Today’s Wisdom – Stars, Steel, and the Subconscious

Details like how close the host stands when greeting you, the sound of cutlery, or even how the toilet paper hangs in the bathroom can all affect whether a restaurant earns a Michelin star. The origins of this global culinary ranking began in the late 1800s, when brothers André and Édouard Michelin opened a tire factory in France. They wanted people to drive more and wear out their tires so they created a free pocket guide with maps, repair shops, and restaurant listings to encourage longer trips. It was so accurate that the U.S. government reprinted it in 1939 during the Normandy invasion. Born to help drivers find dinner, it ended up guiding soldiers through war.

In the 1930s, the brothers introduced their three-star system. One star meant worth a stop, two stars meant worth a detour, and three stars meant worth a special trip. Today, that marketing ploy from a tire company has become the most prestigious culinary award in the world, operating in over 40 countries and capable of transforming a chef's career overnight. A single star can boost bookings by 400% while losing one can be devastating. In 2019, French chef Marc Veyrat sued Michelin after losing his third star, claiming inspectors mistook his saffron-tinted French cheese for cheap English cheddar. The immense pressure behind these decisions rest in the hands of Michelin’s anonymous inspectors who eat hundreds of meals a year while travelling under false names. They are culinary ghosts, shaping reputations from behind a veil of anonymity.

Today, Michelin operates in over 40 countries. The stars generate no direct profit but create hundreds of millions in brand value. The cheapest Michelin-starred meal is found at Singapore's Hawker Chan for under three dollars while the most expensive runs over six hundred at Guy Savoy in Paris. A company that sells rubber ended up defining what the culinary world calls perfect.

For our British readers, here’s a free spreadsheet featuring every Michelin-starred restaurant in London, complete with set menu prices and Google review ratings. Enjoy! P.S. Forward this to someone who owes you a very nice meal. Preferably one with a star or two.

Andrew Carnegie rose from a penniless Scottish immigrant to become the richest man in the world. Arriving in America at age 12, he began as a bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh cotton mill, earning $1.20 a week. While working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he was offered a stake in the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company and mortgaged his mother’s home to buy in. The dividends gave him something rare for a man of his class - financial freedom. In the 1870s, while others dismissed steel as costly and impractical, Carnegie bet everything on the new Bessemer process, which could turn molten iron into steel in minutes instead of days. His gamble reshaped the modern world.

Steel built America's bridges, railroads, and skyscrapers. Carnegie built the empire that supplied them all. He perfected vertical integration, controlling every step from ore to output. He owned the Minnesota mines, the coke fields for fuel, the freighters crossing the Great Lakes, and the railways carrying steel to his Pittsburgh mills. He even employed spies to track rival prices so Carnegie Steel could always undercut the competition. By the 1890s his furnaces poured out more metal than all of Great Britain and his profits exceeded $40 million a year, billions in today's money.

When he finally sold his company, Carnegie wasn't even in the room. His partner Charles Schwab gave a dazzling after-dinner speech leading financier J.P. Morgan to scribble a note saying "If Carnegie will name his price, I'll buy." The price was $480 million, the largest corporate deal in history at the time. It created U.S. Steel, the world's first billion-dollar company. Carnegie retired to become a philosopher of wealth. He gave away more than 90% of his fortune, building 2,500 libraries, Carnegie Hall, and universities across the world. He had conquered industry, leaving behind not just steel and skyscrapers but the enduring question of how much good can justify great wealth.

Picture a lemon. A juicy, ripe, bright yellow lemon. You slice it open, juice spilling across the cutting board, the scent sharp in the air. Imagine taking a piece of that lemon and chewing it up, all of the juice, the meat, the rind, etc. Really picture it hard. Did your mouth water? You can almost taste it, can’t you? That reaction is your subconscious at work. Your brain released real saliva for an imaginary lemon because it can’t distinguish vividly imagined experiences from real ones. So, imagine what your body is doing when you think negative thoughts all day long?

Scientists estimate that while your conscious mind can handle about 40 bits of information per second, your subconscious processes more than 11 million. It runs your heartbeat, reads facial expressions, detects emotional tones, and even predicts danger before you are aware of it. One of the most famous demonstrations of this power came from psychologist John Bargh’s 1996 priming experiment. Participants who were unknowingly exposed to words related to old age, such as “Florida” and “bingo,” walked slower afterwards than the control group. They had no memory of seeing the words, yet their subconscious minds had already instructed their bodies to behave accordingly.

The subconscious shapes what you like, trust, and believe. In a 1968 study by Robert Zajonc, researchers discovered the mere-exposure effect, showing that people develop preferences simply by being repeatedly exposed to something. Even when geometric shapes or foreign words were flashed too quickly to consciously recognise, participants later chose those same symbols as their favourites. Their subconscious had quietly learned what felt familiar and therefore safe. Every day this hidden system is at work,  guiding your choices, forming your opinions, and writing the quiet script that shapes your life.

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Until next time…. - A Little Wiser Team

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