About one in eight Americans eat pizza on any given day. And an increasing number of them are ditching legacy brands like Domino's and Pizza Hut for innovative fast-casual chains.

Fast-casual pizza is one of the fastest-growing categories of food, a 2016 report from Technomic found. Chains like Blaze Pizza, MOD Pizza, and Pieology create made-to-order personal pies on an assembly line, much like Chipotle, and bake them on an open flame.

In honor of National Pizza Day, we taste-tested pizzas from those three chains — and the winner was clear.

SEE ALSO: Major pizza brands are stuck in the middle of a fierce culture war — but here's how Papa John's really stacks up to Pizza Hut and Domino's

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Fast-casual pizza should terrify legacy brands like Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's.

Three of the five fastest-growing restaurant chains in 2016 were fast-casual pizza concepts, according to Technomic. Their sales accounted for 37% of US fast-casual business last year.

Not all fast-casual pizza is created alike. We stopped into the three fastest-growing chains.

Our test had two categories: the classic cheese pizza and a meat-lover's rendition.

• NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt reported from a ski resort in North Korea.
• Many of the skiers that day were dressed in the same outfits, prompting conversation that the resort was staged by the government.
• The North Korean government dictates where journalists entering the country can report.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt began his reporting on the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games with a visit to a North Korean ski resort where most skiers were dressed in similar neon outfits, prompting discussion that the site was staged.

"There was likely a lot of smoke and mirrors but you couldn't say for sure it's totally fake," Holt told Business Insider. The visit to North Korea was Holt's fourth time to the Korean Peninsula since last April, and flying to the Hermit Kingdom is a unique experience.

"It's one of those places when you go there, unlike any other place that I've traveled, you don't know what you're going to get," Holt, who flew on the North Korean state airline from Beijing, China, said.

Midflight, the airline announces when the plane crosses into North Korean airspace, and once the flight lands a rigorous custom process begins. On his most recent trip, agents checked all personal items, even down to the specific books that travelers were reading and their toothbrushes.

Once through customs, North Korean government escorts told them the sites they would visit.

"We put in a wish list, but at the end of the day they say where you're going to go," Holt said. "They tell you what you can shoot. We accept that because it is one of the most mysterious places, potentially one of the most dangerous places. It's a place where we need to get a sense of what's happening there."

They received guidance on what they could and couldn't record. Holt's crew could record images of downtown Pyongyang, with it's high rises and new buildings. But rural areas, where citizens held manual labor jobs, were off limits.

And the ski resort trip was also planned by the North Korean government. There, skiers, some dressed in identical neon ski suits, enjoyed the slopes. The ski resort is in stark contrast to the poverty that many North Koreans experience. Holt said many of the skiers on the slopes the day he was there were government workers.

"You don't expect to peel the curtain back too much while you're there because of the nature of the place," he said.

Holt's Olympic coverage started at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

SEE ALSO: The 9 biggest rivalries the Olympics has ever seen

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• Delivery pizza is a huge industry in the US — and at the top of the food chain are Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's. 
• We compared each of the big three chains' cheese pizzas, supreme pizzas, pepperoni pizzas, and breadsticks. 
• Each chain ended up being best at something — but some results were surprising. 

Americans adore pizza.

According to a 2014 study by the US Department of Agriculture, about one in eight Americans eat pizza on any given day. That's a lot of pizza.

And today is an important day for pizza facts: February 9 is National Pizza Day. Should it be a national holiday? Perhaps.

Of all the delivery chains out there, acolytes of the Pizza Big Three are steadfast in their preferences: Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's.

The Big Three have been busy over the past few years revamping menus, recalibrating ingredients, and resetting brand images in order to gain an edge in the cutthroat delivery pizza game.

But the question is, from which chain to order? We decided to take the matter into our own hands and test the Big Three pizzas head-to-head to see, hands down, who has the best pizza.

Who is crowned the classic-cheese champion, and who snags the supreme-pizza prize? Keep scrolling to see the results.

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Our test has three categories: the classic cheese pizza, the supreme pizza, and breadsticks — the pizza palace essentials.

First, the cheese pizza choices — still hot and cheesy.

The smell of mozzarella and tomato fills the room. No matter how disappointing, all pizza is still good, so this will prove tricky. Are any pizzas truly bad?

• Having a balanced lifestyle with equal parts work and leisure has a lot to do with where you live.
• Factors like the cost of housing, commute time, quality of health, and income vary from place to place.
• New research from MagnifyMoney suggests the best cities for a balanced lifestyle have shorter average commutes and high marks for income equality, among other things.

While living in one of America's major cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Miami may sound glamorous, it's no secret the lifestyle can be difficult. Long work hours, tedious commutes, and a high cost of living can take a toll on residents.

The best places to live in the US are actually places you might not expect, according to new data from personal finance website MagnifyMoney.

The site compared the US's top 50 metro areas, using a variety of indicators including average commute times, the cost of housing relative to income, the number of hours residents work in relation to how much they earn, the percentage of people in good health, and the cost of living compared to the national average.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top cities tended to have shorter average commutes and high marks for income equality. New York, which was dead-last in the rankings, scored abysmally on both those measures.

Here are the cities in the US where Americans live the most balanced lives:

SEE ALSO: What Americans pay in state income taxes, ranked from highest to lowest

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13. Oklahoma City has the fourth-shortest average commute and the cost of housing is 21% lower than the national average.

Source: 2014 Oklahoma Cost of Living Report

12. St. Louis, Missouri, is ranked 3rd in terms of cost of goods and services. A cocktail at a club costs around $8 and dinner out for two averages $42.

Source: Expatistan

11. Austin, Texas, ranks 2nd for residents who get enough sleep. That's a bit unsurprising since the city ranks highly in income relative to hours worked.

Source: MagnifyMoney

• George Lucas visited the set of "Solo: A Star Wars Story," but he did more than just say hi.
• The creator of the "Star Wars" saga came up with a suggestion for a shot and director Ron Howard had the actors act it out.
• Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy said Lucas' suggestion will "probably get a laugh."

