4 Penalty-Free Ways to Use a Roth IRA Before Retirement

I’ve written about the Roth IRA many times before, with good reason. Hands down, it’s one of the best places to invest for the long-term because it’s one of the only accounts that gives you tax-free money in retirement. But what you may not know is that unlike other types of retirement accounts, you can spend it before retirement without having to pay taxes or an early withdrawal penalty.

Owning a Roth IRA and really understanding all the rules, is another matter. So, in this post, I’ll explain the unique flexibility of these accounts and 4 ways you’re allowed to make penalty-free withdrawals from a Roth IRA to spend before you retire. 

Free Resource: Retirement Account Comparison Chart (PDF download)  - get this handy, one-page resource to understand the different types of retirement accounts.

In How to Make Kids Rich by Investing in an IRA, I discussed the eligibility rules and benefits of using a Roth IRA to give minors a financial head start in life. A Roth IRA is available to anyone, no matter your age, who has earned income up to certain annual limits (see the article about making kids rich for more details).

With a Roth IRA, your contributions are not tax-deductible, which means you make them on an after-tax basis. Then your investment earnings grow completely tax free—that’s a huge benefit!

Because you pay tax upfront on Roth contributions, you’re allowed to withdraw them at any time for any reason. You don’t owe the IRS additional tax or penalties on that portion of your account. That means you can take out an amount that equals, but doesn’t exceed, the total amount of your original contributions, with no problems.

Because you pay tax upfront on Roth contributions, you’re allowed to withdraw them at any time for any reason.

However, where things get a little confusing is for the earnings portion of your Roth account. The investment growth that your contributions creates is subject to tax in certain situations. There are restrictions on withdrawals of earnings because you haven’t paid tax on them yet.

Also, the IRS says earnings must be distributed from a Roth IRA last. So, how much you want to...

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Is a Vegetarian Diet Bad for Your Brain?

Bea writes: "Can you comment on research showing that creatine supplements can improve cognitive function in vegetarians? Do I need to worry about my vegan diet hurting my brain?”

If you've heard much about creatine, you’ve probably heard it in the context of enhancing athletic performance. My colleague, Brock Armstrong, recently devoted an episode of the Get-Fit Guy podcast to the potential uses of creatine to build muscle.

But creatine has also been investigated as potential a nootropic. A nootropic is a substance that enhances brain function or cognition.

Creatine is a non-essential amino acid, which means that our bodies have the ability to manufacture it from other amino acids. However, we can also get creatine from our diets. Meat, poultry and fish are the primary sources of creatine. Not surprisingly, vegetarians and vegans have lower levels of creatine in their blood and muscle tissue than meat eaters.

Is a Vegetarian Diet Bad for Your Brain?

If creatine is important for brain functioning and vegetarians have lower creatine levels, could a vegetarian or vegan diet have a negative impact on cognitive function?

Observational data suggest that lifelong vegetarians and vegans actually have a lower risk of dementia than meat eaters. Now, this may not have to do directly with the amount of animal products they do or don’t consume. It could be due to a higher intake of vegetables or legumes, for example. Or it could have to do with the fact that vegetarians are statistically more likely to exercise and less likely to smoke or any number of other lifestyle factors. That’s the difficulty with observational data; it’s impossible to prove cause and effect.

There’s little evidence to suggest that a vegetarian or vegan diet impairs brain function or increases the risk of cognitive decline.

Should Vegetarians Take Creatine?

Since vegetarians have lower creatine levels, would there be any benefit to taking creatine supplements? 

...

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How to Bullet-Proof Your Online Privacy

When you imagine hackers and identity thieves violating your privacy, you might think of a pallid, 20-something hacker in a dark basement, wearing a hoodie, gulping Red Bull by the gallon, typing mysterious, high-tech commands rapid-fire on a keyboard to break into your email, social media site, or bank account.

In this scenario, your cyber nemesis is someone who knows tech way better than you do, and abuses that tech to exploit you.

But, having worked in the electronic intelligence field, at NSA and other three-letter agencies, I can tell you that violating—and protecting—your electronic privacy is not really about tech at all, unless you consider the human brain to be tech.

What I mean is this: Protecting your privacy is much more about understanding  human behavior than it is about understanding technology. For example, Rob Joyce a former NSA colleague and Chief White House Cybersecurity official, said recently, “Human factors like corporate leadership priorities are at the bottom of almost all of our cyber problems.” Rob should know—he ran Tailored Access Operations at NSA (which, according to Wikipedia “identifies, monitors, infiltrates, and gathers intelligence on computer systems being used by entities foreign to the United States.”)

One particularly problematic  “human factor” is use—and misuse—of passwords. A Verizon data breach report estimates that over 80% of hacking incidents stem from stealing, spoofing, or cracking passwords.

Violating—and protecting—your electronic privacy is not really about tech at all, unless you consider the human brain to be tech.

Why are passwords the major Achilles heel in cybersecurity and privacy protection?

Because using and protecting passwords is such a pain that almost everyone engages in bad cyber hygiene with passwords. Examples of bad hygiene are using easily guessed passwords such as “12345,” birthdays, or children’s names, or employing the same password (or variants of it) on 10-20 different accounts.

Although “strong passwords”—such as $%Fth&8H8j9ErQst—that change regularly and are used only for one account—seem like “good cyber hygiene,” in reality strong, frequently changing passwords are a staggeringly dumb idea because...

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The 1920s Fascination With Slang

Throughout the 1920s, the public was fascinated, if a bit confused, by the slang that was steadily seeping into the American parlance from all directions. In newspapers across the country,  commentators wrote hundreds of articles and editorials seeking to enlighten readers about the meaning of words spoken by “College Joes,” cops and ex-servicemen, prize fighters and baseball players, railway workers and taxi drivers, flappers and gangsters, jazz singers and musicians, and even circus performers.

These commentaries are mostly light-hearted, written tongue-in-cheek by outsiders trying to explain the argots of others.  Yet, a sense of confusion and puzzlement underlies many of these explanations as well.  This may be because so much slang of the period was indeed nonsense (“elephant’s manicure,” “oyster’s earrings,” ”snake’s hips,” etc.), which was part of the larger trend of meaninglessness and absurdity that followed the devastation of the First World War.

Not surprising, the disconnect is also generational—an uneasiness towards the modern flapper who sought to upend traditional expectations around womanhood and sexuality. Slang words and phrases associated with dating, such as “blind date,” “petting,” “necking,” and “petting parlors” (movie theaters) were regularly discussed with amusement and, one can imagine, a slightly arched eyebrow.

1920s slang is the Bee’s Knees!

An early example of this generational confusion is “Sunday Morning Breakfast,” a humorous piece by Rob Fukerson that appeared in the "Detroit Free Press" in 1922.  The scenario describes a father desperately trying to make sense of the conversation that his daughter Lucy, a flapper, is having with his son. Lucy has been reading the social pages, and has wondered out loud how a rather dull friend of hers has managed to get engaged.

Only his daughter didn’t use those words; what she actually said was that her friend’s fiancé is “some darb she picked up at a jazz jamboree. Her regular monog was away some place and she had this strike breaker doing her corn cracking at a party and hooked him. I always thought she was a permanent flat tire, but she vamped him in a dance and then had a conservative petting party with him and now he is going to be a permanent meal ticket.”  The father just stammers and stares. His children basically laugh at him, and continue to use slang that only confuses him more.  The implication is that the father will never really understand their words.

