Ghost Mail Weekender

Happy Sunday Voornaam,

It’s happened again. A man walks into a courtroom, accused of something very serious and terrible, and instead of gasps of horror, the internet lets out a collective, dreamy sigh. Luigi Mangione - currently on trial for allegedly murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson - was recently photographed at a court appearance, and let’s just say, some people aren’t exactly focused on the legal proceedings.
Social media is drowning in posts from women (and probably some men) declaring their undying love for Mangione. Some are praising his smoldering stare, others are dissecting his impeccable outfit choice, and at least one tweet has boldly declared, “I could fix him.”
Spoiler: you cannot.
This phenomenon at play here is hybristophilia, also known as the “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome”, where people develop a romantic or sexual attraction to criminals. And it isn’t new (sorry to break it to you, Luigi) - history is littered with fan clubs dedicated to dangerous men, from Ted Bundy to Richard Ramirez. But Mangione’s courtroom thirst trap proves that, even in 2025, the tradition is alive and well.
Why does this happen? Some experts believe it’s the appeal of danger, a misguided sense of empathy, or the sheer thrill of forbidden love. Others suggest it’s just the internet doing what the internet does best: getting way too weird about things.
When Gen Z isn't perving over highly questionable sex icons, they are drinking and smoking far less than previous generations. In this week's column, Dominique Olivier writes about one of the most disruptive forces in the consumer market today: the wellness wave. Ignore it at your peril. Get the details here>>>
To further inspire you into healthy choices, read on for a story of a marathon finished over 55 years (yes, really) and the fast facts dedicated to what "wellness" looked like hundreds of years ago. Seriously, today's facts will astonish you.
Have fun!

The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)

Watch out for the wellness wave

Jog on, Shizo

TL;DR: In the long and storied history of marathon-running, no one has ever taken quite as long to finish a race as Shizo Kanakuri. His official time is a record-smashing 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20.3 seconds.
This unlikely story started in 1912, when Shizo Kanakuri became Japan’s first Olympic athlete and set out for Stockholm to represent his country at the Games. This was the era before Boeing, which meant that his journey took 18 days and involved ships, the Trans-Siberian Railway, and a level of endurance that no amount of running could have prepared poor Shizo for. Upon his arrival, he discovered that he couldn’t sleep thanks to Sweden’s endless summer daylight, and that Scandinavian cuisine did not agree with him. Meanwhile, his coach was mostly bedridden with tuberculosis, proving that bad luck almost always comes in threes.
Unsurprisingly, the marathon itself was an unmitigated disaster, not just for the hungry and sleep-deprived Shizo, but for almost every other athlete involved. Remember that article we published last year about the terrible Men’s Marathon event of 1904? It wasn’t quite that bad, but it sounds like it came close.
A heatwave turned the race into an actual health hazard, with multiple runners dropping out, including one who tragically became the first Olympic athlete to die mid-event. Even the reigning marathon champion called it a “disgrace to civilised sport”. Shizo, struggling with heatstroke and dehydration, made it about 25 kilometres before he reached the only logical conclusion: national pride was not worth dying for.
He wandered off the course, stumbled into a Swedish garden party, and spent an hour drinking orange juice. Refreshed but deeply embarrassed, he made the decision to leave Sweden immediately without informing race officials. With no sign of him at the finish line (or anywhere else, for that matter) Swedish authorities added Shizo to their missing persons list and left him on there for the next 50 years.
Meanwhile, Shizo had quietly built a little life for himself as a geography teacher in Japan, presumably under the assumption that the Swedes had moved on and forgotten about him. As it turns out, they had not. In 1967, a Swedish reporter tracked him down and, in what can only be described as an incredibly belated invitation, asked if he’d like to come back and finish the race. Shizo, by then 75, said yes.
He travelled back to Sweden and on the 20th of March, 1967, he finally crossed the finish line, officially completing the longest marathon in history. “It was a long trip,” he reflected, “along the way, I got married, had six children, and ten grandchildren”. Before returning home, he revisited the garden where he had made his infamous orange juice pit stop. The host’s son proudly showed him a family heirloom: the scroll Shizo had given them as a thank-you gift for their hospitality (and their many glasses of orange juice). Deciding that this was the appropriate moment to come clean, Shizo confessed to the family that their family heirloom was really just an old Japanese customs form, which is all that he had on him when they met.
Shizo Kanakuri lived to the age of 92. He passed away in his hometown of Tamana in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, secure in the knowledge that no one would ever take longer to complete a race.

Dominique's fast facts:
Wellness back in the day

An assortment of facts that will only take you five minutes to read.

In the late 1700s, the English got their hands on American tobacco and, for reasons lost to time, decided it belonged inside them. Specifically, via enema. London medics took to blowing smoke up the backsides of near-drowned Thames victims, believing it would warm them up and jumpstart their breathing. The idea caught on, and soon tobacco smoke was being puffed into patients to treat everything from headaches to cholera.

Back in the day, infant mortality was alarmingly high. Since many babies died between 6 months and 2 years - right when their first teeth were coming in - doctors decided teething must be to blame. Their solution? Gum lancing. This involved slicing into a baby’s gums until the teeth were exposed. The practice eventually faded, but not quickly enough, since dentistry textbooks were still recommending it as late as 1938.

In ancient Rome, urine was such a hot commodity that people collected it from public urinals, and if you made money off it, you paid a tax. While it had plenty of industrial uses, like making leather soft and gunpowder explosive, its most questionable application was as mouthwash. Aged urine, rich in ammonia, was believed to whiten teeth. Which technically makes sense, since ammonia is still used in cleaning products today. Just, thankfully, not for oral hygiene.