It has become a treasured tradition — like the president throwing out the first pitch at a World Series game — when the creator of "Star Wars," filmmaker George Lucas, visits the set of a movie in the saga he sold to Disney in 2012.

He doesn't do it often.

The last time was during the making of "Rogue One." But it's a way of Lucas showing his approval of what Disney is doing, and laying out some Godfather-like advice to the filmmaker of that project. 

But it was a little different when Lucas came to the set of "Solo: A Star Wars Story." 

And it wasn't just because Ron Howard had taken over the project — following the firing of its original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("The Lego Movie") — who Lucas has known since the 1970s when he directed Howard in "American Graffiti." It turns out Lucas wasn't shy about giving some directing suggestions on set.

According to a profile of Howard in Entertainment Weekly, Lucas showed up on set and "didn’t offer a lot of advice except, ‘You’ll get this,’” Howard said. 

Usually that's when Lucas would head out and everyone would get back to business. However, Lucas didn't leave.

“He had intended to just kind of stop by and say hi, and he stayed five hours,” Kathleen Kennedy, the head of Lucasfilm, told EW. “There’s even one little moment in a scene that — I can’t tell you what, sorry — but in the scene on the Millennium Falcon where George said, ‘Why doesn’t Han just do this.’”

Without giving anything away, Kennedy said that Lucas' suggestion is a "funny little bit that will probably get a laugh."

"Ron happened to be by the monitor and not inside the Falcon and he goes, ‘Oh that’s a great idea,’ and ran in and said, ‘George wants us to do this,’" Kennedy said. "So that was pretty cool. I think George felt pretty great about that. He could revisit these characters, and I think he felt so comfortable, obviously with Ron being there, that it was just fun for him."

"Solo" opens in theaters May 25.

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• Displaying certain bad habits at work can really get on your managers' nerves.
• Knowing what some of the worst offenders are is the first step in not letting your bad habits get the best of you.
• These bad habits can range from showing up late to work to being the office slob. 

Annoying your coworkers — while never a good idea — is one thing. But annoying your boss with your bad habits could cost you your job.

To help you avoid letting your bad habits get the best of you, we asked experts to highlight some of the least professional behaviors you could demonstrate at work that will put your job on the line.

Here are 19 things you could be doing all wrong that may make your boss think you're not right for the company:

SEE ALSO: 19 simple social skills that will instantly make you more likable

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Showing up late to work

"Punctuality is critical," Rosalinda Oropeza Randall, an etiquette and civility expert and the author of "Don't Burp in the Boardroom," tells Business Insider.

"The professional thing to do is to arrive on time, ready to do what is expected. It's not like they just sprung this job on you," she says.

Rolling in 10 minutes late to every meeting

Similarly, showing up late to meetings shows that you neither respect your coworkers — who showed up on time, by the way — nor the meeting organizer, Vicky Oliver, author of "301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions" and "Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots," tells Business Insider.

"Keeping people waiting can be construed as inconsiderate, rude, or arrogant," Randall says.

Being negative all the time

Repeatedly responding to suggestions with a pessimistic or contrary attitude can be construed as being uncooperative, Randall says. Phrases like "That won't work," "That sounds too hard," or, "I wouldn't know how to start," should be avoided.

Similarly, complaining too much puts you in a bad light.

"While there may be times when everyone feels the desire to complain about the boss, a coworker, or a task, voicing it will only make you look unprofessional," Randall says. "It's even worse if you complain every day, all day, from the moment you walk into work. Before long, people will go out of their way to avoid you."

"There's nothing as energy-draining as having to deal with a pessimistic coworker," Rosemary Haefner, chief human-resources officer for CareerBuilder, tells Business Insider. "Things do go wrong, but even when they do, focus your energy towards what you've learned from a bad situation."

She points to a recent CareerBuilder survey, which shows that a majority of employers — 62% — say they are less likely to promote employees who have a negative or pessimistic attitude.

• MoviePass confirmed to Business Insider that a "small percentage" of accounts were terminated due to users violating its terms of service.
• People have taken to Twitter to object in very vocal terms.

On Friday, MoviePass terminated the accounts of what it described as a "small percentage" of users who violated its terms of service, the company confirmed to Business Insider. 

This was a shock to many users, who took to social media to object to being taken off the service. Many of them said they were confused as to why their accounts were deleted. 

Business Insider obtained an email that was sent out to members who MoviePass said violated its terms of service by purchasing part of a "premium ticket" on their card. However, multiple people who received the email denied they had ever done that.

Here's the email:

"Your account has been cancelled effective immediately for violating the terms of service by using your MoviePass card to purchase part of a premium ticket. You cannot sign back up for MoviePass."

Customers who then inquired via MoviePass' customer support account on Twitter were sent this via Direct Message:

"Thank you for sharing your concerns with us. Your account was cancelled due to Terms and Conditions violation. You should have received an email notifying you on this on February 09, 2018 with a description of the action that was in violation. Please remember to check your Spam or Junk folders for this email. Some email filters may prevent it from being delivered directly to your inbox. Terms and Conditions violations cannot be disputed nor can your account be reactivated. We appreciate your understanding."

Many took to Twitter to voice their frustration and confusion as to why they lost their accounts:

A MoviePass spokesperson sent the following statement to Business Insider regarding the canceling of accounts:

"A small percentage of MoviePass users have been removed from the system, due to violating the terms of service. We diligently review card transactions to prevent fraudulent activity and take our Terms of Service agreement very seriously. If individuals abuse the service, we must take action so that our model continues to be sustainable for everyone. If customers feel there has been a mistake, they can feel free to reach out to MoviePass customer service via the phone number on the back of their card."

SEE ALSO: George Lucas directed a shot for "Solo" when he visited the set

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's what might happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon

This year's flu season is not messing around.

As the virus has swept the US in recent months, people have turned to some strange habits to keep illness at bay, like chugging orange juice, "starving" their fevers, and taking antibiotics. (Spoiler: None of these will help.)

Orange juice is high in sugar and there's little to no evidence that the vitamin C it contains helps beat viruses. Depriving yourself of nutrients while you're sick may also backfire; your weakened immune system needs nutrients to fight off illness. And antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses — which characterize both the flu and the common cold.