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Interestingly, in 1925, Ada Lewis, a self-proclaimed “mistress of modern slang,”...

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Is Recovery the Key to Optimal Performance?

It has been a while since I wrote the episode called 6 Reasons Recovery is Essential to Your Exercise Routine and even longer since I did the podcast called The Perfect Workout Recovery Day, but I stand by my claim that it is the alternation between stress and rest that moves us to a higher and higher level of fitness. I also still believe that the higher the training intensity and effort, the greater the need for planned recovery. 

Let's face it, when you are under-recovered (or overtrained), your ability to positively adapt to your training (or gain fitness) is zapped, and—in addition to putting yourself at risk of illness and injury—you really are wasting your precious training time. I don’t know about you, but I want results when I train.

So a while ago, to help me keep an eye on that stress/rest balance, I decided to give a device called the Whoop a try. After using it for a few weeks I was so intrigued by the device that I invited the founder and CEO to chat about his background, the science of recovery, and why he has dedicated his life and business to ensuring we all get enough of it. 

The Guest

Will Ahmed grew up loving sports and exercise and many of his childhood heroes were athletes. Will was recruited to Harvard and became captain of the Men's Varsity Squash Team and as a D1 athlete, he was amazed at how little he actually knew about his body. He would often train for three hours a day with his teammates, without knowing what gains (if any) he made in his fitness. He was surrounded by athletes who overtrained, misinterpreted fitness peaks, underestimated recovery and sleep, and got injured. In fact, he felt that whether or not he and his teammates were truly prepared for gameday often seemed random.

Will became inspired by a simple idea: Humans, especially athletes, could optimize their daily performance—not through a random sequence of events and decisions, but rather a systematic approach to understanding the body.

The Interview

When you to listen to the audio interview, you will hear:

• How Will got interested in studying the science behind overtraining and recovery.
• What biometric markers are important to measure for recovery.
• The importance of balancing strain and recovery.
• Is it Ok to wake up feeling tired and sore and still do a workout?
• Can you "manage" what you don't measure? 
• What types of athletes should be focussed on recovery? (Spoiler:...

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The Health Benefits of Coffee

Fifty-four percent of American adults are coffee drinkers with the average intake being at least three cups of coffee per day. As you can guess, this adds up: the US spends roughly $40 billion on coffee each year. But the US doesn’t even break the top 20 in a ranking of countries by coffee consumption per capita, coming in only at number 22. Coffee consumption proves highest in the land of the midnight sun: Finland and Norway rank #1 among the top coffee drinking countries in the world, although the Netherlands and Slovenia are not far behind.

There are over 21,000 Starbucks locations alone in the world (with about 12,000 of those being in the US) and our consumption continues to rise. Global demand is expected to increase by an extra 40-50 million bags of coffee over the next decade which is more than Brazil’s entire yearly production. With the current threats to coffee crops that come with climate change, the world could possibly face a severe coffee shortage.

So what has us all so hooked? Let’s discuss the science behind the making of a good cup of coffee as well as its potential health benefits.

The Science Behind a Good Cup of Joe

Coffee beans themselves have little to no taste at all. The flavor, the aroma of coffee: it all comes from the roasting process which releases a large number of chemicals from the tiny bean. In fact, the average cup of coffee contains more than 1,000 chemicals. To transfer those delicious chemicals to the hot water in our cup, we run water over those roasted beans. To increase our success, we both grind the beans to increase their surface area (and thus more exposure of those chemicals to the water) and heat the water since higher temperatures (and thus energies) speed up the removal of molecules from a solid.

Lucky for us coffee drinkers, smaller and more water soluble molecules like acids will get extracted first and those tend to be the tastier, less bitter flavors. Coffee drinkers are well aware that not every cup is created equal. I have rarely met a cup of coffee that I won’t drink (a little soy milk goes a long way) but I know others who won’t touch, say a gas station brew and insist upon espresso.

The difference lies not in the beans themselves but in the preparation. For espresso, the beans are very finely ground (almost to the texture of...

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Make Your Presentations Evergreen

If you’re a manager, you’ll find a lot of your job is giving presentations. Status presentations. Market presentations. Project presentations. Analysis presentations. Proposal presentations. Training presentations. Presentations to those above you. Presentations to your colleagues. To clients. To your team. Presentations everywhere! 

It takes a lot of work to develop that much. If you present, you know how much time and effort goes into a good presentation. If you’re going to put in that much effort, you want to get the most out of it. 

Some presentations, like status presentations, are very much about a specific moment in time. Those must be created from scratch, and when they’re done, they’re done. 

But other presentations—sales, analysis, proposals, training—can be reused. You can give them again in their entirety. Or you can use them as the starting point for other presentations further on down the line. 

If your presentations rely on slides (and we can talk about that decision in a future podcast), you can carefully design them to be sneakily reusable.

Sales, analysis, proposals, and training presentations can be reused. Or you can use them as the starting point for other presentations further on down the line.

Use a Consistent Look-and-Feel for All Your Presentations

Give all your presentations a consistent look and feel. That means color scheme, font choice, and layout. Most presentation software provides templates for different slides, so everything within a presentation goes together. Then when you change or add a slide, you don’t need to worry about formatting it. The formatting magically matches the rest of the presentation.

Don’t just stop at one presentation; do them all. Choose the same theme for everything. The same colors, fonts, and layouts—for all your presentations. This way, you can easily cut and paste slides from one presentation to another. You won’t need to reformat them or tweak them to get them to match. They’ll already match. So combining material from multiple presentations will be a snap.

Develop Your Presentation in Modules

There’s no reason to stop at copying single slides between presentations. Sometimes presentations share entire topics. For example, one of my favorite productivity techniques is Speed dating your tasks. Speed-dating belongs in my both ...

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‘So’ and ‘So That’: Coordinating or Subordinating Conjunctions?

Today’s question comes from Matt Mullan, a teacher I met a few years ago at the National Council for Teachers of English convention. He writes, “I struggle to provide students with any explanation for the difference between ‘so’ used as a coordinating conjunction and ‘so’ when it’s really ‘so that’ in disguise.” 

Two Sentences About  Boxes, Pillows, and Cats

This really is a tricky ball of twine to unroll. We’ve even touched on the topic of whether “so” is a coordinating conjunction in episode 424, “Weird Coordinating Conjunctions: ‘Yet,’ ‘For,’ and ‘So.’”

We didn’t pursue the matter too far in that episode, but you better believe we’re going to in this one! To understand Matt’s question, let’s think about two sentences that on the surface are a lot alike. One is “Kim put a pillow on top of the empty box, so no cats would get into it.” The other one is “Kim put a pillow on top of the empty box, so no cats got into it.” The words are exactly the same, except that where one of them has “would get,” the other one has the verb “got.” 

‘So That’ Showing Purpose: A Subordinating Conjunction

Let’s take a closer look at the first sentence, “Kim put a pillow on top of the empty box, so no cats would get into it.” The clause that begins with “so” expresses Kim’s purpose: Kim didn’t want any cats to get into the empty box. Notice that you can replace “so” with the somewhat stuffier phrase “in order that,” and the sentence means the same thing: “Kim put a pillow on top of the empty box, in order that no cats would get into it.” For this reason, it will be convenient to talk about the “so” in this sentence as the “purpose-‘so.’”

Here’s something else you can do with this sentence: You can put the “so” clause first, and the sentence will still be grammatical. In other words, we could also say, “So no cats would get into the empty box, Kim put a pillow on top of it.” 

