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Five takeaways:

1. Let’s start with the basics: champagne is a sparkling wine that bears the name of the region it comes from- the Champagne region of northeastern France.
2. Champagnes are generally known for their bright acidity and light, lively body, often with a brioche-y and/or nutty quality thanks to required minimum aging on the lees, or dead yeast cells
3. Champagne differs from other sparkling wines in its fermentation process. It’s second fermentation happens naturally, inside the bottle– a natural carbonic gas that cannot escape the sealed bottle naturally makes the wine sparkling.
4. Champagne producers fall into two categories: Récoltant-Manipulant and Négociant-Manipulant.
   • A Récoltant-Manipulant grower, independently makes his or her wines onsite under his or her own label using grapes grown on the house’s vineyards exclusively.
   • A Négociant-Manipulant — such as Veuve Clicquot, Moët Chandon, and other big, well-known brand names — is defined as a group that buys outside grapes then produces the champagne on their premises. These make up most of the international market.
5. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Meunier are the most commonly used grapes in the production of champagne.

From Céline Bossart for Food & Wine
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Five takeaways:

1. This article draws a clear and pivotal distinction between pleasure, which Brooks views as a potentially harmful, short-term salve– and enjoyment, which can be far more productive and fulfilling.
2. Brooks notes: “Pleasure happens to you; enjoyment is something that you create through your own effort. Pleasure is the lightheadedness you get from a bit of grain alcohol; enjoyment is the satisfaction of a good wine, properly understood.”
3. Enjoyment can give you sense of effort, foreword movement, and accomplishment. Enjoyment is a commitment to engaging with and savoring a situation.
4. The examples are everywhere, and as simple as exercise: We enjoy being fit, but exercise itself may not bring us pleasure, as it is strenuous and time-consuming.
5. Pursuing enjoyment over pleasure makes you intentionally independent from base impulses and pushes you towards more insight and personal growth.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.

Five takeaways:

1. Opening with the example of the yearly Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, Brooks argues that the decision to expose yourself to real danger (“not roller coasters or haunted houses”) will push you out of your comfort zone, and make you feel more alive.
2. However, Brooks reminds readers that a clear distinction must be made between bravery and recklessness– and notes that the former can be key to injecting one’s life with happiness.
3. Brooks offers three tips for the injecting your life with the right kind of danger:
   • “Find your bulls to run with” – Your idea of danger will be different from the person next to you. Think about the things you’ve been putting off or feel like you can’t do that might be possible, with a dose of bravery. Danger is not always physical– you may fear moving to a new city, or of going back to school. You need to identify where your danger lies and pursue it.
   • “Envision bravery– but not recklessness” – When facing danger, make sure you assess risk as clearly as you can. If your fear is rock climbing, Brooks notes, you should not go ahead and climb El Capitan. But in many cases, clear assessment of risk will make you realize that the chance of catastrophe is much lower than it initially seems.
   • “Make a Sensible Plan and Follow it” – Research shows that happiness and impulsivity are incompatible. When you decide on a course of action for taking a risk, make a clear plan of action that takes different eventualities into consideration.
4. Brooks notes that while physical danger does not keep him up at night, switching careers used to. When he quit his career as a musician, he confronted feelings of incompetence, and doing so made him infinitely more comfortable making a career change later on. He knew he could do it because he’d learned a new profession before.
5. Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Look for ways in your life to triumph over fear and danger, and, Brooks says, you will find your best self waiting on the other side.

From Arthur C. Brooks at The Atlantic:
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Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.

Five takeaways:

1. Ambition, the author argues, is viewed as a force that drives people forward. Conversely, relationships are often seen to hold people back from developing in life.
2. The author cites a Journal of Applied Psychology a multidecade study that tracked the lives of ambitious children into adulthood. The study found, unsurprisingly, that children who exhibited more ambition early on went on to more illustrious and lucrative lives. But it also showed that early ambition was not as strongly correlated with wellbeing later in life. In fact, it showed that ambition is only weakly connected with well-being and negatively associated with longevity.
3. The author cites psychologist Tim Kasser, who has shown that the pursuit of materialistic values like money, possessions, and social status– the fruits of career successes– is correlated with lower well-being and more distress. It can also come at the cost of meaningful personal relationships.
4. Many studies have shown that community is strongly connected to well-being– more so than financial success. A 2009 Science study of 1.2million people showed that Louisiana was the happiest state… while the richest states like California, New York, and Connecticut, were listed among the least happy.
5. Barry Schwartz, a psychological researcher based at Swarthmore College, notes that while relationships can have a limiting effect on one’s life, but that too much freedom in life can be detrimental: “Relationships are meant to constrain,” he says. “but if you’re always on the lookout for better, such constraints are experienced with bitterness and resentment.”

From Emily Esfahani Smith at The Atlantic:
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Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.