Welcome to the fourteenth 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 🐆✈️

P.S. Last week we published our Q3 Airplane Mode Recap, with some of the most impactful sections from all the editions this past summer. If you missed that, check it out here!

Are you a cat person or a dog person? No matter how divided the modern world feels, no debate has lasted longer than this one.

The general consensus seems to have always been that more people prefer dogs than cats. They are more loving, more approachable, and more interested in us, feeding the human craving for love and affection.

But with all this focus on dogs, some researchers decided it was time to focus more on cats. Cats are often seen as the opposite of dogs, uninterested in socializing with humans and often annoyed by humans who try to interact with them.

And to some degree, this stereotype is true.

Researchers decided to put together 100+ cats and 100+ humans, letting each human interact with 3 different cats for 5 minutes each while being filmed.

They assessed things like where the people touched cats, whether humans forced contact or let the cats come to them, and whether humans restrained cats or gave them freedom.

The results showed that cats indeed like to be in charge, preferring their autonomy and control. This fits with the general consensus on cats and their behavior, and might show why dog-lovers struggle to connect with cats.

However, the results on humans were much more unexpected, as the study showed the worst offenders in terms of interacting with cats tended to be long-time cat owners and people who thought they knew a lot about cats.

Despite having spent more time around cats, these people tended to engage in more bad behaviors that made the cat uncomfortable and avoid them. These included too much eye contact, restricting movement, petting in disliked areas, and talking too loudly.

The human participants who didn’t force contact, letting the cats lead the interaction and come to them, had much more success connecting with the cats.

The conclusion: As most of us expected, cats are indeed autonomous and avoidant animals who like to be in charge of any interaction, and they are much more likely to interact with humans who don’t force the interactions with them. However, the worst offenders when it comes to human behavior cats don’t like, often tend to be long-time cat owners and people who think they know cats very well.

How much do you pay attention to your meal times these days?

This is something I’ve only recently begun to pay attention to, as I’ve learned how important consistent meal times are for people with ADHD. Before this, I was eating whenever I could basically.

But new research on longevity is changing how I see the role of meal timing in adult health.

Researchers from the UK conducted a massive study with almost 3,000 participants over a 34-year span, looking at their reported meal times, sleep, health, and lifestyle.

They wanted to look at how meal times (aka ‘chrononutrition’) impact some of the most important elements of our health, like our circadian rhythms.

After looking through this massive data set that spans three decades, researchers found that as we age, a shift towards later eating times is often a signal of underlying health decline.

These results are particularly true when it comes to breakfast, showing that older adults who eat breakfast later often also had a higher risk of death and shorter lifespan. Each one-hour delay in breakfast raised mortality risk by 8 to 11 percent.

People who ate breakfast later tended to suffer more from things like depression, anxiety, fatigue, and were more likely to have multiple illnesses at once.

But these results raise a chicken and the egg question, are later meal times a signal of deeper health issues? Or do later meal times cause the health issues?

The conclusion: Both are true. Later eating times are a signal of health issues and health decline, but later eating times for breakfast can also contribute and make health issues worse, mostly due to the disturbance to our circadian rhythm. While eating breakfast earlier won’t solve every health problem, it can improve overall health and slow the worsening of existing issues, all contributing to a higher quality of life.

(Next week we’ll dive deeper to circadian rhythms, arguably the most important aspect of our comprehensive health)

Everybody has a type, yet most of us have very little understanding of where our type came from.

Most assume looks drive attraction, but that’s far from the whole story. Attraction is a dynamic aspect that is different for each of us, with each person rating various qualities differently.

In order to understand how attraction and preferred qualities impact attraction across cultures, researchers from the British Journal of Psychology decided to look deeper at the elements that drive our attraction in the modern world.

To begin, the research confirmed something most of us already knew: everyone’s attraction style is a mix of common preferences and unique personal ones.

Common preferences included facial symmetry, clear skin, and a healthy voice, but personal preferences varied widely, from movement style, body odor, and eye contact.

But it was actually the way we interact that seems to determine what the most important drivers for our attraction really are.

It’s no surprise that in-person meetings generated the most powerful attraction. However, it was the combination of voice + body movement that repeatedly ranked the highest in terms of determining someone’s attraction to another person.

Overall, the more dynamic the interaction (IRL or video), the stronger the attraction was, and the more that attraction was based on qualities other than looks, showing that attraction is multi-sensory. Photos, on the other hand, proved to be much weaker in terms of determining someone’s attraction and the intensity of that attraction.

We judge others by a mix of sight, sound, smell, and movement, and combined signals are stronger than one sense alone. Not everyone likes the same faces, voices, or scents, and your biology and experiences shape what you find appealing.

The most surprising finding, however, was that attraction works as social glue, not just for romance, but for friendships and alliances too.

This means that attraction shapes who we choose to be friends with, call our allies, or have as teammates. All of these are highly important when it comes to our health, stress relief, and ultimately our survival.

(We first looked at how ‘Close relationships are human stress insurance’ back in Airplane Mode #002)

The conclusion: Attraction is a mixture of common and personal preferences, and the format we interact in determines which personal preferences are more important. The more dynamic the interaction, the more things like voice and body movement dictate our attraction to others, both romantically and platonically. Attraction itself functions as a general social glue for all our relationships, impacting vital aspects of our life including health, stress relief, and survival.

Thanks for reading the fourteenth 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.