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Death has always had a marketing problem. Most people fear their own deaths. The debilitating terror it induces has been linked to everything from money hoarding to workaholism. And worrying about death—thanatophobia for the pub quizzers—can even be self-fulfilling. Anxiety can double the risk of death in patients with heart disease and cause others to avoid screening tests most likely to catch cancer early. So all credit to the brave folk in Australia who signed up for a quick practice kick of the bucket—experiencing a cardiac arrest and out-of-body journey in virtual reality (VR). The ten-minute VR experience, “Passing Electrical Storms” by Shaun Gladwell, was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2023. Visitors lay on a bed that initially vibrated with their heartbeat, while wearing a VR headset showing them on a table in the gallery. The simulation then takes over: as their heart rate seemingly crashes, the volunteers watch doctors try and fail to resuscitate them. After brain death, they then see themselves leave their body and appear to float through the universe before shrinking inside cells and atoms. Six large fans provide the associated cooling effects. Participants’ reactions to the experience were analysed by researchers before being published in a journal in June. Most participants found it a pleasant trip, and many emerged less anxious about death. “If death is as simple as that, I’d be very happy,” a volunteer told the research team, led by Stefan Greuter, a design technologist at Australia’s RMIT University. Another compared the experience to yoga. One participant, brought up to believe in hell, admitted to being relieved. A separate study in Texas, published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality, tested an 11-minute VR simulation of a near-death experience. In this case the student volunteers survived, but only after watching themselves undergo a car crash, coma, tunnels of light, serene landscapes and imagined encounters with friends and family. Reported death anxiety among participants dropped by an average 18%. “Very relaxing. I wish I could try it more than once. Maybe every night before going to bed,” one participant said. Running the test again with those who are frail, elderly or terminally ill could produce a stronger response, the researchers say. A glimpse of mortality did not, however, help everyone: a quarter of the student volunteers said the VR experience made them more anxious about death, and a third emerged more stressed. [via The Economist] Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?

Back in the before times, trying to contact someone, say an author you liked, was labor intensive and generally futile. You had the choice of writing a letter to their publisher and hoping it would be forwarded and that the person would respond, or trying to winkle out their home address from written information and reference books and college catalogs (if they were associated with a school). When the internet happened, gradually and then suddenly the walls came down: sometimes people had their own websites with a contact function or in rare cases their email address on the site. This became ubiquitous when publishers started demanding that their authors put up a website as a condition of their contracts. Then newspapers and magazines brought their reporters and writers out from the shadows: whereas in the old days you had to write the paper and ask them to physically forward your letter, now almost every byline is accompanied by an email address. Recently I ran into a stone wall trying to reach an author: none of the above worked. Then I stumbled on a new way to get in touch: 1. Go a person's Instagram (everyone who makes money by interacting with the public has one) 2. Follow them 3. A Message box will appear (it's in the lower right corner in my Instagram screenshot up top) if there's not one there already and Bob's your uncle Using this method I've since succeeded in messaging several peeps I'd given up hope of ever making contact with, in one case after trying for over a decade. If this trick doesn't work for you, let me know and a member of my Crack Research Team©®™ will get back to you. They don't have Instagram as they're deep black as a condition of their employment.

I wish I'd known this a month ago: I bought some baking potatoes to nuke now that I've got a nifty microwave pouch that bakes them in 4 minutes. I put them in a kitchen cabinet with a door, figuring keeping them in the dark would prevent them from sprouting and going bad: bad idea. When I opened the cabinet a couple weeks later to grab a potato, I saw all of them had sprouted, and not just a little. From The Coolest: ............................. Every fall it's the same story. You buy a big bag of potatoes, or bring in the last of the garden harvest, and three weeks later half of them have pale little shoots growing out of the eyes and have gone soft to the touch. A potato is a living thing. Stored in the wrong conditions, it does exactly what it's built to do: it wakes up and starts to grow. Sprouting is triggered by warmth and light. In a warm kitchen, near the stove or a sunny counter, a potato reads the signal that spring has come and starts sending out shoots. Light also turns the skin green, a sign of solanine, a natural compound that tastes bitter and can cause stomach upsets in larger amounts. Green patches and sprouts should always be cut away generously before cooking; a potato that's very green or shriveled belongs in the compost. Here's the best way to store potatoes: • Keep them cool: ideally 45-50°F. A cool pantry, basement, garage that doesn't freeze, or unheated closet works well. • Keep them dark: a paper bag, a cardboard box, or a basket with a cloth over it. • Let them breathe: never store them sealed in plastic, which traps moisture and invites rot. • Don't wash them before storing: dirt protects the skin; moisture speeds decay. • Keep them away from onions: stored side by side, the two speed each other's spoiling. One more thing: Grandmother's famous trick was to tuck an apple in with the potatoes. There was a logic behind it: apples give off ethylene, a natural plant gas, and continuous exposure to ethylene is used commercially in some countries to hold back sprouting in stored potatoes. One apple in a bag won't match industrial-grade storage, and results at home vary, but it's cheap, harmless, and worth trying. Replace the apple when it starts to wrinkle. What About The Fridge? Here the advice has shifted. For years, the rule was never refrigerate raw potatoes, because cold turns some of their starch into sugar, which changes the taste and makes them brown faster when fried. In 2023, the U.K.'s Food Standards Agency updated its guidance to say the fridge is fine. Many U.S. guides still prefer a cool, dark pantry for best flavor. If your kitchen is warm and you have no cool spot, the fridge beats a sprouting potato. Summarizing: Cool, dark, dry, away from onions, with an apple for company.

