Read Beat (...and repeat)

William Stixrud, the co-author with Ned Johnson, of “What Do You Say?”, talks about communicating with teenagers. 
If you’re a parent, you’ve had a moment–maybe many of them–when you’ve thought, “How did that conversation go so badly?” 
At some point after the sixth grade, the same kid who asked “why” non-stop at age four suddenly stops talking to you. The good news is that effective communication can be cultivated, learned, and taught, said Stixrud. As you get better at this, so will your kids, he adds.
 Stixrud , who with Johnson have 60 years combined experience talking to kids one-on-one, based the title of their book on the most common question they get when out speaking to parents and educators: “What do you say?” 
While many adults understand the importance and power of philosophies behind the books that dominate the parenting bestseller list, parents are often left wondering how to put those concepts into action.  Stixrud talks about how to engage in respectful and effective dialogue, beginning with defining and demonstrating the basic principles of listening and speaking. Forty percent of children admit to being estranged from a parent at some point in their lives, said Stixrud, citing research. That often comes from misunderstandings based on a failure to communicate between parent and child. Stixrud also cautions about technology overload—for both parent and child.

A friendship famine? Along with everything else we’ve had to put up with for the past two years? We’re a lonely society--in need of friendship, says Marisa Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland and the author of “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends as an Adult.”

How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? Franco says it’s important to understand how we bond these days. If your friends aren’t texting you back it’s not because they hate you.

To make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style—secure, anxious, or avoidant. That’s the key to unlocking what’s working (and what’s failing) in your friendships.
 
 Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age—in fact she says, it’s essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. 

Guys, she tells Steve Tarter, sometimes have a harder time bonding with another man due to fears that it will be taken as a sign of being gay. 

But friendship is important enough to find forms of connection, said Franco.

Need Einstein’s theory explained? How about an evaluation of Sir Isaac Newton’s contributions to physics?

Sean Carroll’s your man. His new book, “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe,” offers up equations, history and some basic math principles but seeks to do it in an easy-to-understand manner.

But then you may already know about Carroll. He’s written a number of books such as “From Eternity to Here” and “The Particle at the End of the Universe” as well as accumulating over 4 million views on his YouTube series where he routinely explains mind-boggling concepts.

Carroll decided on a career in physics at the tender age of 10, reading books at his local library on black holes and the Big Bang Theory. “I thought that was the most interesting stuff in the universe,” he told Steve Tarter.

Now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, Carroll has some counsel for those of us who have stressed about the concept of eternity or the miracle of life. “I understand it can be disturbing to contemplate some of these ideas but nature doesn’t care,” he said.

As a frequent consultant to Hollywood, Carroll said he understands the primary purpose of a film is entertainment “but when things obey the laws of physics, the reality can get people more immersed in the movie,” he said.

Dr. Dale Bredesen  is internationally recognized as an expert in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, and the author of “The First Survivors of Alzheimer’s” (2021). 
In “First Survivors,” Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia, presenting the stories of the first survivors of Alzheimer’s themselves.
These first person accounts detail the fear, struggle, and ultimate victory of each patient's journey. They vividly describe what it is like to have Alzheimer's. They also drill down on how each of these patients made the program work for them. 
Bredesen suggests people get checked in advance to offset an onset of Alzheimer’s. "Just as when you’re over 50 you should get a colonoscopy, when you’re over 45 you should get a cognoscopy which, by the way, is far more pleasant than a colonoscopy,” he told Steve Tarter. .
 “With early detection and prevention, we can get make this a rare disease,” said Bredesen.

Inspired by none other than naval historian and literary agent Jim Hornfischer, Greg Wahl applied a flash fiction approach to what World War Two was about at some of the Pacific Islands that became famous as theaters of war.
 
 Wahl, a former dentist who makes his home in Peoria, said a professor friend of his encouraged him to take on the project that involved two years of research on eight islands where fighting took place in WWII.

Hornfischer, who died in 2021, had originally suggested that Wahl take on some 40 battles, a feat that Wahl said could have taken decades. Hornfischer, the author of books like “The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-45” and “Neptune’s Inferno: the U.S. Navy at Guadacanal,” was a military expert whose accounts merited awards from the Naval Historical Foundation.