Instead, there are several research-backed steps you can take to fight off illness.

Keep in mind, too, that the symptoms of the flu and the common cold can be very similar, but these preventive and defensive tips should help in most cases.

SEE ALSO: 9 at-home remedies that actually work

Gargle with plain water.

If you're just starting to feel a cold coming on, try gargling with plain water. A study of close to 400 healthy volunteers published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that those who gargled with plain water were significantly less likely to come down with upper-respiratory-tract infections (URTIs) — a type of infection often linked with colds and the flu — during the study period. The researchers concluded that "simple water gargling was effective to prevent URTIs among healthy people."

Have some chicken soup.

Strangely enough, several recent studies have suggested that chicken soup may actually reduce the symptoms of a cold. The jury's still out on precisely why this old-school remedy appears to help, but the available evidence suggests that some component of the soup helps calm down the inflammation that triggers many cold symptoms.

For a study published in the journal Chest, the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians, researchers found that chicken soup appeared to slow the movement of neutrophils, the white blood cells that are the hallmark of acute infection. In an attempt to decipher precisely which part of the soup was beneficial, they also tested some of the components individually, and concluded that both the vegetables and the chicken appeared to have "inhibitory activity."

Get plenty of rest.

Getting enough sleep — somewhere between seven and nine hours a night — is key to a properly functioning immune system, which plays a critical role in both helping fight off an existing cold and defending you against a new one.

For a 2009 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tracked the sleep habits of 153 healthy men and women for two weeks to get a sense of their sleep patterns. Then, they gave them nasal drops containing rhinovirus, also known as the common cold, and monitored them for five more days. 

Volunteers who regularly got less than seven hours of sleep were nearly three times more likely to come down with the cold than those who slept eight hours or more each night.

The 2018 Winter Olympics has now officially begun, after the opening ceremony concluded in Pyeongchang in South Korea on Friday.

The ceremony itself involved an elaborate fireworks display that lit up the night sky, a dance routine emphasizing the Olympic theme of peace, and the Parade of Nations showcasing all participants.

Lookalikes of US President Donald Trump and North Korea supreme leader Kim Jong Un threatened to steal the spotlight, but the impersonators were booted out of the stadium by security.

Keep scrolling to re-live the opening ceremony with 22 of the most incredible photographs from the event here.

SEE ALSO: This is the full schedule for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang

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An elaborate fireworks display got the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony going.

At one point it looked like sinister red flames had surrounded the stadium in Pyeongchang, which is more or less frozen solid this time of year.

A part of the initial pageantry involved martial arts. One performer, pictured here, looked like he was pulling off moves that could have been at home in "The Matrix."

• Prince Charles' title has 18 separate elements, and takes up three lines of text.
• It is a mixture of honours, titles, and ceremonial roles.
• Scroll down for an explanation of each individual part, and its history.

British royalty have a lot going on in their full titles — as well as having more given names than normal people, there is also a flurry of dukedoms, honours, and awards to deal with as well.

Of the senior tranche of royals, the most extravagant moniker belongs to Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth's oldest son. As the heir to the British throne, Charles has a lot of noble titles by default, and has also been awarded successive extras over the years.

His full title is more than three full lines long:

His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, PC, ADC, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.

The order above is the full version as presented by Clarence House, Charles' private office. Here, Business Insider breaks down each element and explains what it means:

His Royal Highness (HRH)

This is the style given to senior royals, and is one rung belong "His/Her Majesty", which is reserved for kings and queens. Prince William, Kate Middleton, their children, and Prince Harry also have HRH status.

Prince

This one's easy, and is because he is the son of the monarch. His children, and their children, are also princes or princesses. People they later marry, like Kate Middleton or Meghan Markle, do not become princesses.

Charles Philip Arthur George

Royals don't have surnames like regular people, but do have a lot of given names. They tend to be drawn from a relatively narrow pool: There have been two King Charleses and six King Georges. Philip is the name of Charles' father, while Arthur has been associated with British royalty since the days of legend.

Due to a quirk of royal protocol, when Queen Elizabeth, dies Charles will have the opportunity to take any of his four names as his official "regnal name," and could from then be known as King Philip, King Arthur, or King George. 

Read Business Insider's rundown of everything else that will happen when the Queen dies here.

Prince of Wales

This title belongs to whoever is first in line to the throne. It dates back to 1300s, just after Wales was conquered by the English and ceased to be a separate kingdom. Charles is the 21st English Prince of Wales.

KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO

These abbreviations all represent knightly orders of which Charles is a member, they are:

Knight of the Garter (KG): The most senior chivalrous order, led by the monarch. Foreign royals including the King of Spain, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and the Emperor of Japan are also members.

Here's a photo of Charles, the Queen, and Prince William in full Knights of the Garter get-up:

Knight of the Thistle (KT): Scottish equivalent of the Garter.

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB): The top rank in the Order of the Bath, which is occupied by nobles and figures from public life such as the civil service and military.

Order of Merit (OM): A 20th-century order peopled by figures from the arts and sciences. Members include Sir David Attenborough and Time Berners-Lee.

Knight of the Order of Australia (AK): An order based in Australia.

Companion of the Queen's Service Order (QSO): An order based in New Zealand.

Privy Counsellor (PC)

This is a group of figures who together make the "Privy Council," a large body of people meant to advise the monarch. The Prince is automatically one, along with the Prime Minister, all members of her Cabinet, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, and many other legal and religious figures.

Aide-de-Camp (ADC)

Aides-de-Camp are a small body of personal advisers to the monarch, mostly military figures. In ceremonial uniform, they wear a decorative rope ornament called an aiguillette to mark their status.

Earl of Chester

This is an ancient noble rank linked to the city of Chester, near England's border with Wales.

William I created the title to give to somebody to guard against attack from the Welsh. Since the 1300s it has always belonged to the Prince of Wales.

Duke of Cornwall

This title, the oldest dukedom in England, has automatically belonged to the heir to the throne since 1337. When in Southwest England, Charles is sometimes referred to by this title first.

