Peter's Q2 2025 Letter
Morning Heat & Momentum
With the heat wave rolling in, there’s no better time than early morning to get this written. I’m not sure why, but I genuinely enjoy the heat of summer. While cities across the country are issuing heat advisories, something about being outside in it energizes me.
🧠 Health: Red Light, Better Nights
I’ve always struggled with winding down at night. The harsh white lighting in most homes makes the transition from “on” to “off” feel jarring. It’s like flipping a switch in my body that refuses to flip.
Recently, I started using red light in the evenings—and the difference is wild. I swapped out the soft white bulbs in my bedroom lamp for red ones, added a red nightlight to the bathroom, and picked up a rechargeable, portable red light for reading or moving around the house without blasting myself with blue light.
The result? I fall asleep within five minutes and wake up feeling refreshed. Bonus: the red nightlight is light-sensitive—it turns on at sundown, serving as a gentle reminder that it's time to slow down and start the evening routine.
📚 Book: The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan
Mike Duncan (creator of The History of Rome podcast) makes a compelling case—Rome didn’t fall because of one event. Its collapse began centuries earlier, with slow and steady fractures in its foundation.
In The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, Duncan explores the growing corruption, inequality, and divisive politics that weakened the Republic—long before Caesar, Cleopatra, and Marc Antony. At one point, while Hannibal was threatening Rome, civil unrest broke out in Sicily. They were battling external and internal chaos at the same time. Sound familiar?
🎧 Podcast: Face the Pain with Truett Hanes (Kreatures of Habit)
This one stuck with me so much I listened to it twice.
Truett Hanes—son of elite bowhunter and endurance athlete Cameron Hanes—shares how he reclaimed the world record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours: 10,001. And as if that wasn’t enough, he recently ran a marathon in 2:42—wearing jeans.
What fueled it all? From a young age, his dad drilled one message into him: you don’t get to be average. That mindset clearly took root.
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