The Best Paragraph I've Read...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Sometime in recent history, possibly around 2004, Americans forgot to have fun, true fun, as though they’d misplaced it like a sock. Instead, fun evolved into work, sometimes more than true work, which is where we find ourselves now. Fun is often emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, pigeonholed, hyped, forced and performative. Adults assiduously record themselves appe...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: S.L. Price was a newspaper guy, making his bones as a young reporter at the Sacramento Bee and Miami Herald in the ’80s and ’90s. He covered sports, but those publications also allowed him to dip in on other beats; one day he might be reporting from the Olympics, the next he would be in thick of hurricane coverage. “I loved working for newspapers so much,” Price said....

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Is a collection of interesting numbers and statistics surrounding this year's presidential election. These numbers come from Politico. You can read the full article and all of the numbers here: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/30/2024-election-numbers-00133327 Government teacher Kevin Kopec joins Zac and Don to discuss the political statistics they found...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: The roots of boys’ problems are complex. Things that once benefited boys in school, including male teachers, recess and vocational classes, have dwindled in recent years. The post pandemic ubiquity of technology also has contributed to boys’ problems—and parents’ frustration. “If you have the option between studying for boring chemistry and playing a videogame, wh...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "The free throw is supposed to be an easy point after a foul: a direct, unguarded shot 15 feet from the backboard. But there’s an art to it. The ball, most players and fans would say, should leave the fingers gracefully, make a wide arc, avoid the rim — and “splash” straight into the net, as the N.B.A. sharpshooter Steph Curry called it. With the help of anal...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "The Cybertruck, for all of its many faults, lives up to this promise. Too many other EVs don’t. A fully electric Ford F-150 Lightning is a technological feat that can power a house for up to three days, but from a distance, you can’t tell it apart from its gas-powered cousin. Other EVs are even more Wonder Bread: The electric Hyundai Genesis G80 is so simila...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: This week we discuss laws, the people who decide the law, and whether those very people can have social media accounts. Here are the articles we read: "Leaf Blower Fight Roils Greenwhich, Conn., How to World's Most Perfect Lawns" Wall Street Journal. Author: Joseph De Avila "Can public officials block you on social media? It's up to the Supr...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation. Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it’s accept...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: When self-checkout kiosks began to pop up in American grocery stores, the sales pitch to shoppers was impressive: Scan your stuff, plunk it in a bag, and you’re done. Long checkout lines would disappear. Waits would dwindle. Small talk with cashiers would be a thing of the past. Need help? Store associates, freed from the drudgery of scanning barcodes, would be cl...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Forty years ago, when I was earning my Ph. D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the research seemed clear. Studies back then showed that kids who attended schools in low-income communities were at higher risk for substance abuse, anxiety, and depression, compared with kids who attended schools in more affluent communities. Suniya Luthar, then at Col...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: In the first release of U.S. history and civics scores since the start of the pandemic, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, showed a decline in students’ knowledge that reversed gains made since the 1990s. According to the data, 13% of eighth-graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history, meaning they could explain...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Zac & Don discuss the second half of the new Elon Musk biography. Does Elon have too much power when it comes to Free Speech? War? What about the Algorithm, The Idiot Index, Production Hell & More! You can read the full biography here: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=hjIpY&content-id=amzn1.sym....

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Let’s just get this out of the way: I don’t like dogs. I don’t like the way they smell. I don’t like the way they jump on your dry-clean-only pants. I especially don’t like the way they “get to know you.” (I generally don’t like to be poked down there unless it’s so someone can tell me whether I have HPV.) I don’t believe animals are equal to people; I can’t belie...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Economists, sports scientists and psychologists have analyzed Olympic performances and chess matches, as well as thousands of online quizzes to determine the average age when people peak mentally and physically. They are trying to understand how our brain and bodies work and if there are lessons on strengthening each. The good news is that while we may have peaked in...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: It’s been almost 2,000 years since the Roman Empire reached the historic peak of its power. But many men still contemplate it — quite a lot. A new social media trend prompting women to ask the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome reveals that it crosses the minds of many men on a weekly basis. Even daily. Or more — to the surprise and confusion o...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "His heritage and breeding, along with the hardwiring of his brain, made him at times, Callous and impulsive. It also led to an exceedingly high tolerance for risk. He could calculate it coldly and also embrace it feverishly. "Elon wants risk for its own sake," says Peter Thiel, who became his partner in the early days of PayPal. "He seems to enjoy it, indeed it times...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Taco Bell’s food-innovation staff, which includes sixty developers, focusses on big questions: How do you make a Cheez-It snack cracker big enough to be a tostada? What are the ideal Cheez-It dimensions to guarantee that the tostada won’t crack inconveniently when bitten into? Or consider the Doritos Locos Taco: What safeguards can be implemented to prevent the or...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "Consider: only between 10 and 30 percent of second-hand donations to charity shops are actually resold in store. The rest disappears into a machine you don’t see: a vast sorting apparatus in which donated goods are graded and then resold on to commercial partners, often for export to the Global South. The problem is that, with the onslaught of fast fashion, these don...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Comes from a new book titled Mountain Top: The Inside Story of Michigan's 1997 National Title Climb. The authors are Nick Baumgardner & Mark Snyder. You can purchase the book here. Zac and Don are joined by co-author Mark Snyder. They discuss Michigan's 1997 championship football season. Marks shares some of his favorite coach and player anecdotes. They discuss the pr...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Steady growth in Internet shopping has been accompanied by steady growth in returns of all kinds. A forest’s worth of artificial Christmas trees goes back every January. Bags of green plastic Easter grass go back every spring. Returns of large-screen TVs surge immediately following the Super Bowl. People who buy portable generators during weather emergencies use them...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Plaintiffs’ lawyers are pitching school boards throughout the country to file lawsuits against social-media companies on allegations that their apps cause classroom disciplinary problems and mental-health issues, diverting resources from education. Nearly 200 school districts so far have joined the litigation against the parent companies of Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: It’s not the wedding professionals’ fault that weddings are expensive. The fact is that weddings are luxuries, not necessities. It costs a lot to make something look nice; it costs even more to make it feel nice—to make sure all your guests are comfortable, and well fed, and entertained. A wedding is not a photograph of a wedding. A wedding—a good wedding—is immersive...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: A tourist is a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change. This definition is taken from the opening of "Hosts and Guests," the classic academic volume on the anthropology of tourism. The last phrase is crucial: touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: The idea of building a desalination plant in Mexico has been discussed in Arizona for years. But now, a $5 billion project proposed by an Israeli company is under serious consideration, an indication of how worries about water shortages are rattling policymakers in Arizona and across the American West. On June 1, the state announced that the Phoenix area, the fastest-...

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Listen, the US is a big dumpster fire. At least, it's easy to feel that way with the constant horrible news — and any and all apathy and distress we feel is valid. But we often tend to forget about the good things about America. So, when Reddit user u/hippiechick725 asked, "What's the best thing about the US?" and a bunch of people from other countries or those who ha...