Unlike the other titles, it comes with a large economic benefit: As duke, Charles owns some 150,000 acres, mainly in southwest England. Its 2017 accounts say the Duchy has assets totalling more than £913 million, and makes him £20 million a year.

Duke of Rothesay

This Scottish title is another longstanding possession of the heir to the throne. Before 1603, when the crowns of England and Scotland were joined, the Duke of Rothesay was the title given to the heir to Scotland's throne — post-1603, one heir has held them both.

When in Scotland, Charles is frequently referred to as the Duke of Rothesay, like in the newspaper headline in the Scottish edition of The Times newspaper.

Prince William and Kate Middleton also have separate Scottish titles, as Business Insider explained last week.

Earl of Carrick and Baron of Renfrew

These are two separate Scottish titles, which also go to the heir to the throne. Carrick and Renfrew both refer to southerly areas of Scotland. Before the crowns merged, the earldom of Carrick was associated with Robert the Bruce, a Scottish king who fought a war of independence against England.

Lord of The Isles

This title refers to the islands to the west of Scotland, which remained functionally independent from the mainland until around 1500. Parts of the territory still speak an entirely separate language, Scots Gaelic.

One of the islands, Lewis, is notable for being the original home of Gaelic speaker Mary Anne MacLeod, the mother of US President Donald Trump.

The lordship of the isles was given to the Scottish heir to the throne, and then later to the English, and therefore now belongs to Charles.

Prince and Great Steward of Scotland

Charles's last titles are also Scottish, and date from the medieval period. "Prince of Scotland" used to refer to a smaller area than the Scotland of today. The Great Steward used to be a separate noble title, but has belonged to the heir to the Scottish throne since 1371. It comes last in the official order of precedence.

When Charles takes the throne, Prince William is likely to inherit almost all of the titles listed above, though he may not get them all immediately.

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• We went to a McDonald's branch in Italy.
• We tried the items on the menu that are only available in Italy.
• Among those: a chicken burger, fried mozzarella, and a peculiar parmesan snack.

We went to a McDonald's branch in Italy to see what's on the menu. The branch we visited was in the iconic city of Venice, but sadly it was not on a canal.

We ordered some items that are only sold in Italy.

We got the My Selection Chicken burger, which has chicken breast, provolone cheese, and yellow tomato sauce, the Mozzarella McBites, the "Parmareggio Snack," which is basically a 280gr parmesan bar, and also chicken wings.

Watch the video to see how the food was like.

Produced and filmed by Claudia Romeo.

Join the conversation about this story »

Everyone should have a food bucket list, and a new year is the perfect opportunity to refresh it.

Last year, The Waitrose Good Food Guide selected the 50 best UK restaurants to try in 2018.

The guide reviews the best restaurants, pubs, and cafés across the UK based on feedback from readers and expert inspections. However, while each eatery makes our mouths water, making it through the best restaurants in one city can be hard enough, let alone an entire country.

In order to help you wade through the culinary options in the capital, we've compiled the 15 best restaurants in London, according to Waitrose.

The restaurants are awarded a score between 1 and 10, with 1 being "capable cooking with simple food combinations and clear flavours, but some inconsistencies" and 10 being "an extremely rare accolade" with "perfect dishes showing faultless technique at every service."

Scroll down to see the 15 best restaurants in London to try in 2018, ranked in ascending order along with their score.

SEE ALSO: The 13 best restaurants in the UK to try in 2018

15. Murano, Mayfair — 7 points. Coming in 48th in the UK, the Michelin-starred restaurant offers up melt-in-your mouth pasta dishes and Italian wines in a setting that feels like home.

14. Le Gavroche, Mayfair — 7 points. Known as "the last bastion in London of classically rich French haute cuisine," Le Gavroche has become a London institution partly thanks to its Chef Patron Michel Roux Jr. Expect dishes like Black Pudding, Fried Egg, Raw Asparagus Salad, and Spicy Tomato Chutney.

13. Restaurant Story, Bermondsey — 7 points. Tom Sellers tells his story and the story of British food through an ever-evolving tasting menu of seasonal dishes at this south London hotspot, which gained its Michelin star only five months after opening in 2013 and has retained it ever since.

• Tim Ferriss follows a strict — and elaborate — morning routine.
• I tried the routine for a single work week and found that it was energizing, though it was somewhat challenging to start the work day after 11 a.m.
• I also learned the importance of taking care of yourself, whether you do it before or after work.

Tim Ferriss' morning routine is long. If you're the kind of person who needs to ease into the day (my hand is raised), his schedule is probably for you.

Ferriss is the bestselling author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," a podcast host, an entrepreneur, and an investor.

I followed Ferriss' routine for a single work week and found that, while pushing back my schedule several hours so I could drink tea and meditate was a challenge, I felt pretty great. Plus, it beats waking up at 5:30 a.m. a la Donald Trump, whose daily routine I'd tried two weeks prior.

Throughout this experiment, I kept a running log of what I loved — and loathed — about the routine. Here's what I learned:

SEE ALSO: Tim Ferriss follows the same routine every morning to maximize his productivity

Ferriss' routine

Ferriss has written before about how he wakes up and goes to bed later than most people. He confirmed in an email that generally, he wakes up around 9 or 10 a.m.

My colleague Richard Feloni had already reported on Ferriss' morning routine, which I've summarized briefly below:

• He makes his bed.
• He meditates for 20 minutes.
• He drinks strong tea.
• He journals for five to 10 minutes.
• He eats a small breakfast.
• He exercises for 20-90 minutes.

My new routine

I made some tweaks to the steps above, so my new, Ferriss-inspired morning routine looked like this:

• I woke up naturally, which typically ended up being between 7:30 and 8 a.m.
• I made my bed.
• I meditated for 5-10 minutes.
• I drank strong tea.
• I journaled for 10 minutes.
• I practiced yoga for 20 minutes.
• I ate breakfast.

For the purposes of getting to the office before everyone else had left for the day, I curtailed some of the morning activities, like meditating and exercising. (Also, to be quiet honest, 20 minutes of meditation sounded like torture.)

I also switched the order of eating breakfast and exercising, so as not to down-dog on a full stomach.

