Morning Brew - ☕️ New kid

Hi there, Essentials readers, and happy 21st night of September. It’s me, your new Essentials writer, Rachel Cantor. 

I’ll be helping graduate The Essentials from a quarantine pop-up to a multiplatform recommendations machine, so get ready for a little ~experimentation~. A little bit about me: I’m a recent college graduate, born and bred Midwesterner, optimist, direct-to-consumer fangirl, and cookbook collector.

I’d love to hear about you. Hit reply, introduce yourself, let me know your best quarantine purchase, and what else you want to see from The Essentials. 

P.S. Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here.

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Tomorrow is the first day of fall. Quick reality check: Yes, we are still in 2020, and yes, I am still living with my parents. Fall happens to be among my top four seasons. Here’s why: 

• Apple-picking. Check out this directory of apple orchards and be on the lookout for Honeycrisps before they’re out of season. 
• Cottagecore photoshoots 
• From this fall foliage prediction map, it looks like I’ll be catching the leaves’ peak color on October 19, which also happens to be a very important day, my half birthday.
• An excuse to binge-watch season 2 of The Mandalorian (coming out on October 30) and stuff my face with Reese’s peanut butter cups.
• “Sweater Weather”

It’s also election szn. Tomorrow is National Voter Registration Day, and to help you check your registration status, Morning Brew launched the Brew Votes website. The best part? When you post about it on social media, we’ll send you an exclusive sticker sheet.

Two truths and a lie: Before I started college at Northwestern, I filled my Notes app with fun facts about myself just to calm my anxiety around icebreakers. I would've been much better prepared if I had this massive Google Doc of icebreakers to study from. Though I am still stuck on the prompt: “If you had to take a bath in a food, which food would it be?”

Level up: He’s an entrepreneur, investor, and deep thinker and tweeter. Check out The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, aka the Navalmanack (it’s free). 

College-bound: Syllabus Week is the best. Your professors always let you out of class early, and you get to spend the entire class organizing and color-coding your planner. Now with the Open Syllabus Project, over 6 million syllabi are at your fingertips. My personal favorite: Morning Brew’s Marketing 101 syllabus. 

Get lost in a hole: Remember Winamp (the media player)? Cause I don’t. We Gen Zers were either not born yet or just babies when Winamp hit 3 million downloads in 1998. Now there’s a Winamp Skin Museum that will instantly transport you back to the ’90s/early aughts. Each skin is fully interactive, and you can even load your own music into it. 

This brand has you covered—for a good cause.

These days, we need head accessories that serve fashion and function. 

And nobody does it better—or with more heart—than Headbands of Hope.

From camo masks to paisley-patterned scrunchies to leopard print wire ties, Headbands of Hope’s styles not only turn heads, they touch hearts. For every item sold, Headbands of Hope donates a headband to a child with an illness.

Since 2012, they’ve donated over 600K headbands to every children's hospital across the United States and in 19 countries. And since March, they’ve donated over 60K surgical masks to hospitals in need.  

Discover all their styles here.

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For comic relief: This celebrity virtual table read of Fast Times at Ridgemont High was totally unrehearsed, but Shia LaBeouf is out there, just doing it. 

For cookbook collectors: I really shouldn’t be buying any more cookbooks, but I have no self-control, especially when fall cookbook szn comes around. You can’t stop me from pre-ordering Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person. 

For self-care seekers: Four podcasts to listen to this week.  

Just click it: 

• Ah, so this is how TikToks are made. 
• 10-year-old Rachel would’ve traded her Polly Pocket cruise ship for these Polly Pocket homes. 
• A directory of chip flavors. What’s the weirdest chip you’ve ever tried? 
• I know I’m late to the party, but I just discovered the South Korean boy band BTS and this Twitter account of BTS’s choreography set to my favorite throwback songs (please watch "Hollaback Girl"). And check out their just-released Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. 

Inspiration from a robot: If you’re looking to start a business, you might want to consult the GPT-3-powered business idea generator. Type in a problem, and you’ll get a product idea. 

Bonjour: Meet your new friend, Eunoia, a searchable directory of words that don’t translate to English. My favorite untranslatable word is the Danish “hygge”—that feeling of cozy contentment and wellbeing made possible by enjoying the simple things in life with the people you love. 

Ditch the awkward Zoom wave: A gesture-activated Zoom add-on allows users to avoid the “no you go,” “no...YOU go” problem. Here’s how it works in action. If you want to replicate it, download Snap Camera and find the Meeting Gestures lens. 

Rachel Cantor. Not bad, eh?

While studying abroad in Paris, I day-tripped to Claude Monet’s home and gardens in Giverny, France, where he painted his famous water lilies. Not sure what’s more beautiful—his yellow dining room or his private gardens.

That’s all, folks! What a blast. Please hit reply, introduce yourself, and let me know your best quarantine purchases. I’ll see you Thursday evening!