#5SmartReads - August 17, 2022

Founder Amy Nelson Was Madly Pulling a Pandemic Pivot When... the FBI Showed Up at Her Door With Guns, Seized Her Money, and Told her Husband he was the Target of a Criminal Investigation (Entrepreneur)

I shared this on my Instagram Story yesterday, but it bears sharing here again because it reads like a John Grisham novel.

Instead, it’s the brutal and unbelievable reality that my friend Amy and her family has been living for over two years.

Nothing I summarize or quote from this piece will do it justice, so please carve out some time to read it in full.

FDA finalizes rule allowing some Americans to buy hearing aids over the counter (CNN)

The FDA is frustratingly slow at authorizing prescription > OTC products that are deemed safe and effective and available in other countries.

My fellow pharma folks understand how the agency prioritizes safety as requirements 1, 2, and 3. Patients’ ease of accessibility doesn’t even track in the top 10, but we are starting to see some changes here.

Hearing aids for those with mild and moderate loss of hearing is a great start (and I hope we see OTC birth control authorized shortly as well).

Over 35 million people in this country have mild-moderate hearing loss, with only about 15% of this group using hearing aids. Making them easier to access (both via a pharmacy or online) and affordable (manufacturing at scale means the per-unit cost is cheaper) will make an impact.

But can we please do OTC birth control next? And, uh, quickly?

do straight men even like women? (Liz Plank)

Leave it to Liz Plank for asking the hard hitting questions, and getting the answers we need but probably don’t deserve.

Liz’s interview with Asa Seresin explores heteropessimism more deeply, exploring how the shows we watch and the books we read further exacerbate it and the hope we can seek now that we know what this is. I really enjoyed this piece, and I think you will too.

The world's economic engine is sputtering (Axios)

…and the world - especially China - don’t seem to be acting with the urgency we’ve seen in recent history. So what does it mean?

Here are some of my thoughts:

• The Chinese government has refused to deploy their old playbook (investing in infrastructure, borrowing to boost domestic spending, cutting interest rates), and has stuck with their lockdown-based pandemic response. Is this because they care more about public health than we do, or believe no other country can take on China’s dominance in the near term, or a bit of both?

• I do think that this is an opportunity for competition in the global manufacturing space, and India seems all too willing to compete. It also makes the Biden-Harris administration’s investment in domestic manufacturing make a lot of sense.

No one can predict what’s actually going to happen, but I have a hunch that the result will be something we can predict or that it’s close to what we’ve observed in history.

For when things don't go as planned (Social Media Detox)

This about sums up how I’m feeling right now:

It’s a good ritual when you’re feeling a lot of hard feelings. Another ritual I have and endorse is to visit Nicole Tabak’s excellent Substack and soak in her soothing words and wisdom that she creates and curates.

Here’s to finding peace in how we react, and to finding peace in geenral.

The reason why presidents can't keep their White House records dates back to Nixon (NPR)

I like to think that #5SmartReads is the adult millennial’s version of Schoolhouse Rock, helping answer the questions we have but feel like we should automatically know.

Like this one: why do presidents turn over their White House records when they leave office?

Also, why do presidents have their own libraries?

For the former, we have Nixon (actually, Congress during the Nixon-Ford years) to thank. This quick read outlines the why and puts it in context of the current challenge we’re facing with this law.