Day 1: Wednesday

In a moment of absentmindedness, I'd set my alarm for 7 a.m. the night before. When I woke up and remembered I was on Ferriss time (nice!), I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep for another hour or so.

After wake-up round two, I promptly made my bed and tidied up the bedroom. The next step — the one I was dreading — was meditation. It had been years since I'd had a regular meditation practice, and even then, I'd found it frustrating and surprisingly exhausting.

Ferriss uses the Headspace app, which offers guided meditations, and I'd used the same app years ago. This time around, I simply set my iPhone timer for five minutes, plopped down on the couch, closed my eyes, and breathed.

Five minutes flew by. Perhaps I was feeling especially calm that morning, but I found it easier than I remembered to concentrate on my breath and to resist the tugging of thoughts and worries.

I prepared some green tea and pulled out a notebook to journal. Here again, I diverged slightly from Ferriss' routine. He uses either the 5-Minute Journal or Morning Pages— I stuck with free-form writing, which proved surprisingly cathartic.

At this point, I looked up and realized it was almost 9 a.m. I frantically messaged my editor letting her know I'd be in late, around 10:30 a.m. — an estimate that turned out to be off by almost an hour because I'd forgotten to take into account the time it took to shower and dress.

• Chelsea started physically attacking her parents after suffering brain damage in an accident at college.
• She is not alone. There are well-documented cases of people with brain injuries, tumours, and lesions behaving out of character.
• Studies show that criminals are more likely to have suffered a brain injury than the rest of the population.
• In severe cases, brain injuries are a line of defence in court, but the science is not strong enough to link all criminal behaviour with brain damage.

Four years ago, Chelsea fell head first onto the hardwood floor at her college. She had a seizure and stopped breathing, causing an anoxic injury — when the brain is damaged from not receiving enough oxygen.

Before the accident, Chelsea experienced a level of anger similar to any other person. She had certainly never been aggressive. But ever since, she has grappled with mood swings and can't contain her rage or impulses.

"I have really bad anger problems now. I can be fine one second and when the slightest inconvenience happens I'd be throwing and breaking things," said Chelsea, a pseudonym we are using to protect her identity.

"One time was that I was really pissed off about not being able to go back to school. I really wanted to go and try and get my old life back... I was screaming, throwing things. My mom was yelling and I start getting physical with her, and then my dad stepped in and out of nowhere I punched him in the face."

Chelsea's story is not unique. Behaviour changes after brain injuries have been well documented for many years. There are cases of people recovering from a brain damage with a new talent, or even in some cases, an accent from a foreign country, like this woman who survived a stroke only to acquire a Chinese accent.

Sometimes, brain damage can create a criminal.

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman infamously became the "Texas Tower Sniper." He killed his mother and wife with knives, then climbed up the tower at the University of Texas and started randomly shooting at people for 96 minutes. He killed 14 and injured 31 others, before he was gunned down.

During his autopsy, doctors found a tumour on his brain. It is indeterminable whether the tumour caused Whitman to act the way he did, but the autopsy report concluded it was certainly a possibility.

Injuries can be linked to areas of the brain that control morals

Whitman's story, and others like it, intrigued Ryan Darby, a professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Cases like this raise a question," he told Business Insider. "What is it about brain lesions in different areas that could lead to this behaviour?"

In a recent study, Darby and his team looked at 17 cases where people appeared to behave normally, then started committing crimes after changes to their brain like a tumour or an injury.

They wanted to see if lesions in certain areas of the brain were associated with criminal behaviour, but the results were inconsistent. However, when they looked at whether lesions were connected to the same area of the brain, they started to see a pattern.

"Even though all the brain lesions were in different parts of the brain, they were all connected to the same brain network," Darby said. "Our idea is that after an injury in one location, other parts of the brain become dysfunctional."

Areas they saw the lesions in were the anterior temporal lobe, the ventromedial frontal cortex, the amygdala, and the nucleus accumbens. These are all areas connected to morals, value decision making, reward and punishment.

"Those were the processes we thought would be important for what keeps a normal person from committing crimes," Darby said.

There are studies linking brain damage to crime

Brain injuries typically result in having problems with "executive skills," explained Huw Williams, a professor of clinical neuropsychology and co-director of the Centre for Clinical Neuropsychology Research at Exeter University in Britain. These skills include planning ahead, thinking things through, managing impulses, and memory.

When you're dealing with such a complicated organ like the brain, it takes decades of research to pinpoint what exactly might be happening. There still isn't strong research to suggest you can completely determine the way someone will behave depending on what their brain scans look like.

What is certain is that in a community sample of the UK population, analysed by Williams, about 10% will have had some kind of brain injury at some point. In the prison population, this number jumps dramatically to somewhere between 50 and 70%. This trend is echoed in the US and South Africa

"This doesn't mean necessarily that head injury equals crime," Williams pointed out. "It might, but also it might be coincidental, because if you've got a violent life, and you crash cars, you're likely to get a head injury at some point."

A team at Oxford University tried to shed some light on this question in a 35-year population study in Sweden led by Psychiatrist Seena Fazel.

Results showed that overall, Swedes had a 2.5% chance of becoming violent offenders. If they had a head injury on their records, that rose to 9%. To make allowances for the fact brain injuries could be a result of upbringing, the researchers also looked at the siblings of those with brain damage — they had a 4.5% chance of becoming offenders too.

In other words, the Oxford research shows that people have nearly double the chance of becoming violent offenders if they something in their upbringing, genetics, or environment predisposes it. Add a head injury on top of that, then the risk is doubled again.

Criminals might not be getting the right rehabilitation

Brain injuries are not easy to recover from. If memory is damaged, for example, patients will easily forget everything they've learned about how to behave. Or they might struggle to contain their outbursts of anger, like Chelsea does.

This is more pronounced among criminals, Williams said, partly because they are not getting the right rehabilitation.

When he switched to academia from clinical work, he was asked to supervise a student's work looking into whether prisoners had post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I gave a workshop in a local prison, to get an idea of the nature of the environment... and one of the prisoners had an area of skull missing," Williams said. "This was probably because he'd had a head injury and hadn't had follow up surgery to put in a titanium plate to replace the missing part of his skull probably removed to release pressure on the brain.

