It all adds up

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. A look at the next hot spot for travel, how about a pill that communicates with you, and how to succeed like an Olympian🥇

Let’s get into it!

The image you’re looking at is in Georgia, but it’s not at the southern tip of the Appalachian Trail. What you’re looking at is the Pankisi Valley in the former Soviet state of Georgia.

Once used as a refuge from Russian encroachment by Chechen rebels, along with (according to the U.S. government) Al Qaeda militants after 9/11, the pristine region of Pankisi is now a huge draw for tourists—mainly from the United States.

While the U.S. Agency for International Development labelled it as “peaceful” just three years ago, the federal government still has it on a warning list. Plenty of locals even remain concerned about the feasibility of tourism in the region.

Undeterred, the tourism industry has sprung up over the last decade, with a great deal of foreign aid helping it get off the ground. The majestic mountainous valley could easily be confused for Appalachia, Allegheny, and even parts of the Rockies.

Demand for guided tours has grown in the area already popular with hikers, along with international interest in the unique culture of this predominantly Suni Muslim region in a country that’s mostly Orthodox Christian.

Care to take a deeper dive? You can read on here.

Engineers at—you guessed it—MIT have developed a pill that communicates via a radio frequency antenna once it’s been swallowed.

The biodegradable antenna reacts when the pill is consumed and dissolves shortly thereafter, with just the microscopic RF chip remaining to be disposed of by the body’s…usual methods.

The engineers say the technology could be a game changer for patients who’ve had transplants or others who must take their medication at a specific time and frequency throughout the day.

“The goal is to make sure that this helps people receive the therapy they need to help maximize their health,” says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Traverso notes that hundreds of thousands of people die annually because they’ve failed to take their prescribed medication on time, resulting in billions of dollars in extra cost burdens on healthcare systems.

He and his team have previously designed medication that will stay in the digestive tract for days or weeks and release doses based on the patient’s prescribed time and frequency of dosage.

This isn’t an option for every type of therapy, making the RF-chipped capsule all the more impactful.

Everyone has their own level of ambition or competitiveness, but when it comes to the mentality of an Olympic athlete, there’s a reason they’re considered the best of their country’s best.

Some people are born athletically gifted; fewer have the mental fortitude to harness their abilities. In modern Olympic sports, athletes aren’t just open to, but motivated to leverage the wisdom of sports psychology.

“A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” said A clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Emily Clark, in an interview with The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.”

Just 116 gold medals will be up for grabs in Milan across 16 different Olympic disciplines. Millions compete each cycle just to get the chance to maybe represent their country. Over 70% will only get one shot, according to Dr. Bill Mallon, a shoulder surgeon and Olympic historian.

Olympians must be focused in a way that isn’t necessarily about winning a medal, even though that’s the ultimate goal.

“Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” said Clark. “Some of this might be realigning what success looks like, and some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”

If you’re ever visiting or live in Toronto, you like singing, and you’ve got some place to be, then maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be picked up by Bekir Ozel.

Ozel immigrated to Canada about a decade ago, unable to speak the language and suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. After several years of intense manual labor to make ends meet for his wife and three daughters, his condition became too painful to continue working in construction.

So a brief stint in pizza delivery was followed by his current career as a rideshare driver, which has generated more than a million Instagram followers for him.

How? It’s simple: he turned his car into a karaoke machine on wheels, with strobe lights, microphones, and a tablet that lets passengers pick a song to sing after being surprised with the moving concert hall by a gleeful Ozel.

He works his tail off to make a living in a field that isn’t particularly well-paying. He works 10 hours a day, six days per week, and somehow only gets a few hundred per month from his social media channels.

But after a health scare that nearly killed him two years ago, he takes pride in making the most of every day while making a living bringing joy to others.

“We have three days. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” Ozel said. “Yesterday is gone. It’s not going to come back. Tomorrow is coming or not coming… God knows. We have just today. This moment.”

You can quote me on that

Shows like Three’s Company were full of laughs and quotable lines. And they weren’t alone either! We’ll be testing you on classic TV quotes with today’s trivia.

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