17. On living in a toxic world.
Why are the women living in a nuclear wasteland outliving everyone else?
Today’s letter includes: Why the Babushkas of Chernobyl have the right idea about risk, Fortune 100 companies going full office dictator mode, Instagram's shameless copycat moment, Disney finally admitting one streaming app is enough, and a new experiential show in NYC with absolutely unhinged marketing copy.
Hi friends.
We're living in the age of the perpetually afraid. Open Instagram and someone's telling you your tap water is poison, your makeup is giving you cancer, and don't even think about eating anything that doesn't come from a farmer's market run by someone named Moonbeam. The anti-vaxx crowd has evolved into the anti-everything crowd, and suddenly it feels unsafe to exist in modern society without a full hazmat suit and a team of toxicologists.
Sometimes, when the worry that I'll get cancer from literally everything becomes too much, I think about the Babushkas of Chernobyl. The ~130 people—mostly women in their 70s and 80s—who've been casually living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone for nearly four decades. And somehow, they're doing better than the people who left.
These women, known as the "self-settlers," illegally returned to their radioactive homes shortly after the 1986 nuclear disaster. When soldiers tried to evacuate them, one grandmother, Hanna Zavorotnya, literally told them: "Shoot us and dig the grave, otherwise we're staying." Her reason? "Radiation doesn't scare me. Starvation does."
These babushkas—who lived through Stalin's genocidal famine, the Nazis, and decades of Soviet rule—decided an invisible enemy wasn't worth fleeing. And they were right. A Chernobyl medical technician whose job was testing radiation exposure noted that the elderly who were relocated were dying faster than the ones who refused: "Quite simply, they die of anguish," the tech said.
A documentary called "Babushkas of Chernobyl" by Holly Morris and Anne Bogart was released in 2015. In a clip you see someone ask:
"Is there a grandpa for you here?"
"Well," the babushka pauses, "there are two useless ones." The whole group bursts into laughter.
The lesson isn't that radiation is harmless (it's not). It's that the trauma of displacement, the severing of deep connections to place and purpose, can be deadlier than the thing we're running from. Stress is not our friend!
Which brings us to today's plot twist: nuclear is back. New York announced plans to build the nation's first new major nuclear power plant in more than 15 years. The project will add at least 1 gigawatt of power generation—enough for about a million homes. Only five new commercial reactors have opened in the U.S. since 1991, but this could kick off what The New York Times calls a "new era" of nuclear investment.
Turns out, when you're facing climate catastrophe, suddenly that clean, carbon-free energy source doesn't seem so scary. The babushkas of Chernobyl understood something we're just figuring out: sometimes the thing that looks dangerous from a distance is less harmful than the alternatives.
Maybe we could all learn something from women who looked death in the eye and said, "That'll do."
RTO mandates hit Fortune 100 companies hard. More than half of Fortune 100 companies now require full-time office attendance as of Q2 2025, according to Bloomberg. That's a massive shift from 2023, when just 5% required full-time attendance and 78% offered hybrid schedules. Now it's flipped: 54% demand full-time presence and only 41% offer hybrid arrangements. The 10 biggest Fortune 100 companies, including Amazon and Apple, all mandate at least four days in the office, with three going full five-day grind. Hope you remember how to make small talk by the coffee machine.
Real Housewives cruise sets sail for Bermuda this September. Teresa Giudice, Dolores Catania, and Shannon Beador are taking their drama to the high seas aboard the Norwegian Escape for five days of "luxury, pink sand beaches, and full-on Housewives energy." The cruise runs from NYC to Bermuda with events hosted by Dave Quinn. Because apparently what the world needed was a confined space where you can't escape table-flipping energy for nearly a week. At least there will be pink sand beaches to recover on.
Instagram finally admits it just wants to be Twitter. The platform just launched Reposts, letting users reshare reels and feed posts to their friends' feeds (plus a new Friends tab and reposts section on profiles). Basically, Instagram looked at the retweet button and said "we'll take that, thanks."
For brands, it's just another way your content can ping-pong around to new eyeballs. But the real takeaway? Shareability is everything now. If your post doesn't pass the basic "will someone actually want to reshare this" test, you're dead in the water.
The magic formula from Rachel Karten remains: Does this make people feel seen? Does it spark love OR hate? (Both work!) Will it help strangers bond in your comments? And does it actually provide value while being entertaining? If two of the three bullets are a YES, then it passes the “shareability test.”
Are you tired of hearing about McDonald's yet? I wrote about their Snack Wrap comeback two weeks ago but wait, there’s more! McDonald's is reviving 1970s McDonaldland mascots (Hamburglar, Grimace, the nightmare crew) for limited-time adult Happy Meals starting August 12th.
Sounds weird but it's working. Second-quarter sales up 6%, revenue up 5% to $6.84 billion. Turns out the secret sauce is just bringing back old stuff that makes millennials feel feelings. McDonald's cracked the code on weaponized nostalgia and we're all just lab rats pressing the "childhood memory" button for dopamine.
There's a new experiential show in NYC with intense vibes. “NO ILLUSIONS. NO SAFETY NETS. JUST PURE ADRENALINE.” The daunting copy proclaims.
Disney is finally merging Disney+ and Hulu into one platform next year. Even Disney got tired of juggling subscriptions. The move helped drive a solid Q2 earnings beat with 2.6 million new subscribers and revenues up 2% to $23.7 billion. Disney’s “experiences” arm a.k.a. their parks are also doing well.
P.S. rumors are flying about Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson being an item. Some are saying it’s the new Meryl Streep/Martin Short. Whether it’s true or not, I’m loving that it’s just another excuse to circulate these fire Arch Digest pics of Pam.
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Me to TJ’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. My kryptonite.
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Childhood memory button - love it!