"He asked me why he had these funny feelings in his body that were quite nice, when he pressed himself on that area — and it was because he was pressing on the sensory motor strip. He was told he needed more surgery, and to take care with the area."

After that, Williams became aware that the medical and neurological needs of the prison population probably weren't being met.

"A lot of people who are in the system seem to have head injuries," he said. "That complicates their rehabilitation, which means there is a lot of re-offending. That may be because the present system isn't necessarily well geared towards rehabilitation yet, especially neuro-rehabilitation where you have to remind people when to do things, and how to do them."

Williams and his team started projects where they helped prison staff work with young people with brain injuries. So far the outcomes have been very promising because young people are more able to participate in their own improvement.

For example, for those with injuries to the left side of the brain, who have trouble remembering what they've been told, were given visual cues instead. "It's about trying to find a way of helping and working with the population more effectively," Williams said.

Neurology can be used in someone's defence

When the law comes into it, things get even more complicated. Defence attorneys have a duty to defend their clients with rigour, and so they keep up with the latest research to help minimise their punishment.

In some cases, this means zealously claiming their client was neurologically predisposed to acting the way they did. It isn't their fault, they may claim, because their brains are just wired that way.

Judith Edersheim is the co-founder and co-director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Centre for Law, Brain and Behaviour. It's an organisation that is helping bring science into the courtroom, by separating the fringe ideas from the theories that are a lot more established.

"It's very hard to tell [the difference] when neuroscience itself is so new," Edersheim told Business Insider. "And there are some features of brain science that make it perhaps more alluring and look more probative than it should be."

It's important to make the distinction because law and science behave in conflicting ways. Science is evolutionary like "building blocks," where you make assumptions and test them, then talk about the limitations of your studies and invite other scientists to do the same.

Law is not like that. In a courtroom, the outcome is final, and somebody's life is going to change. So you have to be pretty certain of your evidence. But when applied sparingly, looking carefully at the condition of an individual rather a collective, neuroscientific evidence can be a useful defence tool.

If a person is accused of a violent crime, there may be attributes of that person's brain which would explain abhorrent violent behaviour, like a tumour in the brain's frontal lobe. That would be a well-founded reason that somebody's neurology could contribute to their defence.

One of the most successful defences along these lines was a case of an obstetrician in New York, Dr Allan Zarkin, who started behaving peculiarly at work. He became unusually angry, and was short and provocative with the nursing staff.

Zarkin performed a cesarean section on a patient, delivering a healthy baby. He then carved his initials "AZ" into her abdomen. When asked about it, he simply said he thought he should sign it because he did such a good job.

After an investigation, doctors discovered that Zarkin had progressive Pick's disease, a frontal lobe dementia similar to Alzheimer's, which catastrophically disrupted his ability to plan, contain himself, and behave socially appropriately. Zarkin wasn't convicted, due to the medical diagnosis, but his licence was revoked.

In another case, a 40-year-old man who began looking at child pornography and propositioning prostitutes at massage parlours — behaviour that was completely out of character. He was eventually kicked out by his wife and found guilty of child molestation.

But while awaiting jail, he complained of a terrible headache and was admitted to hospital. That's when a large, egg-sized tumour was detected in the right lobe of the orbitofrontal cortex in his brain. Surgeons immediately removed it, and after that the pedophilic urges disappeared.

He successfully completed a Sexaholics Anonymous programme and was allowed to return home.

But it's not possible to defend everyone

These two cases are extreme, and the cause and effect are easily identifiable. But when brain damage is less severe, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions about how it can impact behaviour. This becomes even more complicated when you look group data.

Research may show certain brain patterns or injuries that are loosely associated with certain types of behaviour, but then the lawyer has to correlate that with the defendant's characteristics.

For example, you may have a whole set of brain scans of people who have committed violent crimes, and a pattern has been detected by researchers. You then have to show where the defendant fits into that group data.

"Crime is about behaviour, and the trial is about the mental state of the person who is sitting in front of you," Edersheim explained. "If you say someone has a propensity for violence, someone who has killed his wife for example, why is your propensity for violence only towards your wife? The individuated questions will dominate."

Without the specifics, the behaviour is explained by motive. For now, at least, there are too many vulnerabilities in the neurological evidence for it to be used effectively.

Neuroscience's contribution to criminal behaviour is still in its infancy, Edersheim said. Researchers are building on what they have to try and map out what makes a criminal mind, but there is still a lot they do not know. Only when the science is a lot more concrete can it be used with confidence as a defence.

Researchers are still piecing the puzzle together

With Chelsea, she doesn't know the next time she will lose control. Last time the police were called but no charges were brought against her. If she ever commits a violent crime, though, it looks unlikely that the evidence of her post-injury behavioural changes will be strong enough to help her.

A neurologist and psychiatrist have both said her behaviour is a result of her brain damage, but she isn't convinced of any of the treatment they offer her.

"When I get angry like that I literally have no control. It's almost like the fight or flight response turns on and I choose to fight for no reason. It's not even like I enjoy attacking people or getting worked up like that... it just happens," she said.

"They put me on mood medication, but I don't see the point in taking it. I see it as my brain is physically damaged, not chemically imbalanced. Then again, I could just misunderstand all of this."

Of course, not everyone with a brain injury will become a criminal. As Darby explained, brain lesions may predispose someone to criminal behaviour, but that certainly doesn't mean everyone becomes an offender.

As for those who suddenly acquire a propensity for violence from less serious injuries, like Chelsea, they are still awaiting answers.

SEE ALSO: Our brains sometimes create 'false memories' — but science suggests we could be better off this way

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NOW WATCH: Watch Tony Robbins bring someone to tears in a one-on-one motivational session

Fisher Island, Florida, is a paragon of exclusivity.

The 216-acre, man-made island sitting pretty off the coast of Miami Beach is reachable only by boat — most often yacht. It's considered America's most millionaire-dense ZIP code, but less than 20% of the island's residents permanently reside there.

With its mix of condos, private homes, and hotel rooms, the lush island exists as a retreat for the ultra wealthy, who spend their days golfing, playing tennis, lounging on the beach, boating, and simply relaxing.