This ability to come before or after a sentence’s main clause is a dead giveaway that we’re dealing with an adverb clause. An adverb clause is a clause that explains when, where, how, or why the action of the main clause happens. Adverb clauses are a kind of clause known as a subordinate clause, and...

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Helping Your Child Navigate Body Exploration

As they grow, children start exploring their bodies, including the parts it's not considered polite to touch in public. How should a parent respond to this natural curiosity? It begins with letting your child know there's nothing to be ashamed of.

In late December, I experienced an extraordinary parenting milestone I’ll treasure for the rest of my life—the birth of my first grandchild! Watching him enter this amazing world was surreal.

Because I enjoy spending time with him, I was excited when my daughter asked me to join her at his pediatrician appointment. I was catapulted back to a time when I used to cart my own babies (usually several at a time—by myself!) for check-ups. Most of those visits were a total blur. My one and only goal was getting my kids in and out with my sanity intact. This time, though, my daughter was the one handling the car carrier, organizing bottles and diapers, and soothing her son while he fussed. I just sat and savored the time with my new grandson.

We were waiting, as the baby slept peacefully, when a woman with a crying newborn and pre-school aged child came in and sat down across from us. The frazzled mom told her little boy to say seated while she cared for his baby sister. Though he had a small electronic toy in one hand, he was much more interested in the hand he had down his pants. I waited to see how his mother would handle this breach of public etiquette, but she was too busy with her crying baby to notice. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the nurse called my daughter in. We gathered the baby and his things and headed towards the exam room, leaving the little boy in the same position he arrived in.

My daughter, looking uncomfortable, asked me, “Mom, what was up with that little boy touching himself in public? Why didn’t his mother tell him to stop?” It's a good question! Let's take some of the mystery out of young children and body exploration.

It’s completely normal for kids as young as toddlers to become aware of their private parts.

Normal Sexual Behaviors and Exploration

Children’s curiosity can lead to exploring their own and each other’s body parts by looking and touching. As I explained to my daughter, it’s completely normal for kids as young as toddlers to become aware of their private parts. When they do, they're often so consumed with this self-discovery that they aren’t tuned in to who might be watching them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) shared a list of the follow normal sexual behaviors in children.

Ages 2 to 6

• ...

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8 Must-Know Electronics Hacks

Hack 1: More Battery Juice

You’ve just realized your cell phone’s battery is about to die, but you’re at work and don’t have your charger. Get a little more talk time by detaching the battery and placing it in your workplace’s freezer, then allowing it to come back up to room temperature before you use it. The cold will keep your battery from losing a single drop of juice before you use it.

Hack 2: Fuzzy TV Signal?

If the picture on your television isn’t crystal clear, it may be caused by interference. Place a sheet of aluminum foil between any electronics (like your DVD player, cable box, or TV) that are stacked on top of each other and those wavy lines will be history.

Hack 3: Make Ink Last

You’re trying to print out a document, but you just ran out of ink! This solution will save you a trip to the store: Take out the ink cartridge, then blow hot air on it with a hair dryer. Once it’s warm, put it back in the printer. The heat loosens the ink that is stuck to the side of the cartridge, often giving you enough to finish the job.

Hack 4: Proactive Electronics Protection

You probably know that leaving electronics in a hot car can hurt them, but did you know that extreme cold can harm them, too? The freezing temperatures cause their tiny components to become brittle, making them much easier to break. If you live in a cold area, make sure to bring your electronics inside during winter!

Hack 5: A New Purpose for the TV

One of the most frustrating things you can do is to forget your phone chargers when you’re traveling. From experience, we’ve learned that most televisions in hotels have small USB ports on their sides. If you have a USB cord but no wall socket, you can often just plug your phone into the TV and watch it...

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Adulting Tips: 5 Psychological Secrets

Do you take odd pride in knowing how to clean the dishwasher filter? Do you tell your friends in a conspiratorial whisper about the miracle of compound interest? Does going to bed at 9:30 give you a high? If so, congrats: you’re adulting. But beyond the practical, there's a psychology to managing your adult life.

Adulting, which the Oxford English Dictionary shortlisted for Word of the Year in 2016 (along with alt-right, hygge,woke,and post-truth) is behaving in a manner consistent with responsible adulthood. 

Adulting can be about the little things, like cleaning snow off your windshield with an actual snow brush rather than your flailing, late-to-work arms. It could mean making a dentist appointment without your mother reminding you. But it can also be about the big things: figuring out your values, learning how to take care of yourself, and taking responsibility for your life rather than blaming traffic, your little brother, or Jack Daniels.

Much of adulting consists of working against human nature. We humans tend to focus on whatever shiny thing is directly in front of us, so adulting often means taking the long view: saving for retirement, doing cardio, taking your vitamins. But as the name implies, it’s also simply the process of growing up: adulting occurs as you trade dependence for independence and self-centeredness for community.

Adulting occurs as you trade dependence for independence and self-centeredness for community.

Over the years, out of all the college seniors I’ve worked with in treatment, 100% have freaked out about graduation in one way or another. It’s normal. For example, one woman obsessively read personal finance books to cope with her anxiety about supporting herself. Another, after triumphantly turning in her thesis, fell into a deep slump. Another questioned the decades that lay before him in an existential way. He wondered: “What’s the point of the next sixty years?”

While I can’t help you with the meaning of life, we can cover 5 secrets of adulting the college seniors and young adults I’ve worked with over the years have found most helpful in a time of transition. And if you’re already a full-fledged adult? Whether you’re one day or fifty years past graduation, all of us can benefit from the wisdom of those who tossed their mortarboards before us.

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The Psychology Behind 5 Adulting Tips

Here are five big jewels in the crown of adulting wisdom.

Adulting Tip #5: Question your self-imposed deadlines.

Many a college senior has sat in my office and announced a deadline for life. Sometimes the deadline is a way to test the waters: “I’m going to work for...

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'Sneaked' or 'Snuck'?

A listener named Salomé from Santa Clara, California, wrote, 

“I have a question regarding the word ‘sneaked’ versus ‘snuck.’ I religiously hammer into my students’ heads that ‘snuck’ is not a word, but I hear it used all the time (in public speaking and in the media). My students have even noted the instances and have asked me to explain. [Can you help?]”

Salomé is right that “sneaked” has been considered the proper form of the word for a long time, but she and her students are also on to something when they notice people using “snuck” out in the world.

‘Snuck’ Is Becoming More Popular

The previous edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage put “snuck” for “sneaked” at stage 3 on his language change index (which means it was widespread but still avoided in careful usage), but the most current edition, published in 2016, puts it at stage 4 (which means it’s now ubiquitous but still objected to on cogent grounds by a few die-hard snoots, as he puts it), so as people have been predicting and noticing for a while, “snuck” is becoming more popular, especially in American English. 

‘Snuck’ Is More Popular in the United States

And this is definitely more of an American thing than a British thing. “Snuck” first appeared in American English in the late 1800s, but it wasn’t until about 1970 that it started really gaining popularity in both Britain and the United States. But it’s still used much more often by Americans than the British, which you can see in graphs from the Google Book corpus. 

'Snuck' in British English

'Snuck' in American English

‘Sneaked’ and ‘Snuck’ on TV

The popularity of “snuck”...

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Have You Noticed People Not Pronouncing Their T's?

