Good morning. On today’s docket:

• 🧠 Scientists may have discovered what happens when we die (nothing like a light topic to start a Tuesday)
• 🏆 The satirical Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded
• ✌️ American consumers are taking the economy’s exit ramp

… and more.

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Let’s Roll: Today’s news should be about a 4.98-minute read.

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“Try all things, hold fast that which is good.”

–John Locke (1632-1704)

Humans around the world show similar brain activity and report similar experiences when dying or close to death, including seeing their life flash before their eyes, according to a first-of-its-kind study from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

As part of the research, a team led by Dr. Sam Parnia monitored the brain waves of 567 people who underwent cardiac arrest resuscitation (aka CPR) across two dozen hospitals in the US, UK, and Bulgaria.

Here’s what they found:

• The brain activity of patients who died flatlined shortly after cardiac arrest, as expected.
• But over the hour-long period following their death, researchers also identified sudden spikes of electrical activity in several areas of the brain associated with higher mental functions, like talking or concentrating deeply.

🤔 So, what were they experiencing?... Scientists interviewed the ~10% of patients in the study who ended up surviving CPR, then categorized their testimonies alongside those from 126 additional survivors of cardiac arrest.

According to Dr. Parnia: “We were able to show very clearly that the recorded experience of death – a sense of separation, a review of your life, going to a place that feels like home, and then a recognition that you need to come back – were very consistent across people from all over the world.”

• People also consistently report seeing a God-like being that Parnia says can be interpreted in different ways: “If you happen to be a Christian, you say, ‘I saw Jesus’ and if you happen to be an atheist, you say ‘I saw this incredible being of love and compassion.’ All of this has been reported now for more than 60 years.”

🧠 One possible explanation: Dr. Pania says the human brain typically has braking systems which prevent us from accessing all of its regions. But those limits are removed as the brain shuts down following cardiac arrest, briefly allowing access to all thoughts, emotions, feelings, and memories a person has experienced in their life.

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🇮🇱 Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met with Elon Musk to discuss AI, antisemitism, and more. PM Netanyahu kicked off his ongoing trip to the US by meeting with Musk in northern California, where the two discussed a range of issues in an hour-long conversation livestreamed on X. Over the course of the discussion, Netanyahu asked Musk to take steps to curb antisemitism on X, while Musk brought up public opposition to the Israeli PM’s controversial judicial reform plan. The X CEO also said the site currently has 550 million users, and suggested charging accounts a small monthly fee to combat botting.

🇨🇦🇮🇳 Canada expelled a top diplomat over “credible allegations” linking India’s government to a recent assassination. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and noted supporter of creating an independent Sikh homeland within India called Khalistan, was gunned down on June 18 in British Columbia. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said officials recently opened an investigation after being notified of a potential link between the shooting and India’s government, which strongly opposes the Khalistan movement.

🇨🇳 China’s defense minister has gone missing. Li Shangfu, who was appointed China’s defense minister in March, hasn’t been seen in public for nearly three weeks. Reuters reported that Li is being investigated alongside eight other senior military officials over the corrupt procurement of military equipment in a previous role, and his unexplained absence comes two months after China’s foreign minister and two top military generals suddenly disappeared for weeks and were eventually replaced.

New York’s salary transparency law went into effect on Sunday, making it the latest state to implement legislation requiring job postings to include the salary paid for the position.

And, much like Deion Sanders joining Colorado, these laws are already having an impact.

Half of US job postings in August advertised at least some employer-provided salary information, according to a new report by job board Indeed. That’s the highest share ever recorded by the firm, and nearly triple its February 2020 level of 18%.

Some more data:

• 70% of organizations that list pay ranges in job postings say doing so has led to more people applying, while 66% say disclosing pay has increased the quality of applicants they’re seeing, according to research from the Society for Human Resource Management.
• 36% of HR professionals also say transparency laws caused more current employees to ask about receiving a pay raise, per SHRM.

🖐️ Yes, but… Although pay ranges are increasingly being posted, they’re sometimes like The Rock – big enough to defy belief. A job post from Citi went viral for offering a range of $0 to $2 million (though the company later called it an error), while the posted salary for a Google software engineer in San Jose currently ranges from $157,000 to $235,000.

📸 Big picture: In addition to New York, California, Colorado, and Washington state also have pay disclosure laws in place.

Licking rocks is a pretty good way to test whether the object is actually a rock, or just a piece of fossilized bone, according to this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes.

🤔 Um, what ?... The Ig Nobel prizes are an annual spectacle, created as an ode to strange scientific discoveries, with real Nobel laureates in attendance to announce spoof prizes.

Some of the honorees:

• Psychology: Social psychologist Stanley Milgram – known for his 1960s shock experiment studies on obedience to authority – and two colleagues studied how many pedestrians stopped to look upward when they saw strangers do so. (Results: The bigger the crowd, the more people who looked up.)
• Mechanical Engineering: Five Rice University graduate students used the corpses of dead spiders as robotic claws for picking up and maneuvering tiny electronic parts, in a novel research area they dubbed “necrobotics.”
• Public Health: Urology professor Dr. Seung-min Park invented the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a wide range of technologies – including a urinalysis test strip, a computer vision system, and an anal-print sensor – to monitor and quickly analyze human excretions.