The illustrious Vanderbilt family were the original stewards of Fisher Island, and their penchant for opulence remains.

Below, find out how Fisher Island became one of America's most affluent enclaves.

SEE ALSO: Owning a $1 million home is no longer considered a luxury in America

DON'T MISS: Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates live less than 1 mile from each other — here's where the rest of Seattle's billionaires live

In 1906, the Florida government created the small island off the southern coast of Miami Beach near Biscayne Bay. The island was briefly owned by Dana Dorsey, one of Florida's first black billionaires, but he sold the land to Carl Fisher, an auto entrepreneur and real estate developer, in 1919.

Source: Fisher Island Club

The island took on Fisher's namesake, but he didn't hold on to it for long. In the mid-1920s, Fisher met William K. Vanderbilt II, one of America's wealthiest residents, and proposed a trade: seven acres of Fisher Island for Vanderbilt's 250-foot yacht.

Source: Fisher Island Club

The railroad baron obliged and drew up plans for Fisher Island's first residence, "Alva Base," a Mediterranean-style compound with guest houses, tennis courts, and pools.

Source: Fisher Island Club

Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world. Selling for up to $35,000 per kilo, it's revered and relished by aristocrats across the globe. But it's an acquired taste. Turns out, caviar wasn't always so valuable. In the 19th century, sturgeon species in the US were so common that there are accounts of caviar being offered in saloons for free, like bar nuts. In Europe, fishermen were feeding the eggs to their pigs, or leaving it on the beach to spoil. What changed?

Similar to true champagne, caviar doesn't come from just anywhere. This, for example, is not caviar. To get the real thing, it has to be eggs from a sturgeon. There are 27 species around the world in North America, Europe, and Asia. But probably not for long. 

Arne Ludwig: In this case, sturgeon will die out because humans are over-harvesting their populations and destroying their habitats.

In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed 18 species on its Red List of Threatened Species, making the sturgeon the most endangered group of species on Earth. But lists like these are bittersweet. On the one hand, they can help protect the sturgeon from further population decline.

On the other hand, the rarer that caviar becomes, the more we can't get enough of it. There's actually an economic idea that explains this. It's called the rarity value thesis and it describes how "rarity increases the value of the item." Sturgeon can weigh up to several thousand pounds, and produce hundreds of pounds of roe at a time. The world record belongs to a beluga sturgeon that weighed 2,520 pounds and yielded 900 pounds of roe. Today, she'd be worth about half a million dollars. 

It wasn't until around the 20th century when these freshwater fish and their eggs became a rare commodity. Pollution poisoned their waters and dams blocked their spawning grounds upstream. They had nowhere to reproduce and continued to be overfished for their meat and roe. On top of that, it takes 8-20 years for a female to sexually mature, depending on the species.

She can produce millions of eggs at a time, but odds are that only one will survive to adulthood. In the end, the sturgeon population couldn't keep up with demand and their coveted eggs became the jewels of the luxury food scene. Today, caviar imports and exports are closely regulated in the US., which is partly why it's so expensive. 

Deborah Keane: People forget that every single egg, every one of these eggs is taken off by hand. Now, remember that we're dealing with a raw seafood endangered species. So it is basically like eating and dealing with edible elephant tusks. It is that heavily regulated.

That's why today, the majority of caviar comes from sturgeon farms.

Deborah Keane: Little did I know that by 2011, all wild caviar would become illegal on the planet. When I started there were six farms in the world and only two producing caviar in the world and that was in 2004. Now, there are 2,000 farms.

One farm, in particular, in China called Kaluga Queen produces 35% of the world's caviar. Caviar there is harvested with the classic Russian and Iranian technique, which involves killing the fish and then extracting the eggs. Other farms are exploring a different technique, which doesn't involve killing the fish. It's called stripping. 

The fish are injected with a hormone that triggers their urge to release eggs. Farmers have been doing this for many years, but not to get caviar — just to produce more fish. It wasn't until recently that people started canning this stuff and selling it as caviar.

Dmitrijs Tracuks: The biggest thing is that yes, fish stays alive. You have really small impact on the fish because you do it really fast. You take the fish out of the water, you put it on the special holding facility. The fish has already started to spawn and so all that requires is to press on the belly, massage the belly and the caviar will just flow out of the fish.

The idea behind no-kill caviar is a commendable one, but it has yet to catch on. Either way, with caviar farms in place, this gives the wild sturgeon population a chance to recover. But whether or not, that happens is largely up to us.

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It's early in the year, but the list of canceled TV shows is already piling up.

Networks haven't announced many cancellations yet with the exception of ABC, which canceled freshman sitcom "The Mayor" and "Once Upon a Time" (which was once a ratings hit). 

On the streaming side, things are a bit different. Amazon kicked off 2018 with a slew of cancellations, announcing the end of three quirky comedies. It axed Golden Globe nominee "I Love Dick" and comedian Tig Notaro's semi-autobiographical show, "One Mississippi." 

There are many more cancellations to come, especially since networks haven't announced the fates of their fall shows. We'll update this list as more cancellations are announced. 

Here are all the shows that were canceled this year, including those from networks and Netflix:

SEE ALSO: The worst TV show of every year since 2000, according to critics

"The Mayor" — ABC, one season

"Chance" — Hulu, two seasons

"Lady Dynamite" — Netflix, two seasons

We can't all be Olympians. 

But we couch-bound Olympics-watchers can still reap serious health benefits from trying out some of the sports in play at the Winter Games.

We've rounded up nine of the most exciting winter sports to determine about how many calories you'd burn based on a metric called METs.

We calculated how much the average Joe and Jane USA might burn doing each Olympian-style sport for 60 minutes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average American woman weighs about 168.5 pounds (~76kg), and the average man is somewhere around 195.7 lbs (~89 kg), so we've used those weights.

The calorie estimates are based on a tool built by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Arizona State University. Of course, they aren't perfect, and the numbers would likely be different for you based on your fitness, age, and other factors.

But with that in mind, take a look at what a spin around the rink or slide down an icy chute could do for your body. 

