Good morning, friends!

I recently went on Barrett Brooks’s new podcast, Good Work.

It ranks as one of my favorite conversations I’ve had on a podcast. Whether you’ve been with me and The Profile for years or whether you just discovered my work, you’ll hear me talk about things I’ve never shared publicly before.

We cover a lot of ground including:

• Why some people respond to pain, suffering, and hardship by growing as people while others shrink from the moment or ruminate on the past

• What becoming a parent and building a purposeful marriage has taught me about creating a meaningful life

• Why it is that we hold back aspects of ourselves online and the ways in which this curation is both healthy and unhealthy

• And a few funny stories about the University of Georgia

You can watch or listen to the interview below:

WATCH:

LISTEN:

Creating a Shared Humanity through Authentic Storytelling with Polina Pompliano Barrett Brooks Episode

PROFILES.

— The Walmart CEO fending off Amazon [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The founder who wants to bring you back from the dead
— The basketball star reflects on her time in a Russian prison
— The dating influencers who urge their followers to marry rich
— The retailer that became a cult
— The schools run by the Defense Department

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The Walmart CEO fending off Amazon: Walmart has ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest companies for Doug McMillon’s entire tenure as CEO (and for 12 years in a row). McMillon, 57, has an approachability that would make any politician jealous. And in his 10 years as leader of America’s largest company, he’s needed every iota of it. McMillon took the reins in 2014 with a mandate to reinvent a tradition-bound giant whose sales had grown stagnant, a retailer facing obsolescence in the face of the e-commerce revolution. It has taken diplomacy, empathy, and persistence to rally managers and rank-and-file workers worldwide around a new approach to their jobs. Can he continue to fend off Amazon? (FORTUNE; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“It’s fun when the world tries to condemn a failure, and inside, you just smile and say, ‘We were learning.’”

The founder who wants to bring you back from the dead: Laura Deming has been running Cradle Healthcare in secret for the past three years. The company’s focus is on trying to develop technology around reversible cryonics, placing people with illnesses into a frozen state and then reviving them at some stage in the future when cures for their ailments have arrived. Deming says other companies tend to place too much emphasis on freezing and not enough on reviving. “We have spent years looking at this problem, and we wouldn’t have chosen to work on this, and really double down on our approaches, if we weren’t convinced it’s feasible,” she says. What a fascinating story. (Bloomberg, if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“It raises questions around exactly what is life and what is death and if we should be doing this.”

The basketball star reflects on her time in a Russian prison: Less than two years ago, Brittney Griner was starting her nine-year sentence in a penal colony in Russia, sewing uniforms for the Russian military and subsisting on spoiled food. She had never been further from the sport that made her a household name. She had no idea when — or if — she would be coming home. When, after 10 months in Russia, she was finally released, she jumped back into playing, thinking the routine and familiarity would ground her back in herself and her life. But the transition was rocky. (The New York Times; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“Maybe I should stop. Maybe I’ll never be the same player that I was before. Maybe this was the big rift in my career, where it’s like, I’m never going to get to that top.”

The dating influencers who urge their followers to marry rich: A bunch of dating influencers on TikTok are urging their followers to find a man willing to provide so they can leave behind some of their daily tribulations and live a more comfortable life. The gist of what they’re promoting is simple: The “high-value” provider man does everything for his partner; in turn, she has the freedom to live a ‘soft life.’ She can work or not work. It’s easy to see this dating advice as evidence of a bleak or sexist regression. Ironically, many influencers are simply cashing in on followers’ growing appetite for wealth. (New York Magazine; if you can’t access the article, try this link.)

“A husband who pays the bills is real power.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The retailer that became a cult: Costco has nailed the science, and art, of retail like virtually no competitor, inspiring a devotion that has landed it at No. 11 on this year’s Fortune 500 list, with revenue of $242 billion. At a time when brick-and-mortar retailers are desperate to lure shoppers, Costco boasts 128 million members worldwide—each paying at least $60 a year for the privilege of visiting the palace of pallets. Costco obsessives throng dedicated groups on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and X to trade information on a great find, or discuss which celebrity was spotted in which of its 600 U.S. stores, or just to bemoan leaving a store after spending $300 more than they’d intended. Here’s how Costco has reached cult-level loyalty. (FORTUNE; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

The schools run by the Defense Department: Schools for children of military members achieve results rarely seen in public education. While the achievement of U.S. students overall has stagnated over the last decade, the military’s schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country’s lowest-performing students — in the bottom 25th percentile — have slipped further behind, the Defense Department’s lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading. How does the military do it? (The New York Times; if you can’t access the article, try this link)

“If the Department of Defense schools were a state, we would all be traveling there to figure out what’s going on.”

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