Two of our listeners wrote in recently to ask about a speech pattern they’d noticed: the habit of people dropping the T-sound in words like “Putin” or “mitten.” They wondered if this was a regional dialect, a generational one, or something else.

Here’s what we discovered.

The phenomenon itself is known as “T-glottalization.” It occurs when a speaker swallows the T sound in a word rather than speaking it aloud. We hear it when words like “kitten” and “water” are pronounced like “KIH-en” and “WAH-er.” 

Let’s talk about how this happens, and whether we should expect more of it.

How Does T-glottalization Happen?

First of all, glottalization is a normal thing that people do when they talk. It occurs when our vocal folds come together to stop the flow of air and then suddenly open. If you say “uh-oh,” a glottal stop occurs right after the “uh” and before the “oh.” Try it. You’ll feel a tightness in your throat when you say “uh” that is released when you say “oh.” That’s a glottal stop. (1)

We do this all the time without realizing it. For example, instead of carefully telling your friend “I can’t jump very high,” with an emphasis on the T in “can’t,” you might say “I CANH jump very high.”  Instead of saying “start your engines,” with a hard T at the end of “start,” you might say “STARH your engines.”

Without getting into too many linguistic details, we do this because it’s hard to aspirate certain consonants when they fall at the end of a word. We aspirate the P at the beginning of “purse” all day long, but we swallow it at the end of “stop.” We aspirate the T at the beginning of “toy,” but swallow it at the end at the end of “hot.” 

T-glottalization Stands Out When the T Is Dropped in the Middle of Words

T-glottalization tends to be more noticeable when it happens in the middle of a word.  

For example, a hallmark of British Cockney speech is dropping T’s in the middle of words. Instead of “getting a bottle of water,” you might be “GEH-ing a BAH-l of WAH-er.” Instead of “waiting for a letter,” you might be “WAY-ing for a LEH-er.” (2, 8)

Notice that the T is always dropped on the non-stressed syllable in a word. Take the word “potato.” There are two T-sounds. If you were glottalizing the word, you...

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D-Day: When the Tides Turned on Omaha Beach

Who were Charles Canham and Norman Cota? And why were they sent to Omaha Beach with the greatest urgency on the morning on D-Day? Turns out, they were the only two men who could break the bloody stalemate that had afflicted Omaha since dawn.

Welcome to Season 3 of Unknown History: D-Day Stories. I'm your host, Giles Milton, and today we're returning to the terrible killing fields of Omaha Beach.

In an earlier episode of Unknown History, we heard how the first wave of American troops to land on Omaha were massacred by the German defenders. Hardly a single man who landed in the first wave survived.

So what happened next? And how did American troops finally win the beach? It’s a story of courage and leadership—and it begins on USS Augusta, anchored offshore from Omaha. Pacing the bridge of the ship, and gravely anxious, was General Omar Bradley, General Eisenhower’s principal American commander on D-Day.

Norman Cota and Charles Canham were to be dispatched to Omaha Beach with the unenviable task of saving the landing from catastrophe.

Bradley was a worried man. The few reports he’d received from the beach suggested that the assault on Omaha was turning into a huge-scale catastrophe.

"Privately," he said, "I considered evacuating the beach-head and directing the follow-up troops to Utah Beach or the British beaches."

But he knew that evacuation was logistically impossible and that a diversion of troops would wreck the entire invasion plan. It would also condemn those already on the beach to certain death.

It was in this moment of desperation that Bradley chose to deploy two of his most formidable weapons. Norman Cota and Charles Canham were to be dispatched to Omaha Beach with the unenviable task of saving the landing from catastrophe.

Cota was a brigadier general, Canham a colonel, but their ranks were only partly relevant to everything that was to follow. More crucially, both were tried and tested leaders accustomed to getting their way.

Colonel Canham was the more unusual of the two. "A fiery old guy who spat fire and brimstone," said one. Another said he was "a tough son of a bitch: tall and lanky, he had a thin little moustache like the villain in a movie."

Canham’s comrade in arms was Norman Cota. Fifty-one years of age and with thinning hair, he was an old man leading a young man’s game. There was something of the outlaw about Cota: he champed on an unlit cigar even when under fire, and had perfected the art of swinging a pistol on his index finger. He had driven his men hard and vowed to lead from the front. His men were known as the Bastard Brigade. He was the Bastard-in-Chief....

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How to Invest Money Like A Pro (Even If You Haven’t Started)

If you want to create wealth, investing is one of the best ways to make it happen, besides winning the lottery or inheriting a fortune, of course. No matter if you’re saving for a luxury retirement, ivy league education expenses, or to pass money to the next generation, investing consistently over time is a wise strategy.

Problem is, investing can be intimidating, and no one wants to lose money, right? Many people never get started, or they have big misconceptions about what good investing really is.

I interviewed Chris Hill from The Motley Fool to chat about common mistakes that new and seasoned investors should avoid. If you haven’t already heard of The Motley Fool, it’s a multimedia financial services company that’s been providing advice for investors since 1993. Chris oversees business strategies and a lot of audio programming at The Motley Fool. He’s the terrific host and friendly voice behind two wildly popular podcasts: Motley Fool Money and MarketFoolery.

Motley Fool Money airs every week on more than 50 radio stations across the United States. It is consistently ranked as a top business and investing show on Apple Podcasts and other podcast sites. Chris interviewed me for the February 28, 2019 episode of the MarketFoolery podcast, which is another top-ranked daily show.

On the Money Girl podcast, Chris and I discuss his background, answers to common questions from his audience, and a variety of investing topics, including:

• Overcoming barriers to getting started with investing and why it’s easier than you may think
• The best account to begin investing with and how to make it automatic
• The only investment fund you may ever need
• Big misconceptions about investing that you should avoid
• How your temperament plays a role in investing success
• Why holding too much cash can be dangerous in the long run
• The “sleep factor” for an investment
• The pros and cons of the robo-investing trend

[Listen to the interview using the embedded audio player or on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and ...

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Quinine: Medicine or Mixer?

Nutrition Diva podcast listener Sherri writes:  “Is there anything about quinine (or tonic water) that makes it worth drinking? I know some older people who are convinced it helps with neurological issues. Does it have side effects, or is it fairly benign even if ingested daily?”

What’s in Tonic Water?

Quinine is a bitter chemical that is extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree. It’s used in tonic water to impart that characteristic bitter taste. In fact, I’ve made my own tonic water, using cinchona bark that I bought online.

My recipe involved boiling cinchona bark with other spices like coriander and juniper and combining that with citrus juice, grated citrus peels, and sugar and straining the whole concoction to produce a syrup. To use it, I would add a tablespoon or two of the syrup to a glass and fill with plain soda water. (Gin optional.)

Making your own tonic water is fun, especially if you like those sort of DIY projects that require a bunch of esoteric ingredients or equipment, take a lot of time, make a big mess, and ultimately produce something that you could have bought at the store for a buck.  Of course, my tonic water tasted nothing like store-bought tonic water. Some of my friends thought that was a plus; others frankly preferred the store-bought stuff. The other interesting thing about homemade tonic water is that it is not clear like store bought tonic water, but more the color of weak tea.

In addition to being used as a flavoring agent, quinine from cinchona bark can also be an effective treatment for malaria.

What Are the Medical Uses of Quinine?