As soon as I finished reading Tim Carman's rave Washington Post review of Popeyes' newest offering (above), I got my car keys and headed straight to the location 3 miles from my house. Short review shorter: He's right! Below, his paean to the king. ....................................... Popeyes Has Another Hit With Its Honey Chicken Biscuit Sandwich The Louisiana kitchen owes its customers a huge thanks for pointing the chain in the direction of this winning combo. One of my favorite things about fast-food restaurants is their willingness to let customers innovate for them, a reminder that some of the best ideas don't come from tests kitchens or corporate boardrooms but rather from people who know how to hack an existing menu. The latest example arrived last Monday at Popeyes, the Louisiana kitchen that made us lose our collective minds seven years ago over a chicken sandwich. The Miami-based chain just introduced the honey chicken biscuit, a sandwich that customers have been apparently engineering tableside for years. I stand in awe of the moxie of the American diner who reviews a fast-food menu and says, "I can do better." For better or worse, I think most Popeye fans will want to compare the latest offering to the chicken sandwich that launched a thousand imitators. I think that's a mistake. The two sandwiches feel like two sides of the same bun — connected but distinct. The original sandwich is the pinnacle of corporate-kitchen craft, a succulent chicken breast fried and entombed in a sweet brioche bun, offset with briny pickles to provide just enough pucker. While it has Southern touches, the sandwich still feels very much like a fast food creation, its bun a dead giveaway that it doesn't wander too far from the competition. The honey chicken biscuit, by contrast, feels Southern Southern. Like sweet tea on a South Carolina veranda in mid-July. Popeyes designed a slighter larger version of its beloved biscuit to accomodate the thick, crackly breast meat, a protein so tender you'd swear it was 50 percent buttermilk. The biscuit and chicken come unadorned, the former doing its best to contain the gnarly length of fried bird. The combo includes two packets of "honey sauce," whose corn-syrup sweetness completes the picture. I pounded this sandwich like I had not eaten in a week. Its components just locked into place: chicken, salt, butter, honey, crunch, flakiness, simplicity, elegance. This is a dish that somehow takes you outside the sterile walls of a chain and provides the kind of comfort we long for in our food.

Back in 1962, 44-year-old McDonald's franchisee Lou Groen (above, with a picture of his restaurant back in the day) was on the ropes financially. How he turned the tide and created a sandwich that McDonald's world-wide now sells at a rate of hundreds of millions every year was the subject of Paul Clark's Cincinnati Enquirer story, which follows. No Fish Story: Sandwich Saved His McDonald's In 1962, Lou Groen was desperate to save his floundering hamburger restaurant, the first McDonald's in the Cincinnati area. His problem: His clientele was heavily Roman Catholic. In those days, most Catholics abstained from meat every Friday, as well as during Lent, the 40-day period of repentance. His solution: He created the Filet-O-Fish — a sandwich that saved his restaurant and eventually would be consumed at a rate of 300 million a year, of which roughly one-quarter — around 75 million — are sold during Lent. "The local Big Boy chain dominated the market, and they had a very good fish sandwich," recalled Groen. "I was struggling. The crew was my wife, myself, and a man named George. I did repairs, swept floors, you name it." "But that area (where his restaurant was located) was 87% Catholic. On Fridays we only took in about $75 a day," said Groen, a Catholic himself. "All our customers were going to Big Boy." "So I invented my fish sandwich, developed a special batter, made the tartar sauce and took it to headquarters." That led to a wager between Groen and McDonald's chief Ray Kroc, who had his own meatless idea. "He called his sandwich the Hula Burger," Groen said. "It was a cold bun and a slice of pineapple and that was it. "Ray said to me, 'Well, Lou, I'm going to put your fish sandwich on (a menu) for a Friday. But I'm going to put my special sandwich on, too. Whichever sells the most, that's the one we'll go with.'" "Friday came and the word came out. I won hands down. I sold 350 fish sandwiches that day. Ray never did tell me how his sandwich did." But the chain made Groen modify the fish recipe. "I wanted halibut originally," Groen said. "I was paying $2 a pound for halibut. That sandwich cost me 30 cents apiece to make. They told me it had to sell for 25 cents. I had to fall back on Atlantic cod, a whitefish, and I added a slice of cheese. But my halibut sandwich far outshines that one." Groen wasn't complaining. "My fish sandwich was the first addition ever to McDonald's original menu," he said. "It saved my franchise." And fed it. By the time he sold his franchise in 1986, Groen owned 43 McDonald's restaurants in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, about half the number in the region today. But his prosperity didn't include a slice of Filet-O-Fish's national sales. "Not a penny," he said. "I made my money by selling the product and being the best operator I could." Charles Faulks, operations director for McDonald's Ohio Region, called Groen's contributions legendary. "Lou exemplified Ray Kroc's philosophy that you can succeed if you believe in your brand, treat your people right, and give back to your community." Groen entered the fast-food business in 1958. One day, while working in his father-in-law's Cincinnati restaurant, Groen was leafing through Restaurant Management magazine when he spotted a couple of advertisements for franchise opportunities. "They were tiny little ads," he said. "One was for McDonald's 15-cent hamburgers. The other was for Beverly Osborne Chicken Delight. I said to my wife, 'If we do this, we'll be eating a lot of these. Would you rather eat hamburgers or chicken?' "She picked hamburgers." When Groen answered the ad, he was told that $950 would buy him exclusive McDonald's franchise rights in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and parts of Pennsylvania. "But I didn't have $950," he said. So he invested a couple of hundred dollars in a district franchise that included Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. He opened his first store in 1959.