Welcome to the sixth 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 🐆✈️

By now, most of us are hearing about microplastics almost every week, and our bodies are full of them. But there is another group of substances, arguably even more harmful and prevalent, that get slightly less attention because of their complexity.

These substances are known as “forever chemicals” (or PFAS), a group of over 4,700 man-made chemicals, present in everything from food-packaging to non-stick cookware to cosmetics. These substances are known as “slow poison” because they take decades to centuries to break down naturally in the environment and our bodies.

Exposure to these chemicals, present in soil and water supplies all over the world, creates gigantic problems for humans, and we should truly be screaming about them daily. These serious problems include:

Up until now, scientists have not been aware of anything on this planet that could help breakdown these forever chemicals, so they could only advocate for reducing your exposure (basically impossible). But a recent study and announcement from Cambridge University is hopefully about to change this completely.

These scientists found a specific set of gut bacteria, which we know as probiotics, that were able to trap and absorb a large amount of forever chemicals in our gut and dispose of them in our feces.

In a study with human gut bacteria placed in mice, these gut bacteria were able to absorb 25-75% of forever chemicals, even when the concentrations of chemicals were very high.

While they haven’t released the names of the gut bacteria responsible, these scientists are now working on commercializing these into a probiotic supplement to boost our body and gut’s ability to clear these forever chemicals.

Which means one of the most important detox tools of our lifetime may be on its way.

With the rise of international travel, especially the rise in people living in different countries and working as digital nomads, cross-cultural interactions are more common than ever.

When done the right way, this is a net benefit for humanity, because the more we understand people from other countries, the more humble we become about ourselves and our own culture.

This intermingling is a net benefit over the long-term, but that benefit doesn’t come without short and medium term turbulence.

While there are many dynamics at play in cross-cultural interactions, one lens we can look through as we travel and try to understand each other is the concept of peach vs. coconut cultures.

Depending on which culture you were brought up in, your culture exists on one end of this spectrum.

If you’re from peach cultures like Brazil or the USA, you’re likely someone who is a bit more friendly when meeting new people. You smile more, use first names quickly, and ask or share personal details more quickly.

Like a peach, you are soft on the outside, but with a hard pit at the center. People from peach cultures tend to keep their real, full self in the pit, something that requires more intimacy and trust to let people in.

If you’re from coconut cultures like France or Germany, that harder outer core is more protective right away. You’re typically more reserved, slower to open up and avoid personal questions or disclosures until more trust is built.

Yet once you crack the outer layer of the coconut and that trust is earned, relationships can become quite deep, committed and long-lasting.

As you might suspect, peaches and coconuts might have a harder time understanding each other initially, leading to some miscommunication or perception issues.

Peaches meeting coconuts should continue to be themselves. But avoid sharing or asking too many personal details right away, while coconuts meeting peaches should not interpret initial friendliness as real intimacy.

Of course, this is just one dynamic at play and within each country there are both peaches, coconuts, and hybrids, so it’s not absolute. But it’s a helpful lens as you meet people from new places and cultures.

It’s 2025 and crying still feels oddly controversial. Some people do it a lot, some people never at all. But our ability to cry doesn’t change what the purpose of crying is for our brains.

Tears are a way for our brains to manage emotional intensity, in either direction. They are our brain’s way of processing more emotion than it can handle, helping us return to emotional equilibrium.

Whether we are crying because of happiness or sadness, tears help calm us by slowing the heart rate and relaxing the body. This is usually why we can feel better physically and mentally after a good cry.

“Happy tears” in particular are not only a result of happiness, but often include other emotions mixed in. This is known as a dual-valence response, where our emotional state contains both positive and negative elements.

A good example might be a parent watching their child graduate high school. They can feel pride and joy at the achievement, and also feel melancholy at the end of the era that led to the achievement.

P.S. Did you know humans are actually the only animal species known to shed emotional tears? Crying evolved as a non-verbal communication to signal vulnerability, authenticity, and emotional depth. So in this era of disconnection, I say let it all out and use it to grow closer to the ones you care about the most!

Thanks for reading the sixth edition!

You can count on Airplane Mode arriving in your inbox every week, just in time for you to switch off & reconnect with the topics that matter most.