In addition to being used as a flavoring agent, quinine from cinchona bark can also be an effective treatment for malaria.  Qualaquin is a prescription anti-malarial medication containing quinine sulfate. However, as more effective drugs have been developed, quinine is no longer the first-line treatment for malaria. It’s basically only used in cases where no other drugs are available, or in areas that have developed strains of malaria that are resistant to the first line drugs. It is also sometimes used to treat...

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5 Surprising Tips for Starting Seedlings

Can You Use Last Year’s Seeds?

If you have old seeds that may or may not be okay for planting, test them out first: Pour a handful onto a moist napkin or paper towel, and cover with plastic wrap. Wait until the germination time has passed (check the wrapper for the correct time), and take a look at your seeds. If some are growing, the seeds are usable—just plant them deeply.

DIY Seedling Starters

Rather than purchasing seedling starters from the store, make your own using cardboard egg cartons or paper towel and toilet paper tubes. Slice the tubes into two- or three-inch sections—halves for short tubes and quarters for long ones—and set them on a tray. Spoon soil inside each one and place them in a warm, moist location to encourage growth.

More Ingenious Seed Starters

Homemade seed starters can also act as fertilizer! For instance, save the hallowed-out shells of citrus fruit like oranges and grapefruit. They make great containers for starting seeds. Just fill them with soil and seeds, and plant them after the seeds have germinated inside. Or, start seeds indoors in clean eggshell halves. Let them grow in an egg container, and when it’s time to transplant them outdoors, just dig a hole for the shells. After the sprouts are planted, the holders will decompose, leaving nutrients in the ground.

Seed Sterilizer

Keep that bottle of hydrogen peroxide handy for your garden! Its antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-viral properties will completely sterilize your seeds, boosting their germinating powers. Before you start the germinate the seeds in the spring, soak them in a solution of two teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide for every one cup of water. Soak your seeds for 24 hours, or up to 48 hours for hard seeds. Add more peroxide solution as necessary to keep the seeds moist throughout their soak time.

Newspaper Nurturance

Are you starting your seeds outside instead of inside? Seeds need warmth, but not light, to germinate, so if you place newspaper over a newly sown area, it will keep the seeds warm while blocking out the light. Water right over the paper and when the plants get tall enough, add more soil on top of it.

For more tips like these, follow our ...

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Em-Dashes: Arrows to the Heart

Like many people, I first encountered dialogue set off with em-dashes (sometimes called quotation dashes) by reading James Joyce’s "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." I was a teenager at the time, and impressionable. Certainly, this way of styling dialogue was new to me, but I never had any issues knowing who was talking in this format.  It may or may not be wise to let teenagers read Joyce, but for me the damage was done; my sense of how consciousness could appear in prose had been given a blast with a blowtorch.

Joyce didn’t invent em-dash dialogue styling—it was already being used in continental literature, particularly French—but he brought it into the mainstream of English literature.  With it came Joyce’s intense interior access, and the exciting sense of flow that he and other modernists achieved.

When, as an adult, I began to work on the material that formed my first two novels ("Wilberforce" in 2015 and "Grievous" in 2019), I found myself presenting the dialogue with em-dashes. The few times I experimented with switching back to quotes, I felt dizzied by the clutter on the page. Once I got into the habit of cutting into speech with em-dashes, quotation marks had come to look very busy. As well, both of my novels are set between the wars at a fictional boys’ boarding school in England, a time and place linked in my mind to the worlds of Joyce and other em-dashers. When I made the decision to stick with this dialogue style, however, my em-dash radar had widened beyond Joyce to other, later, British and American examples such as Roddy Doyle’s "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and Charles Frazier’s "Cold Mountain."

The em-dashes convey a sense of speed and pace better than quotation marks, especially when there is interruption.

Previously on Grammar Girl, Christopher Yates wrote a fantastic, wide-ranging essay about different dialogue styles, including his favorite, bare dialogue (a la Cormac McCarthy), in which dialogue is presented as just another paragraph with no styling whatsoever. In contrast to the “bare” style, em-dash dialogue feels louder because the speech is set off from the...

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How to Build Strong and Pain-Free Feet

A listener named Aaron called the Get-Fit Guy Hotline and said: “I am a 44-year-old cancer survivor trying to put my body together after treatment. I’ve had a foot injury and have been walking in orthotics for months—getting weaker instead of stronger between the podiatrist visits. Do you have any tips on how to slowly move off the orthotics and instead strengthen the metatarsal area, to get back to strong feet?”

That is a great question Aaron. The foot and ankle are among the most common sites for both acute and chronic injuries in active individuals. When an injury to the foot or ankle occurs, we end up being limited in our ability to run, jump, kick, and change directions. The treatment and rehabilitation of these foot injuries is crucial in getting us back to full participation and full function. But how do we do that?

Back in 2014, the British Journal of Sports Medicine published an article called "A new paradigm for understanding intrinsic foot muscle function." That article discusses a “core” that we really ought to be training but in reality we don’t often think about. This core is nowhere near the abdomen or lower back. Yep, you guessed it, they are talking about the foot core!

In that paper, they draw some really interesting parallels between the small muscles of the trunk region that make up the lumbopelvic core and the intrinsic foot muscles. In doing so, they introduce the concept of the foot core. A core that I think we all should be spending time training.

Why Our Feet Need Training?

By the time we reach Aaron’s age of 44, our feet will have travelled about 70,000 miles (or 112,654 km). After putting that kind of mileage on our feet, it is no wonder that eight out of ten Americans say they have experienced one foot problem or another. And even worse than that, one in four Americans report that they are completely unable to exercise due to foot pain. So, folks - this is no joke.

One in four Americans report that they are completely unable to exercise due to foot pain.

Despite the fact that 25% of our bones are located in and below our ankles, and also that our feet are the foundation of our body, many of us neglect our feet. We all know that we should be exercising our arms, legs, and cardiovascular system but when is the last time you exercised the muscles in your feet? And yet, without proper muscle strength in our feet, our bodies are destined to become imbalanced or unstable. Luckily, some simple foot exercises can make a big difference.

Shoes Make it Worse

Even though most shoes are specifically designed and manufactured for things like...

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How Does Wind Energy Work?

In the U.S. 8% of our energy generating capacity comes from wind turbines—that’s more than any other renewable resource—and wind power has more than tripled over the past decade. More than half of that capacity comes from just five states: Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, California, and Kansas. According to the American Wind Energy Association, there are over 56,000 wind turbines across the country that provide a capacity of ~96,000 megawatts, enough to power more than 15 million homes. The Department of Energy projects that by 2050, that wind capacity will increase to more than 400 gigawatts. 

How can you get in on this growing wind energy action? Many electric utilities allow you to tap into wind—and other renewable—sources of power if you pay a little bit more for a “green” option. More consumers signing up for green energy means those utilities will work to procure more of it. Let’s take a look at how wind turbines work and some of the potential pros and cons. 

How Do Wind Turbines Work?

Wind power actually starts with the Sun. In order for the wind to blow, the Sun first heats up a section of land along with the air above it. That hot air rises since a given volume of hot air is lighter than the same volume of cold air. Cooler air then rushes in to fill the void left by that hot air and voila: a gust of wind. 

Wind power actually starts with the Sun. In order for the wind to blow, the Sun first heats up a section of land along with the air above it.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy describes a wind turbine as “the opposite of a fan.” Simply stated, the turbine takes the energy in that wind and converts it into electricity. So how does it do that? 

First, the wind applies pressure on the long slender blades, usually 2 or 3 of them, causing them to spin, much like the wind pushes a sailboat along its path through the water. The spinning blades then cause the rotor, or the conical cap on the turbine, and an internal shaft to spin as well at somewhere around 30 – 60 revolutions per minute. 