SEE ALSO: We compared 7 popular granola bars based on dietitians' health advice — here's how they stack up

Traveling around the ice at 9 miles an hour or less (that's a regular pace, not an Olympic one) burns around 490 calories for an average man, and 418 for a woman.

In an hour of consistent movement on the ice, you're probably expending around 5.5 METs. By comparison, competitive speed skaters and ice dancers can burn up to 14 METs an hour. 

When people really get moving, ice skating and ice dancing can be some of the most intense winter sports. 

Ski jumping is also a heart-pumping sport. For average Americans, an hour of it burns 532 calories for a woman and 623 for a man.

Carrying your skis up the hill then hurling yourself off the top can blow through energy — around 7 METs an hour.

If you want to calculate for yourself how many calories might be in an hourlong workout, multiply your weight, in kilograms, by the MET of 7.

A typical American adult cruising down the slopes at a race pace would burn 608 calories for women and 712 for men.

But that estimate is for someone speeding downhill with their most vigorous effort.

Reigning Olympic slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin eats 3,000 calories a day to fuel her impressive runs down the mountains. But how much people burn skiing and snowboarding depends a lot on how fast they go and how fit they are.

Skiing can plow through up to 8 METs in an hourlong race, or as little as 4.3 METs if you exert just a light effort. 

 Taking it slow, you'd burn closer to 327 calories for women and 383 for men.

Again, multiply your weight in kilograms by the MET to find your hourly calorie burn.

• Protein bars are considered a workout staple because they have a high protein content, which is essential to building muscle mass.
• But they can also be packed with sugar and artificial ingredients. 
• We tested 12 different protein bars available at a local CVS and ranked them based on nutritional content, taste, and cost.

After sampling 12 different protein bars, the only place I don't feel like going is the gym.

Protein bars are designed to be high-energy snacks that contain a large concentration of protein, a macronutrient that helps to build muscle mass and repair wounds or damaged tissues. Some contain around 20 grams of protein in a bar. To put that into context, a large egg has around seven grams of protein in it.

There's a big market for protein bars in the US, and other snack companies are wising up to this. In October 2017, Kellogg's bought the maker of RXBAR protein bars for $600 million in an attempt to cash in on healthier food trends. 

But these "healthy" snacks can also be stuffed with sugar, artificial ingredients, and calories, making them about as healthy as a candy bar. 

We decided we'd had enough of being fooled and headed to our local CVS store to sample all of the protein bar brands on offer. We've put together a ranking based on taste, nutritional content, and price. Find out which bar won, below:

SEE ALSO: I'm gluten-free and survived on nothing but fast food for 5 days — here's what happened

12. Questbar, double chocolate chunk, $2.99

Weight: 60g

Protein: 20g

Calories: 180

Sugar: Less than 1g

Carbs: 24g

Fats: 7g

Review: On first glance, this bar looks great — the packaging seems authoritative and low-key, the kind that makes you trust it instantly. It's very high in protein, low in sugar, and has a decent calorie content. But this is actually a great example of why you shouldn't get suckered in by first impressions, because it does not taste good.

In fact, it has the same consistency as soil.

11. Think Thin, cookies and cream, $2.29

Weight: 60g

Protein: 20g

Calories: 220

Sugar: 0g

Carbs: 25g

Fats: 7g

Review: I'm instantly skeptical when I see it says 0 grams of sugar in bold on the front of the wrapper. My first thought is, if there isn't sugar in it, they're probably replacing it with something much worse.

Sugar is replaced with 20g of sugar alcohols. The offender here is Maltitol – it's 90% as sweet as sugar, but it can claim to be sugar-free despite replicating some of the harmful effects of sugar and causing spikes in blood sugar. 

The bar is high in protein but has a bitter aftertaste.

10. Balance, cookie dough, $1.99

Weight: 50g

Protein: 15g

Calories: 210

Sugar: 17g

Carbs: 22g

Fats: 7g

Review: This bar is stuffed full of artificial ingredients and sugar, which makes it seem like there's no real advantage to eating it over a chocolate bar. Its redeeming feature is that the protein content is pretty high, and it's affordably priced. 

• Poppy is an artist who's gained over 250 million views on her YouTube channel.
• She has mesmerized and confused viewers with videos such as "I'm Poppy," a 10 minute video featuring her repeating the words "I'm Poppy," that has over 14 million views.
• She was recently compared to Andy Warhol by New York Magazine.

Poppy is a YouTube star who claims she's "from the internet." Her robot-like, soft voice and puzzling YouTube monologues — sometimes sung, sometimes recited — deliver slightly nonsensical messages to her viewers.

"Do you ever think about followers? What does it mean when you have a lot of followers? There's a number after my name. Do you have a number after your name? The number keeps climbing higher and higher," she says into the camera during one of her videos published last year.

Her YouTube channel has over 250 million views, and she and her director, Titanic Sinclear, recently debuted her new YouTube Red show "I'm Poppy" during the Sundance Film Festival. She also released an album on Diplo’s Mad Decent records called "Poppy.Computer" that features songs such as "Computer Boy" and "Interweb."

Poppy is influenced by Japanese "kawaii" culture, ASMR videos, David Lynch, and of course, the internet. In a recent profile on the artist in New York Magazine she was compared to Andy Warhol.

Because little is known about the woman who represents Poppy, conspiracy theories from Poppy Truthers have flown around both Reddit and YouTube. Some believe she's a member of a cult, or that Sinclear is keeping her hostage, or that her YouTube Channel — which has videos dating back to 2014, is actually just a marketing campaign for something.

Poppy plays with and responds to these theories within her videos such as "Tide Commercial" and "I Am Not In A Cult."

Below, a look at the artist Poppy.

SEE ALSO: These four women want to help plan your dream funeral

Poppy's first YouTube video came out in 2014. During it, she quietly eats cotton candy.

She and Sinclear have produced over 300 videos for her channel. Her monologues vary in subject, but her words often ring satirically empty. In her video "Politics" she says: "I like politics. I have an opinion. I like politics because it's fun."

The aesthetic of her videos has remained mostly consistent — pale pastel backdrops and generally light colored clothes fill the frame.