New Features and Updates :)

Examined is now 10 months old. Thank you for reading! Here are some cool upgrades and new elements.

First of all, thank you. Thank you for reading this little publication, and for lending me your ears as I try to be another trusted source of information, education, and occasional inspiration. Thank you for sharing some posts with your friends and families, and thank you for your invaluable feedback and comments.

Recently I decided that I needed to improve my profile picture for Examined. Part of my reasoning could be cringe-worthy vanity. It could also be that Dr. Mehmet Oz has a major head start on me, and I need to elevate my game to catch up. “America’s doctor” should never have been a former heart surgeon with often bad advice. But I digress. So I asked my brother, who has great artistic skills, to help me with a portrait-style profile pic. He came through, and I’m using this likeness:

I never did like ties, or white coats. But at least I’m wearing a collared shirt in this rendering. It’s going to be difficult to get me out of scrubs in real life now.

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Secondly, I am going to try using some embedded audio files of me reading posts, riffing, or maybe doing the occasional interview someday. I’ll contact Dr. Oz about doing an interview, you never know. Audio is a new feature offered by the Substack platform, so let’s give it a try. Once again, hopefully this is not just vanity like starting one’s own podcast, but rather another way for people to keep up with the content I’m presenting.

Rather than reading these letters, do you want the option of listening to them? That’s how I get a lot of my information - podcasts, audiobooks, and now some Substack letters. I listen while I do other chores, or while I commute. Here is an audio file I recorded tonight… uncensored and uncut. Perhaps I’ll get a better mic to improve the volume. Presenting the most recent letter:

~ Summer Plans, Covid, and the 4th of July. (Published June 30th, 2022)

What do you think?

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Thirdly, there is a pretty cool Substack app for Apple devices like iPhone and iPad. You can download it for free through the App store. This is a more attractive interface for reading than email in my opinion. There is also a headphone button on my posts through the app, and you can listen to a pleasant female voice reading each letter out loud. If I don’t have time to do an audio file, or if my sometimes congested-sounding voice gets tiresome, this is another option that allows you to listen instead of reading.

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Finally, a clarification about free vs paid subscriptions. Never feel bad about the free option. I want this project to be full of goodwill!

When I was a kid I liked earning a few extra bucks shoveling snow. Or running a lemonade stand. Most Americans never outgrow the thrill of earning a little something in return for their work. Ben Franklin was the original archetype - industrious and unapologetic about pennies earned.

I also enjoy reading. Supporting a subscription actually makes me enjoy it more. Paying for some writers’ substack letters, some magazines, newspapers, and authors’ books makes me feel like I’m voting.

Writers on Substack find that 99.9-100% of trolls and erratic commenters don’t bother to lift the paywall. I would like to build this kind of community.

But as always, I thank you for reading, regardless of your type of subscription. I’ll keep doing my real job. About 10% of readers upgrade, and that’s still an honor. I’ll keep working to make this publication worth our mutual investment of time.