The ultimate goal is to spin an assembly of magnets in a generator which will, well, generate voltage in a coil of wire thanks to electromagnetic induction. Generators...

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How to Organize Reference Files

Get-It-Done Guy podcast listener Corrie writes: 

"I am a school psychologist. I have a ton of resources that I often need to refer to—bookmarks, articles saved on my hard drive, resources in a Google Drive, and stuff in Dropbox. When someone says, 'Hey, we need a behavior plan for this kid who is stealing,' I need to quickly find all the relevant info. How do I do this? And how do I get everything into that resource without going through every single file and entering it on a Google Doc?"

Hi, Corrie! I feel your pain. I’ve been using the internet for so long that some of my files are stored on stone tablets. As you can imagine, it’s hard to share them. Not only are they heavy, but the dust on the stones dries out my hands. I use hand creme to protect my sensitive skin, and then my hands get so slippery the stone tablets slip through my grasp, fall, and shatter on the floor. There’s probably a deep life lesson here.

In episode 543, How to Collaborate on Multiple Projects with Multiple People, we discussed creating master project documents. The master document includes a discussion of the project and links to related files. Master project documents keep everyone focused on just the files that are currently active.

Your situation is different. You want to be able to find the hundreds and hundreds of files and bookmarks. But you only need to find any given file when you need it. 

Search May Do the Trick

This may be a case where simply searching is all the mechanism you need. Give your files descriptive names like “behavior plan for youth stealing” and a search for “behavior plan” or “stealing” will turn up that file.

Do the same with your bookmarks, and you can just search in your bookmarks list to find the resources you need.

This makes it easy for you to find resources. It doesn’t help you share those resources with others, however.

Gather Your Files in One Place

Using a cloud syncing service like Dropbox, Box.com, pCloud.com, or Sync.com, you can solve all the problems at once. Yes, all the problems. At once. Eat your heart out, Albert Einstein!

For the rest of this episode, I’ll talk about a mythical cloud service called “SyncBox.” Just substitute the name of whatever cloud sync service you really use. (Or send me a whole bunch of money and I’ll happily feature the cloud provider you want me to in...

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The Dictionary of Difficult Words

You may remember my chat with Jane Solomon about a year ago when we talked about how Dictionary.com had started defining emoji. Well, she’s back today to talk about her new children’s book, The Dictionary of Difficult Words. 

We talked about the long history of "difficult word" dictionaries in the English language, how she chose the particular difficult words in her book, which letters have the best words, and the specific constraints that dictionary writers often encounter (such as  limited acceptable "defining vocabularies") and the constraints she put upon herself.

You can listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above or by finding the podcast on any podcasting app, but if you prefer to read it, we also have a complete (rough) transcript.

Image courtesy of Jane Solomon.

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The Dictionary of Difficult Words: An Interview with Jane Solomon

6 Tips for Parenting a Pessimist

Even when I was a naive new mom 25 years ago (yikes!), I was prepared for some of the unpleasant behaviors that I knew came with the parenting territory. I fully expected to experience toddler meltdowns, whiny preschoolers, snarky tweens, and even defiant teenagers. But the one trait I never anticipated in my eight kids was negativity.

See Also: 4 Annoying Behaviors and How to Correct Them

Sure, I knew they’d all face disappointments from time to time, but given my positive outlook on life, I couldn’t fathom that any of my kids would become a negative Nellie. I was wrong. Two of my children seemed to thrive on being negative. The glass was always half-empty, there was no such thing as a silver lining, and they certainly didn’t try or want to see the world with rose colored glasses.

Optimists do better in school, work, and extracurricular activities. They also often perform better on aptitude tests, are more likely to win elections, have better overall health, and may even live longer.

The Benefits of Optimism

Whether you’re naturally an eternal optimist or a cynical humbug, there is lots of research that proves a positive approach to life can benefit your entire well-being.

Psychology Today’s article "The Mind and Body Benefits of Optimism" cites research from the Father of Psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman. His studies have shown that pessimists tend to give up more easily, feel depressed more often, and have poorer health than optimists. Optimists, on the other hand, generally do better in school, work, and extracurricular activities. They also often perform better than predicted on aptitude tests, are more likely to win elections when they run for office, have better overall health, and may even live longer. That, says Seligman, "is the incredible power of positive thinking.”

Encouraging optimism in our kids comes with numerous benefits including better mental and physical well-...

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The Etymology of 'Easter' and 'Passover'

Most of you probably have a basic understanding of the Easter and Passover holidays, but I’ll give you a quick summary before we get to the language part.

Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the day that Jesus, known as the son of God in the Christian faith, was said to be resurrected from the dead. It’s Christianity’s oldest festival, and it’s observed on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. 

Passover is a Jewish holiday that celebrates the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt. It also recognizes the night that God was said to “pass over” Jewish homes and spare them from a plague that killed all other firstborn children. Passover lasts seven or eight days, depending on where it’s being celebrated. It begins on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which falls during late March and early April.

What many people may not know about these two holidays is that they have a related linguistic history — at least in some languages.

Let me explain.   

Most words for Easter come from the Hebrew word for Passover

“Passover” comes from the Hebrew word “pesach,” which means to pass or spring over. And in most European languages, the word for “Easter” also has this root. 

For example, the French word for Easter is “Pâques.” The Dutch word is “Pasen.” The Turkish word is “Paskalya.” And the Spanish expression is “Pascua de Resurrección.”

Why is Easter so closely associated with Passover? Because Jesus was a Jewish person. His last meal — what Christians call the “Last Supper” — was a Passover celebration. Jesus was executed during Passover week, and he was said to come back to life three days later. 

In fact, early Christians celebrated Easter on the same day as Passover, regardless what day of the week it fell on. Nowadays, it’s always celebrated on a Sunday. This change came after about 300 years of controversy that rocked the church hierarchy. Sometime in the 1600s, the leaders finally decided that, yeah, Sunday would be the big day. 

The English and German Words for Easter Have a Different Root

In contrast to most European languages, English and German have a different root word for “Easter,” which is called “Ostern” in German. And the root word is a little less certain. 

One theory was suggested by the 7th-century scholar Bede. He stated that Easter was named after a pagan goddess of the...

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Mother's Day Gifts for Every Mom

If you're scrambling to find a gift for the woman who gave you everything, check out the following list for some Mother's Day gift ideas! 

 

For the Artsy Mom

21 Piece Acrylic Painting Table Easel Set

If your mom never really got over fingerpainting with you, she needs this painting set

Ceremic Clay Tools, 45 Piece Pottery Sculpting Tools

You'll be drinking coffee from homemade mugs in no time! 

 

For the Athletic Mom

Foam Roller Set with Massage Stick, Spiky Massage Ball, Deep Tissue Ball Massager and Yoga Strap

Treat your mom to this extensive set of massage tools for a perfect post-workout stretch

Performance Socks

With arch support, moisture management, and a heel tab, your mom will be ready for any workout in these socks

 

For the Musical Mom

Musical Note Necklace Pendant

Help your mom show off her love for music with this treble clef pendant

Mistaken Lyrics Coasters

These coasters feature commonly mistaken lyrics from popular songs—perfect for a music lover! 

