Welcome to the first edition of Airplane Mode, where less is more and the WiFi is always off.

Every week, we curate 3 impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.

Use this newsletter as a signal to pause, breathe, and think, helping you realign with your purpose and clear out the ‘scroll pollution’ that clouds our brains every day.

Thank you for flying with 99 Lives 🐆✈️

Have you ever been so curious about something that you simply couldn’t let it go until you figured it out? Maybe it’s some new information, or the way an episode of your favorite show is going to end.

Well, there’s a reason that curiosity makes you feel “hungry”, and it's the same mechanism in the brain that makes you crave actual food.

Scientists working together in the UK & Japan have discovered that your brain craves knowledge and food in the same way, and in the same region of your brain.

The same motivation/reward mechanism that drives you to seek out your favorite snack is what drives you to seek out the answer to a question that has captured your curiosity. Our brains see new knowledge or information as an ‘immediate prize’, and both outcomes drive humans to take extra risks to secure the physical or psychological snack.

Curiosity is one of the most important traits for human growth and survival, and just like a healthy diet, by feeding our curiosity daily, we reap bigger rewards with each day that passes. Ask better questions, follow the itch, and stay hungry.

Thanks to the rise of TikTok combined with the 2024 US Elections and vibe shift that resulted, more Americans under 40 are looking to move abroad than ever before.

39% of millennials and Gen Zers in the US are looking to get out this year, and this massive increase is already palpable in top target cities like Lisbon and Mexico City.

Besides the political escapism and feeling unsafe, the biggest appeals to young Americans include lower cost of living, a more intentional lifestyle, better weather, and prioritizing experiences over possessions.

While this shift might be good for young Americans thirsty for a more purposeful life, there are serious changes occurring faster than ever in top nomad target countries.

In Portugal for example, rent prices in Lisbon were already skyrocketing from digital nomads after the COVID-19 pandemic, and look set to get even worse. This is pricing out locals from their own city and further diluting the rich cultures that are a byproduct of daily life and the legacies locals have built.

So if you’re planning to become a digital nomad in the next few years, please make sure you don’t treat your new home like Disneyland. Respect the locals and their cultural legacies, try to learn some of the language, and don’t just try to recreate the city you left in the new city you’ve chosen to call home.

It’s easy to roll our eyes these days when it feels like everybody is talking about “energy” and “frequency”, but there is more scientific proof to back some of these things up.

Thanks to great work in evolutionary psychology, we now know that the negativity and depression of the people closest to us have an even bigger impact than we already thought.

Most of us already knew some level of this, but SIX TIMES is absolutely staggering. That means you need five happy friends just to offset one depressed friend’s impact on your mental health, and that’s just to break even.

The famous quote “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.“ has never been truer, and in the most connected era in human history, the impact isn’t just coming from our IRL friends and family, but also from the ones we give our attention to on social media. That counts too.

Choose very wisely.

Thanks for reading the first edition!

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