Good morning! Prescription prices just did something they haven't done since 1963 — fell, and fell hard. And 51 years ago today, Queen walked into a farmhouse studio in Wales to start recording a six-minute song nobody thought radio would touch.
Worth Knowing
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Prescription prices just posted their steepest drop since 1963The government's July inflation report showed prescription drug prices down 3.1% from a year ago — the sharpest annual decline since 1963 — including a 0.8% drop in July alone, the third straight monthly fall. Analysts credit growing generic competition and the new federal pricing agreements that took hold this year. The honest caveat: hospital and physician costs kept climbing in the same report, so total health spending isn't falling. But if you've been putting off a pharmacy conversation about a pricier prescription, the market is finally moving your way. |
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Ford is recalling 565,691 Broncos for an engine-fire riskA wiring harness in 2021–2026 Ford Bronco and Bronco Raptor SUVs can chafe against the engine compartment, short-circuit, and in 15 reported cases produce smoke or visible flame. Owner notification letters start arriving this week, but you don't have to wait for the mail: the free dealer fix is already available. If there's a Bronco in your driveway or your family, enter the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls to check it today. |
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⚠ Scam alert
The "missed jury duty" call demanding payment is a scamThe signal: a caller claiming to be a court officer or deputy says you missed jury duty, a warrant is out for your arrest, and you can settle the "court fee" right now with gift cards or a wire transfer. The FTC warns the tactic is surging nationally, with sheriff's offices reporting fresh waves of calls this month. What to do: hang up. Courts handle jury-duty issues by mail, and no court or law-enforcement agency collects fines in gift cards — that payment method is the tell. Verify it: call your county clerk of court at the number on its official website, and report the call at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. |
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Medicare's shopping season will look different this yearThree changes worth knowing before Open Enrollment starts October 15. The cap on what you can be required to pay out of pocket for Part D prescriptions is $2,400 for 2027. If your doctor or hospital leaves your Medicare Advantage plan's network mid-year, that now qualifies you for a special enrollment window to switch — no more arguing over whether the loss was "significant." And marketing rules for agents loosen October 1, so expect the pitch volume to rise; the plan documents, not the phone calls, are where the real comparisons live. Your plan's Annual Notice of Change lands in the mail by the end of September. Read it before the ads do the reading for you. |
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Still on Windows 10? Your free security lifeline now runs to fall 2027Microsoft quietly extended free security updates for Windows 10 through October 12, 2027 — a full two years past the official end-of-support date — for home users who sign in with a Microsoft account and sync their PC settings. No purchase required, and no forced upgrade to Windows 11. Check it in Settings → Windows Update: if you see an "enroll in Extended Security Updates" prompt, five minutes now buys another year of patches. |
Remember When?
The six-minute song nobody thought radio would touch
Fifty-one years ago today — August 24, 1975 — Queen arrived at Rockfield, a recording studio on a working farm in the Welsh countryside, and began taping a song Freddie Mercury had been carrying around in his head for years. He'd mapped every harmony before the band played a note. For three weeks, Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor sang 10 to 12 hours a day, stacking more than 180 vocal overdubs onto tape so worn it turned translucent.
The record company's verdict on "Bohemian Rhapsody": too long, too strange, unplayable at nearly six minutes. Queen's answer was to slip a copy to a London DJ, who "accidentally" played it 14 times in one weekend. Radio stations were flooded with calls asking what it was — and the song executives wouldn't release went to No. 1 and stayed there for nine weeks.
Queen in 1975, the year "Bohemian Rhapsody" changed everything. Photo: Koh Hasebe / Elektra Records
| Six-pack of beer | $1.73 → $10.96 |
| McDonald's hamburger | 15¢ → $2.79 |
| Comic book | 12¢ → $4.99 |
| Transistor radio | about $15 → about $30 |
| Levi's 501 jeans | about $5 → about $70 |
The year a 13-year-old Stevie Wonder held the No. 1 album and No. 1 single at the same time. Today's beer figure is the national average; the jeans are Levi's current list price for the same 501s — one of the few things on this list you can still buy new.