 

For the Outdoorsy Mom

LifeStraw Personal Water Filter

If your mom is constantly taking the road less traveled by, she needs this personal water filter to make sure she'll always have access to clean water

Zhuanglin Water Shoes

With summer right around the corner, gift your mom these water shoes so she can get to the lake, ocean, and pond without worrying about her feet

 

For the Foodie Mom

The Deluxe Food Lover's Companion

Written for the home chef, this book includes...

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How to Say No (Without Feeling Guilty)

This week’s episode is for listener Stephanie from Adelaide, South Australia, who sent me a lovely email that inspired me when I was dragging.

We’ve all been there.  We’re minding our own business when we get a call, an email, or a “whaaaat’s happening?” Office Space-style cubicle visit, and that other f-word gets lobbed at us: favor.

Sometimes, of course, we say yes.  We’re delighted to help out—it’s fun, rewarding, or win-win. But sometimes we feel anything but delighted: we feel bad, obligated, resentful, or pressured. And it’s almost guaranteed: we feel guilty.

So today, let’s talk about why not to feel guilty when you say no to coming in on Saturday, coordinating the preschool fun fair for the third year in a row, or loaning your pickup truck to your friend who’s moving this weekend. That, plus seven concrete ways to say no, from beginner to ninja.  

Let’s start with why you shouldn’t feel guilty about saying no. First, guilt is an emotion reserved for when you do something wrong. If you hurt someone, it’s appropriate to feel guilty. Now, saying no might create a little extra work for the person you’re declining because now they have to ask someone else or otherwise rethink, but it falls well short of hurtful.  

To make this more visual, picture a flowchart—saying no simply sends someone in a different direction. People are scrappy and creative. If you say no, they’ll recalibrate and take another path. You’re no Obi Wan Kenobi—seldom it is true that you’re really someone’s only hope. There are almost always other options out there for them and the favor they need.

Second, we often feel guilty because not only do we with think we’re hurting the other person, but we expect retaliation. We think, “She’s going to hate me,” “He’ll get mad,” or “I’ll get fired.” Our brains jump to the worst-case scenario. So instead, let’s take a step back and look at all the other, much more likely possibilities that our brains leap-frogged over on the way to the worst.  

Ask yourself instead, what’s a more likely scenario? Maybe your requestor will be momentarily disappointed, but understand and then get help elsewhere. Or, let’s generate a most likely scenario this way: what happens when someone says no to you? Do you fly into a rage, burst blood vessels, and froth at the mouth? I’m assuming you don’t. So why the double standard?  Expect reasonable others to react as you do—that is to say, reasonably.

---

OK, now on to seven ways to say no!

Method #1: Offer an alternative. This is the...

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12 Surprising Sewing Tricks

Tip 1: Make Mending Easier

If you’re mending a hole on a sleeve or pant leg, it’s easy to miss a stitch when the fabric gets all balled up. Make your job easier by rolling up a magazine and placing it inside. It will partially unroll as far as the sleeve or leg will let it, creating just enough tension to hold the fabric in place.

Tip 2: Wine Cork Pincushion

Don’t have a pincushion handy for your next sewing project, or simply need a place to stash a single needle? Use the cork from a wine bottle instead! Simply stick your needles and pins into the cork for a quick and safe substitute cushion. You can also use a pencil eraser.

Tip 3: Thread Substitution

Need to mend an item of clothing on the fly and don’t have any thread? Dental floss makes an excellent stand-in for regular sewing thread, especially when working with hearty items like backpacks or coats.

Tip 4: How to Keep a Thimble On

Do you use a thimble to sew? If so, wet your finger before you put the thimble on. This will create suction, so the thimble stays put.

Tip 5: Make a Sewing Board

If you use a sewing machine often, mount a small bulletin board on the wall next to it. Then fill it with pushpins or straight pins. That way when you’ve got your hands full, you can use the pins to hang extra thread, buttons, bobbins, and other miscellany until you need it.

Tip 6: Don’t Toss That Snagged Swimwear!

You might know that clear nail polish will stop a run in stockings, but did you know it will also work on snagged swimwear? Paint a little bit on the run, and check periodically before hitting the pool to see if it needs a touch-up.

Tip 7: Easier Needle Threading

Do you have trouble threading needles? For easier threading, stiffen the ends of your thread by applying a light spritz of hairspray. The strengthened thread won’t fray and will easily slip through the eye of your needle.

Tip 8: How to Get Rid of Hem Marks

When you let down hems on clothes such as skirts, dresses, and pants, there is often a white mark where the fabric was turned up. Vinegar can be used to get rid of this pesky stain. First warm up your iron, and then scrub the mark with an old toothbrush dipped in white vinegar that has been diluted with small amount of water. Then press with the iron. The mark will usually come right out, but if it doesn’t repeat the process until...

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The Languages of the Marvel Universe: 'Avengers: Endgame'

April 26 is the release date for “Avengers: Endgame,” which wraps up a 22-movie story arc in the Marvel cinematic universe. The film that started it all, “Iron Man,” was released in 2008. Since then, Marvel has released 21 separate movies, all with distinct but interconnected storylines.

To say that fans are excited about the coming conclusion is an understatement. 

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen “Avengers: Infinity War,” you might want to skip ahead about 5 minutes. In that film, an alien known as Thanos, the Mad Titan, collects six infinity stones, powerful artifacts that existed before the universe was created. He uses their combined power to destroy half the galaxy in one fell swoop.

When “Endgame” comes out, we’ll find out what happens next. Will some of our favorite superheroes remain piles of dust? Will the remaining ones recover from their grief? Will the entire universe ever go back to normal?

All will be revealed in a few short days. 

To celebrate, we’re going to talk today about some of the languages featured in the Marvel movies. (By the way, if you like hearing about fantastic languages, check out our April 4 episode on the Languages of Game of Thrones.)

Here’s what you might hear in the theatre next week.

Wakandan

First, off, there’s Wakandan. That’s the Earth language spoken by T’Challa, Shuri, Nakia, and everyone else in Wakanda, the technologically supercharged African nation depicted in “Black Panther.” Two other languages are spoken there — Hausa and Yoruba — and most citizens also speak English and several other African and European languages.

Wakandan — unlike other Marvel languages — wasn’t made up by a language creator. It’s a real language, isiXhosa, that’s spoken in South Africa by more than eight million people. The director of the movie, Ryan Coogler, said he wanted to include as much of the language in the movie as possible. He employed native speakers, translators, and dialect coaches to make it happen. (1)

Groot

Next, there’s Groot. Groot is the name of a language, and also the name of the sentient alien tree from the Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s from the planet Flora Colossi, and he’s an adorable grumpy little creature. He says only three words — “I am Groot” — but that doesn’t mean he’s missing a language. Groot can only form those three sounds because his larynx is made of wood, and therefore pretty stiff. But his...

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6 Options for Income Tax Debt You Can't Pay

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made sweeping changes, including reductions to tax rates for most individual tax brackets and limits on many tax breaks. Problem is, employers may not calculate federal withholding changes properly or have updated W-4 forms from workers. This can leave many taxpayers owing more than they expected.

Sometimes, the amount owed is relatively small and painless to pay. But when you have a large tax debt, it can seem impossible to pay without a special arrangement in place.

Use one of the following six options to deal with an income tax debt that you can't pay:

Option #1: Offer in Compromise

With an offer in compromise (OIC) your tax debt is reduced based on your income, necessary expenses, assets, and equity in assets. To qualify, you can't have any delinquent taxes, estimated tax payments, or be in bankruptcy.    