See the full list of winners.

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💬 Quoted… "Senators are able to choose what they wear on the Senate floor. I will continue to wear a suit."

Prepare to see more Patagonia vests and $900 solid-color tees on politicians – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has instructed the Senate's Sergeant at Arms to no longer enforce the chamber's dress code for senators. The updated rule will go into effect this week, and replaces the chamber’s previous mandate that men and women wear business attire on the Senate floor (which means a coat + tie for men; the rules for women have been relaxed over the past few years).

• Fun fact: It's unclear whether the Senate dress code is actually an official, written policy. It appears to be more of an informal custom, enforced by the Sergeant at Arms, per Axios.

📉 Stat of the Day: If the economy was a highway, consumers are taking the closest exit ramp. According to a new CNBC-Morning Consult survey of ~4,400 US adults, 92% have reduced their spending over the past six months. And the cuts are expected to continue; 76% of those surveyed plan to cut back on spending for non-essential items over the next six months, and 62% expect to cut back on essential items “sometimes” or “more often” over the same timeframe.

🤔 Did You Know?... Female authors’ share of all books published has grown from ~25% in 1970 to roughly 50% present day, according to data analyzed by Joel Waldfogel, an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

📰 Worth a Read: How a Squiggly Line on a Map Got Barbie Banned in Vietnam → (WSJ)

• ☝️ You’re looking at some of the winners from the 2023 edition of the LensCulture Street Photography Awards; the photos will be featured at an upcoming group exhibition in NYC.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

in partnership with The Investors Podcast Network

• 💰 US markets closed slightly up across the board (S&P: +0.1%; Dow: +0.02%; Nasdaq: +0.01%).
• 🛒 Instacart priced its IPO at the top end of expectations, valuing the company at $9.9 billion; shares will start trading on the Nasdaq later today.
• 🍏 Apple released iOS 17 for iPhones; it’s the company’s biggest software update of the year and is available for anyone with an iPhone from 2018 or later. | 📱Lead time and preorders for the iPhone 15 are “better than feared,” per Morgan Stanley analysts. (Background)

*From our partners: 📈🗞️ The podcast network by investors, for investors is coming to your inbox… With 100+ million downloads, The Investors Podcast Network has helped countless investors level up. And they now have a newsletter! Subscribe for free.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• ❌ HBO canceled the show Winning Time after two seasons. | ❌ Russell Brand’s remaining live shows on his Bipolarisation tour have been postponed following allegations of sexual assault.
• 🏈📈 Player turnout for high school football rose 5.6% last year, per recently released data; participation remains well below the sport’s peak about 15 years ago but its YOY growth outpaced the 3% average increase across all high school sports from 2021 to 2022.
• ✍️ The Writers Guild of America is set to resume strike negotiations with Hollywood studios tomorrow.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

in partnership with Upway

• 🤖🪲 Cornell engineers invented an insect-sized robot that’s powered by a tiny internal combustion engine and can carry up to 22x its own weight.
• 🦖 A near-complete dinosaur skeleton will be sold at auction in Paris next month; the 150-million-year-old camptosaurus fossil, named Barry, is expected to fetch at least $1.3 million.
• ☄️ NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft is preparing to deliver an asteroid sample it previously collected in 2020 back down to Earth.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• ✈️💥 A debris field has been identified as the remains of a $90 million F-35 fighter jet that went missing on Sunday north of Charleston, South Carolina, per officials.
• 🎓 US News unveiled its 2024 list of the best colleges; though several schools refrained from providing data to be included on the list. | 🎓 Take a look at the US colleges offering the best value, according to the WSJ/College Pulse rankings (link).
• 💵⚖️ Illinois became the first US state to abolish cash bail.

CLICKBAIT

• 💼🇺🇸 Ranking the best US states for young workers.

Yesterday, we covered the California government’s lawsuit seeking billions in damages from five major oil companies over allegations that the firms knowingly deceived the public for decades about the climate-change risks associated with fossil fuels.

❓ Our question to you: Do you agree with California’s decision to sue fossil-fuel companies?

• 👍 Yes: 46%
• 👎 No: 44%
• 🤷 Unsure/other: 10%

Click here to read some of the best responses.

+Note on sample size: We received 11,986 votes and 1,307 longform responses.

A pair of books were recently returned to the Middlesex Country Library in Ontario, Canada, from more than 600 miles away. 

📚 Background: The books arrived via mail from Massachusetts, after staff members at the UMass Dartmouth Library Services realized they did not belong in their library. 

• The Middlesex team has no record of the books being checked out, but they were registered in their system in 2005 and 2007. 
• "Our best guess is they have been traveling for 7 or more years," employees said in a post about the incident.

🤔 Mystery abounds... It's still unclear how the books ended up crossing the US-Canada border in the first place. 

🎸 Trivia: What's the alternate term for a guitar pick?

🐈 True or False?... Cats are unable to detect sour tastes.

🤔 Riddle Me This: What has ten letters and starts with gas?

(keep scrolling for the answers)

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🎸 Trivia: A plectrum

🐈 T/F: False, they can’t detect sweet tastes

🤔 Riddle: Automobile