Good morning, friends!

My 6-month-old daughter Sofia got to meet my 92-year-old great-grandmother this week, and it was a moment I’ll never forget.

Both were born in the “20s” — nearly a hundred years apart. As cliché as it sounds, this tiny special moment reminded me that life is so impossibly fragile and time goes by in the blink of an eye.

I remember reading an edition of Sari Azout’s fantastic newsletter, which explained that our belief that things will last is the root of our unhappiness. It says:

There's a Jewish folktale about King Solomon asking a counselor for an adage that would make the happy man sad, and the sad man happy. The counselor, perplexed, asked a jeweler in the bazaar for advice. The jeweler inscribed on a ring: 'This too shall pass.' Call it obvious, but it’s taken me my entire life to half-master this axiom.

Whatever you have planned for this week, I hope you take the time to enjoy it because the seemingly mundane moments we take for granted today end up being the ones we remember (and miss) in the future.

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✨ A WORD FROM OUR PARTNER: I wanted to draw your attention to a newsletter I really enjoy. It’s called 1440, a daily email with the most interesting reads across culture, science, tech, sports, business, and everything in between. There's a reason more than 1 million people read 1440 — it's the most unbiased, high-quality source for news I've found. Sign up for 1440 for free here.

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THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), the most successful creator on YouTube. Become a premium member, and read it below.

The Profile

The Profile Dossier: Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), The Most Successful Creator on YouTube

95 million YouTube subscribers. 57 billion video views. $54 million in revenue. Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, is one of the best visual storytellers on the Internet. He’s also the top-earning YouTuber in the world. He gives away the cash as quickly as he makes it. Whether it’s buying homeless people houses, tipping a waitress $100,000, or delive…

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4 days ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Polina Pompliano

PROFILES.

— The Parkland shooting officer called ‘the coward of Broward [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The last employees at Lehman Brothers
— The COVID testing company that missed 96% of cases
— The discount retailer taking over America
— The anti-Instagram app promising to make you feel good

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The Parkland shooting officer called ‘the coward of Broward: The day 17 people were shot to death inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Scot Peterson was the only armed officer on the property. Footage showed him standing outside, apparently doing nothing. He can explain, he says, and he does—at length. Is he trying to convince the victims’ parents? The survivors? Other cops? Or himself? This is a really heavy story of guilt, responsibility, and consequences. (Men’s Health)

“The families that lost their kids, they’ve never been told the truth of what happened at that shooting.”

The last employees at Lehman Brothers: Daryl Rattigan arrived at Lehman Brothers 18 years ago for a three-month assignment from his law firm. Eventually the bank gave him a full-time job at its real estate finance arm in London. Then the bank suddenly collapsed, but Rattigan is still employed at Lehman. He — and a slew of lawyers, accountants, consultants, and money managers — will perform one of the weirdest jobs in finance: laying Lehman Brothers, finally, to rest. (Bloomberg; reply to this email if you can’t access this article)

“When we went into insolvency, the PwC people said, ‘You will be there to turn the lights off.’ ”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The COVID testing company that missed 96% of cases: Northshore Clinical Labs’ COVID-19 tests missed 96% of positive cases. They used political connections to get contracts. Then, they collected nearly $165 million from the government. As evidence mounted that Northshore was telling infected people that they had tested negative for the virus, government managers in Nevada ignored their own scientists’ warnings and expanded the lab’s testing beyond schools to the general public. What a wild investigation. (ProPublica)

“It’s still a profit-hungry model.”

The discount retailer taking over America: Quietly, Dollar General has become the biggest U.S. retailer by number of outlets, and the company continues to spread like wildfire across tiny-town America, opening roughly three new stores a day, many of them in places that real estate experts say couldn’t support any other kind of retailer. Its 18,000-plus locations are more than McDonald’s, Starbucks or CVS, putting it within five miles of 75% of the population. This year, it will open another 1,100 stores and plans to nearly double its store count. (Forbes)

“This is the corner grocery store on steroids.”

The anti-Instagram app promising to make you feel good: BeReal isn’t just a photo-sharing app — “it’s life, Real life,” the company says. The buzzy social-media app aims to “make people feel good about themselves and their lives.” Here’s how it works: The app delivers an unscheduled daily notification that gives you two minutes to take and post a photo of yourself and your surroundings — only then can you see what your friends on the app have posted. You can’t edit the photos, and you can’t import old ones either. The goal is to capture your crusty, boring, lovable self just as you are in that very moment. Is it enough to overtake Instagram? (New York Magazine)

“If you’re lying in bed looking like shit, that’s okay!”

✨ This installment of The Profile is free for everyone. If you would like to get full access to all of the recommendations, including today’s audio and video sections, sign up below.

LISTEN.

A.J Jacobs on the benefits of solving puzzles: These days, puzzles—whether jigsaw, crossword, or logic—are famous for being the perfect activity to pass the time and clear your mind. But what if you were told this seemingly menial task could revamp your thought process altogether? In this episode, author A.J. Jacobs contributor makes his case on why we all should be more intentional with seeking out puzzles. (Link available to premium members.)

Susan Cain on the utility of sadness: Many of us struggle with how to navigate feeling sad, one of the mmost basic emotions. In this podcast, author Susan Cain offers a link between sadness and heightened creativity—arguing the emotion may not be as useless as mainstream culture suggests. “With creativity, there’s a long intellectual tradition of sort of noticing the association between creativity and a kind of sorrow,” she says. “There have been studies done that have shown that a wildly disproportionate number of creative people were orphaned when they were children.” (Link available to premium members.)

WATCH.

Cathie Wood on taming retail investing: It's no secret that trailblazing is never easy. But when you're a single mother fired abruptly at 54 in a male-dominated industry, it becomes doubly difficult. "I sent my three kids, two dogs, and nanny away for two weeks," Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood recalls after being dismissed from her job. "I wasn’t happy. Nor was I sad. I wasn’t even thinking about work. But in the silence, I got the message loud and clear. 'You must take all the technologies that have disrupted other industries and start to disrupt your own…'" You wouldn't be wrong to watch this biography of how Wood on one of the most cutthroat spaces of all time: finance. (Link available to premium members.)

Morgan Freeman on the finality of death: As humans, we’ve all wondered: What happens after we die? This question has motivated countless generations to attempt to decipher the unknown. In this documentary, Morgan Freeman draws on multiple religions, lost civilizations, and even empirical science to determine the existence of an afterlife—and what it is, if there’s one. (Link available to premium members.)

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