Option #2: Partial Payment Plan

If the IRS won’t budge on the tax amount you owe, they may give you an installment agreement, which allows you to make partial payments on a set schedule. This arrangement lets you gradually eliminate your tax debt. 

Option #3: File an Amended Tax Return 

If your tax debt results from an overstatement of your financial liability on a tax return from the past three years, you can correct it by filing an amended return.

Also, filing tax returns for years that you didn't file could reduce your tax liability. You might discover that you owe zero or should receive a refund.

Option #4: Non-Collectible Status

If you have a financial hardship and your expenses exceed your income, you may qualify for non-collectible status. This doesn’t reduce the amount you owe but gives you more time to pay.  So, it's a good option when you know that you'll have the ability to pay your debt in...

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3 Easy Ways to Improve Your Grammar

Looking to strengthen your writing and grammar skills? Keep reading to learn three easy ways to improve your grammar.

1. Set aside time to review the basics

It has likely been some time since you took a class that covered punctuation, verb tenses, and the other basic rules that compose English grammar. If you don’t feel completely confident in your understanding of grammar, give yourself a refresher course. There are many basic grammar rules you may want to review, including the following:

• Don’t overuse apostrophes. Learning the rules for this common punctuation type will enhance your writing significantly. Remember that apostrophes are not used to make a noun plural. Instead, they’re used to show possession—such as Joe’s car—or in a contraction, where the apostrophe replaces the missing letters—for example, it’s in place of it is.
• Understand where to use commas. Commas serve to clarify meaning and to separate thoughts within a sentence. They’re also commonly seen after introductory clauses or to separate a description.

2. Spend time reading

Reading a wide variety of materials will not only expose you to different writing styles and ideas, it’ll also help you improve your grammar. As you’re reading, pay attention to how sentences are structured and how they vary in length. Note how the writer uses specific phrases and punctuation to emphasize their message, and identify ways you can incorporate these types of techniques into your writing. In addition, examine how the writer uses his or her style to set the tone of the piece while still following grammar guidelines. By studying how others write and use specific grammar styles, you give yourself an opportunity to strengthen your writing in new and exciting ways.

3. Proof your writing by reading it out loud

An excellent way to improve your writing and grammar skills is to read your writing out loud. When you read your own words aloud, it helps you spot issues not only with your grammar, but also potential redundancies or issues in the general flow of your work. It’s easier to catch a run-on sentence or an awkward phrase when you hear it out loud. Once you find any problem spots in your writing by using this editing method, you’ll be able to focus on replacing these words with more natural-sounding language. Another editing method to try is having another person read your writing out loud to you. This may be even more effective, because you’ll be able to benefit from another person’s grammar and writing skills.

When working to improve your writing, the first step to take is to strengthen your grammar skills. When improving...

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D-Day: The German Opposition

Who was Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski? And why was he so important to the Germans on D-Day? Turns out, he was the only enemy commander capable of defeating the Allied forces on June 6, 1944.

Welcome to Season 3 of Unknown History: D-Day Stories. I'm your host, Giles Milton, and today we're talking about a colourful SS Panzer commander who was tasked with driving Allied forces back into the sea.

Colonel Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski was one of the great panzer leaders of Nazi Germany, described as "an exuberant, dashing, gay individual" with a noble Prussian pedigree that stretched back to the age of chivalry. War was in his blood: His ancestors had fought their way through central Europe for the better part of half a millennium.

He certainly looked the part, with well-chiseled features, black oiled hair, and an engaging smile. As one of his friends said, he was, "frankly, enjoying the war for the thrills that he got."

Oppeln-Bronikowski had fought as a panzer commander on the Eastern Front and he knew the value of speed when it came to tank warfare. Strike hard and fast, that was how to fight with tanks. He knew that the only conceivable way of driving the Allies back into the sea was for the Germans to hit them with everything they had—including the mechanized and highly trained panzer divisions.

He knew the value of speed when it came to tank warfare...Strike hard and fast, that was how to fight with tanks.

But Hitler had insisted that these panzer divisions could not go into battle without his express command. Since this did not come until after midday on 6 June, the colonel could do nothing but sit and wait while the Allies poured ashore.

He was furious. He considered Hitler’s senior staff to be incompetent amateurs who, he said, "knew nothing of the problems of infantry or of panzers." Nor, for that matter, did he "give a damn about Hitler." 

Like so many noble-born Prussians in the military, he viewed the Führer as an ignorant upstart with little grasp of modern warfare. And now, when clear direction was most needed, the colonel found himself lacking the necessary permission to enter battle with the 127 Mark IV tanks of his panzer division.

Not until early afternoon was he allowed to wheel his tanks northwards, with the aim of driving a wedge between the British troops on Sword Beach and the Canadians on Juno. It was a vitally important operation for the Germans.

If the colonel could split the Allied beachhead in two, it would be far easier for the German forces to pick of the various landing zones, one by one.

It is a curious fact, given the vital importance of his mission, that Oppeln-Bronikowski’s panzers were to receive...

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Behavioral Finance: Tips for Success With Money, Work, and Life

Behavioral finance is the study of how psychology affects the way you handle money. It allows for the fact that we don’t always act rationally. Our emotions and biases strongly influence what we do and don’t do with our personal finances.

I interviewed Sheri Fitts, author of Deconstructing Digital: Simple Ways To Connect With Your Next-Generation Financial Clients, to discuss success tips for money, work, and life. Sheri draws on more than 30 years of expertise in financial services, marketing, and psychology. She’s also the owner of ShoeFitts Marketing, a speaker, and the host of the Women Rocking Wall Street podcast.

Sheri reminds us that success comes from having the right habits, attitude, and mindset. We chat about some driving forces behind decisions that are critical for building wealth and living the life you dream of, including:

• The role inertia plays in our financial success
• How aversion to loss can trip up investors
• Making the leap from employee to self-employed
• Tips for becoming a sought-after influencer or speaker in your field
• Why everyone (even employees) should create a personal brand 
• The benefits of using a coach to achieve goals

[Listen to the interview using the embedded audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Spotify]

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The 3 Levers of Appetite

If you’re trying to manage your weight, chances are that you have spent a fair amount of time thinking about hunger. How can you eat less without feeling hungry? Is there any way to control your appetite? How do people who weigh less do it? Do they simply not experience hunger? Are they hungry all the time? How can you distinguish between true hunger and the urge to eat?

As someone who coaches people on sustainable weight loss, these are questions I’ve spent a lot of time thinking (and writing) about, as well. Today I want to tell you about the three different ways our bodies register or experience hunger. 

In my recent episode on how calories in food are determined, I talked about the hazards of relying too heavily on calorie counters and calculators. I pointed out that we probably can’t rely entirely on our hunger or satiety signals to tell us if we need food and when we’ve had enough.

And I bet that might might have been what triggered a listener to phone in and ask what I thought of intuitive eating and whether there was any good research to support it.

Does Intuitive Eating Work?

Intuitive eating is a popular concept these days and people throw this term around pretty loosely. It’s hard to know sometimes exactly what they mean by it.

For some, it just means not following rigid diet rules. I’m all for that! But if you’re having trouble managing your weight, that approach alone may not be enough to solve the problem. I talked more about the strengths and weaknesses of intuitive eating as an approach to weight management in episode #397.

On a closely related topic, Cheryl from Massachussetts emailed this week to ask:

“Even when I eat a good sized meal with adequate levels of protein, fat, and fiber, I...

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