compound interest.  At the end of the month if you can’t pay up … at 21 percent interest… you’re well on your way to the poorhouse.   Or as Ray Charles put it… the Bills are all due... my baby needs shoes… and I’m busted. So.. Credit Karma claims… more than half of people in Gen Z have discovered cash stuffing to make ends meet.  At some point… you did this.  They cash this week’s paycheck… put the cash toward the rent into one envelope.  For the car payment in another and so on.  That way… as egg prices spike through the roof… or gas lurches past 4 bucks… you got the basics covered. Cash stuffing.  A technique perfected at the kitchen table …  by many-a-family over the decades.  And rediscovered by the youngest adults… who don’t actually pay for anything with cold hard cash.  They just use it to navigate a cold hard world that doesn’t seem to make any financial sense.

I’m not exactly sure why baby naming is headline news here in Utah.  Maybe because we have more babies to name…  but whenever the list of top baby names of the year comes out… we pour over the list looking for the names of our own kids and grandkids… first to see if they made the list… and second check whether our offspring were given a name that’s unique enough. It’s a cutthroat business… and here’s a perfect example.  A family member of mine had selected a name for her first baby.  There was no baby.  Just a name and a gleam in her eye.  But if she was ever bestowed with a baby girl… she landed on the name "Kiara with a “K.”  She told everybody the good news.  There’s a name! For whenever a baby might show up.  Itd’s Kiara. You know?  The next week… one of her friends got a new dog and named it Kiara. That’s ice cold. But in the cutthroat game of baby naming… no harm no foul… because the dog was Kiarra with 2 “r’s.” Their friendship continues.  And years later when a baby did come… they named it Ava.  Which is usually in the top 20… but this year… boys and girls… there was only one new name added to the top 10 lists...  it’s Luna.  A name that laid dormant for 82 years…  til Harry Potter featured a rather looney girl named “Luna Lovegood.”   Which sounds like it belongs to one of those websites blocked by the state  - but the name really took off when model Chrissy Teigan named her baby Luna in 2016and now the name’s in the top 10. And it’s also one of the most popular names… for dogs.

I have a granddaughter who loves spoiling movies on me.  Her greatest moment.  Papa… I don’t know how to tell you this… but I saw Avengers End Game Last Night. I say how was it? She says… I don’t know how to tell you this but Iron Man died. Beautiful  Wait.   Did I spoil it for you?   Come on… the movie’s four years old. But in any event… spoiling a movie or TV show on someone is ok according to new research published in the journal Applied Cognitive  Psychology.   The researchers found that if you spoil a TV show for someone… it doesn’t make the show any less enjoyable. The subjects were shown an Alfred Hitchcock TV Show called Bang You’re Dead.  It features a little boy who thinks he’s pointing a toy gun at everyone in town.  Has no idea it’s loaded.  Participants were asked… every time someone on the show said the word “Gun” … raise your hand. The NYTimes says that as the suspense mounted… people were so absorbed… they forget to raise their hands.  Would the little boy press the trigger?  People who had no idea.  And people who were told what would happen…  same result.   Both groups were so engrossed… spoiling it made no difference. But at the same time spoilers… are very. bad. etiquette. Alexa.

The dating world is brutal.  If you’ve been married for a couple of decades… you probably only have a hint about how insane the world of swiping right or left is… are some of the words we’ve learned from dating apps. Ghosting.  Catfishing.  When somebody creates a fictitious persona with fake beautiful pictures…. lures you in… then leaves you hanging. There’s also breadcrumbing.  Where you send short flirty messages — not because you want to meet the person.  But just to keep them on the hook … in case you’re desperate at some later date. It’s a brutal world full of collectors… those are the ones who try to make enough matches each day to boost their self-esteem… but they have no intention of following up.  If you’ve been married for decades… what your kids go through on these apps is nothing like asking Daisy Mae to the square dance.  And a new term I just learned… drove the point home.  I mentioned ghosting a moment ago.  Now denizens of the dating app are getting zombied.  Getting Zombied is described perfection by singer-songwriter Mariel Darling.   — The guy takes you out … and evaporates.  Months later suddenly he’s back… pestering you to go out.  Most dating experts say it’s not a good idea to dig up a zombie.   Just as its not a good idea to ignore the beige flags.   That’s when it’s pretty clear from their profile that they’re BORING. One could argue that even before the internet … dating always had its share of drama.  But now the drama moves at the speed of light.

Are Utahns the hardest-working people in America…. or Not?  I’m looking at two different studies that supposedly answer the question… and I can’t figure out if I’m living among people who toil til their fingertips are nubs…. or if we’re the biggest slouches in America. I do know this.  US News and World  Report just named Utah the best state in the Union… we’re number one according to their subjective list.  Number 1 at what?  Everything put together.  They’ve decided what we already knew.  This is the best place in America to live and work. So let’s celebrate the honor. Now … let’s get back to work to talk about work.  I’m looking at two different studies…. both rank the states by how much time residents spend working. Wallet Hub announced we work less in Utah than in other states. We’re number 32… Officials say that’s awesome.  We work fewer hours .. to become the number one state.  This leaves us more time for family and the great outdoors.   Yay! But here’s another study that says the direct opposite.  Business Name Generator collated statistics to determine that Utahns work more hours per month than any other state in America.  We work MORE.  An average of 126 hours a month.  It comes out to precisely 30 hours a week.  Which happens to be the exact point at which part-timers would become eligible for healthcare. But it makes us #1 at working  Or #32.  The hard work is figuring out the real answer.