Test Yourself
| 1 | On this date in 2006, astronomers voted to strip which longtime ninth planet of its title? |
| 2 | On August 24, 1989, baseball's all-time hits leader accepted a lifetime ban from the game. Who was he? |
| 3 | On this date in 1932, Amelia Earhart flew 19 straight hours from Los Angeles to Newark and became the first woman to do what? |
| 4 | True or false: "posh" began as a steamship acronym for "Port Out, Starboard Home" — the shady, cooler cabins on voyages between England and India. |
| 5 | On which planet does a single day last longer than its entire year? |
Answers are near the bottom of today's email. No peeking.
Live Better
The RSV shot is one dose, not one a year — and this is the season to get it
RSV puts as many as 160,000 older adults in the hospital each year by CDC estimates, and the agency recommends the vaccine for everyone 75 and older — plus adults 50 to 74 with conditions like heart or lung disease or diabetes. Unlike the flu shot, it's a single dose that protects for at least two seasons, and late summer through October is the window to get it, before RSV starts circulating with the fall.
If you've never had one, a pharmacy visit settles it; if you have, you're likely still covered — no annual repeat needed.
Seal the gaps this week, before the fall bugs find them
Stink bugs, lady beetles, and boxelder bugs start scouting for winter shelter as nights cool — and university extension entomologists say late August through mid-September is the window to shut them out. A gap of an eighth of an inch is all they need, so walk the outside of the house with a caulk gun: window frames, door trim, siding seams, and the spots where cables and pipes enter.
Once they're inside the walls, sprays do little — exclusion now beats extermination later.
You can now give $111,000 a year from your IRA, tax-free
If you're 70½ or older, a qualified charitable distribution lets you send money straight from your IRA to a charity — up to $111,000 per person in 2026 ($222,000 for a married couple), up from $108,000 last year. The transfer counts toward your required minimum distribution but never shows up in your adjusted gross income, which can matter for taxes on Social Security benefits and Medicare premium surcharges. You don't need to itemize to benefit.
The transfer must go directly from the IRA custodian to the charity and land by December 31 — worth setting up well before the year-end rush.
Enjoy Yourself
Seattle just became a gateway to Paris and Athens
Alaska Airlines announced its first-ever nonstops from Seattle to Paris and to Athens, starting May 2027 on new 787-9s — the Athens route will be the only nonstop between the two cities. Introductory round-trip fares start at $999, but only for tickets booked by this Wednesday, August 26. If a 2027 Europe trip is anywhere on your list and Seattle is a workable start, this is the rare fare deadline that's real.
The novel on your shelf gets its two-hour finale Wednesday
Netflix's adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" — filmed in Colombia, in Spanish, with the blessing of the author's sons — releases its nearly two-hour series finale on Wednesday, August 26. Critics have called it one of the most faithful literary adaptations streaming has produced. If you read the book decades ago and wondered whether Macondo could survive the screen, this is the week to find out.
Fresh figs are in, and they don't wait for anyone
Late August opens true fig season — Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Kadota, and Adriatic varieties all show up at farmers markets and good produce counters between now and October. Choose fruit that's soft but not mushy, heavy for its size, with a slight bend at the neck; figs don't ripen after picking, so buy them ready to eat and plan to enjoy them within a day or two. Halved with a little honey and something salty — prosciutto, blue cheese, toasted walnuts — they're the easiest impressive thing you'll serve all month.
One Last Thing
1. Pluto — demoted to "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union; "plutoed" became 2006's word of the year · 2. Pete Rose — 4,256 hits, a record that still stands; the ban did too, for the rest of his life · 3. Fly solo, nonstop, coast to coast — 2,477 miles in 19 hours and 5 minutes · 4. False — no steamship line ever stamped a ticket "P.O.S.H."; word experts call it an invented origin story, and the real one is still unknown · 5. Venus — it takes 243 Earth days to spin once but only 225 to circle the Sun, and it spins backward, so the sun rises in the west
And finally: the ring that survived the flush
A New Jersey commuter's antique wedding band — made in 1905 — slipped off and went down the toilet on an NJ Transit train this month. Most of us would have called it gone. Instead, crews pulled the rail car out of service, dismantled the toilet's holding tank, and found the ring, returning it to its owner at Penn Station. A 121-year-old ring, a very good maintenance team, and one strong argument for resizing.
More tomorrow. — The editors