Almost exactly a year ago… I did a minute about a new app taking high schools and colleges by storm.  It’s called BE REAL … Unlike Instagram where people post pictures of their make believe glamorous and glorious lives… BE REAL was the antidote.  The app would command you “take two pictures right now.”  One with the lens on the back of your phone … and one with the front.  And you would post them.  You’d see people without beguiling makeup.  Without bulging muscles and perfectly coiffed kids.  Gen Z couldn’t get enough of reality and authenticity. And then… because they have the attention span of a flea… they all got tired of it. A year later… the New York Times reports BeReal is crashing.  It was at the top of the app store as recently as July … but no more.  Seems GenZ has seen enough messy bedrooms, lousy food, and plain jane selfies,    In the times Callie Holtermann reports that at first high schoolers loved seeing their friends with all the artifice and glitter shaved away.  But after a while… endless pictures of wet hair, overcooked pasta, and laundry piles became boring… compared to the beautiful, vainglorious lives of Kardashians on superyachts, and perfectly lit buff bodies…   on Instagram. So it seems Gen Z is ready to flirt with reality.  But when it’s time to settle down… they want fake. To which every one of them is now saying … OK Boomer.

It’s possible that civilization has run out of ideas for food.  Instead of dreaming-up new dishes… big food is resorting to resizing to make the register ring.   As eating turns to grazing throughout the day… Nestle is now selling what it calls selling smeals.  Smeals.  Small meals… or in their case pint-sized snacks.  Often mashups... Cocoa Puff popcorn. Or Dr. Pepper Cotton Candy.  In business.. they call it brand extension but it’s proof we’re out of ideas. However. Look what’s comin’ down the road.  A futurist named Tom Cheesewright… yes… a guy who makes his living predicting the future… says within 20 years… we’ll be eating radically different … pizza. He says the lack of water for agriculture could lead to pizza dough that uses crushed-up insects for filler.  Do I need to say “lots of protein?” Your bug pizza crust will be topped by lab-grown meat… the cheese will be charred by laser zapped.  And the craziest part.  Not the first place I’ve heard this.  The pizza won’t come out of the oven…. but from a 3-D printer… that’ll squirt tiny bits of ingredients to build a pizza one tiny glop shot from a printer head at a time…. then it’s laser grilled. While it’s weird a guy named Tom Cheesewright … is making predictions about pizza. For now, I think I’ll stick with swiss miss lucky charms cereal… and Slurpee donuts

2020 it was the Great Resignation.  In the face of the pandemic record numbers of people took this job and shoved it.   Next … at the tail end of the pandemic we got quiet quitting.  Where you lope through the workday expending the minimum amount of oxyge. but still collect a paycheck. Now…. the new trend in work life balance… have you heard this? Bare Minimum Monday.  Here’s the young woman who dreamed up the term.   --- That is Maris Mayes… who creates Tik Tok videos… but probably didn’t today. See on Mondays… she oh so gently eases back into the concept of working. — You’re probably saying … structure… flow… what?  There’s a world of people who gotta be at work by 9… because they pay me to do the job.  It works… but nobody’s pulling a fast one on you.  They actually call it to work.   But in a country filled with burnt-out employees on the precipice of quitting… even the HR Department is getting in on this.  I read one website for HR Professionals that suggests companies lean into Bare Minimum Monday to help cut down on burnout.  One red flag… the boss should never show up Monday morning ready to implement a new genius idea dreamed up over the weekend. That … is poison.   I could offer more suggestions and a funny ending.  But I’ve done enough. And it’s Monday.

An era is coming to an end.  Richard Nixon started up the first relationship between the United States… and Communist China.  Back then… a backward 3rd world country… where running water was a luxury. As a gesture of friendship… the Chinese government loaned us a pair of zoo animals never before seen in the United States.  A pair of Giant Pandas.  At the National Zoo in Washington… Ling Ling and Sing Sing became a sensation.   Chewing on imported bamboo…  and generally being cute. The entire country followed their numerous attempts to reproduce and create an American Panda   W  For 10 years… the Pandas couldn’t quite get it done…. til a baby was born… and died hours later… cradled in Ling Ling’s Arms.  By the way…  this is where you got the entire storyline for the movie Anchorman.  The pandas in labor! —  Alas… Panda diplomacy is dying.  Over the years... China made a habit of befriending countries… and loaning them Giant Pandas… but now they want ‘em back.  In China there’s an angry groundswell …demanding the country get the Pandas back from the Memphis Zoo.  Complaining they're mistreated… and their bamboo isn’t fresh.  Animal rights groups are joining in… and it looks like the era of Panda diplomacy might be coming to an end.  No more ling ling’s and sing sing to marvel at. And that’s a shame shame.