Wahl, on the other hand, offers up wartime stories without all the historical details that most relate to the subject. “I focus on the people, the people who fought the battles,” he told Steve Tarter.

By focusing on those who fought, "A Time of Islands—Stories of the Pacific War Isles" communicates personal moments at a time when life wasn’t assured, when the world was up for grabs. 

The title of “Build,” a children’s book by Chris Sickels might also describe the Indiana native’s career. From puppetry to stop-motion animation, Sickels is always building in order to express himself. 

“I started in illustration and now I focus on 3D and animation,” said Sickels, who credited Terry Martin, his art teacher, with setting his career in motion. “In rural Indiana, you didn’t just go off and become an artist,” he said.

Sickels now works out of his own studio based in Greenfield, Ind., called Red Nose Studio, working on a variety of projects as a freelance illustrator and fulltime builder. A taste of the Sickels style is available on YouTube.

In his interview with Steve Tarter, Sickels  talks about the toy bulldozers, dump trucks, and cranes  he constructed in the making of “Build.”Those models were made from “chunks of scrap wood, bent nails and springs,” he said to make “wonky versions of those machines.”

Encouraged to create recipes without dairy and meat when her husband’s research pointed to the impact of diet on reversing disease, Ann Esselstyn began feeding her family creative, plant-based meals more than thirty years ago. Now Ann and her daughter, Jane Esselstyn have written “Be a Plant-Based Woman Warrior,” a collection of 125 recipes, many of which are desserts, that involve no meat, no dairy and no oil.

In her interview with Steve Tarter, Jane Esselstyn, at 56, the younger of the two authors (mother Ann is 86), she says that a plant-based lifestyle is not only a healthy choice but adopting it can reverse existing problems.

The book not only contains recipes but testimonials from women that have adopted the plant-based diet. The cookbook is a call to action and a message of hope for plant-based women warriors who are in control of their own health, said Esselstyn.
  
When Tarter suggests that some listeners might hear “no meat, no dairy, no oil” and say what’s left, Jane replies “Everything in the world that grows.” Recipes range from Apple Flax Flapjacks and Black Ramen Bowls, to Portobello Sliders with Green Goddess Sauce, to Mint Chip Outta Sight Brownies. 

The history of roller derby dates back to 1935 when Leo Seltzer, a Chicago promoter, drew 20,000 people to the Chicago Coliseum to view roller skaters in action.

That’s just some of the action that Michella Marino relates in “Roller Derby,” a book that covers the sport through its ups and downs right to the present.

The deputy director of the Indiana Historical Bureau in Indianapolis, Marino, who described herself as “very competitive,” actually played with a professional roller derby team in western Massachusetts for almost three years.

The sport attracted her because it was a chance for a woman in her late 20s to compete, she said.

Roller derby challenges the traditional sports framework because it remains a rough, full-contact co-ed professional sport not modified for women, noted Marino.

Many have viewed roller derby as a product of television, something that Jerry Seltzer, Leo’s son, can take credit for, she said. Since taking over for his dad in the late 1950s, “the Jerry Seltzer era of roller derby was marked by innovation, savvy and theatrics,” stated Marino.

Where roller derby goes from here is anyone’s guess but this isn’t the only country where roller derby is played. The game is big in France, Marino told Steve Tarter.

As for Michella strapping on those skates again and getting back on the track, she’s thinking about it. We told you this girl was competitive.

Raymond Loewy left his imprint on this world in a lot of ways. Born in Paris in 1893 and trained as an engineer, Loewy revolutionized 20th-century American industrial design. 

John Wall explores the Loewy legend in “Streamliner,” tracing the evolution of an industry and the path that Loewy took to becoming a national brand.

He created bright, smooth, and colorful logos for major corporations that included Greyhound, Exxon, and Nabisco. His designs for Studebaker automobiles, Sears Coldspot refrigerators, Lucky Strike cigarette packs, and Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives are iconic, noted Wall. 

Wall told Steve Tarter that Loewy employed a full-time press agent who was almost as skilled as Loewy in the courting of journalists and tastemakers to become the face of a consumer-driven vision of the American dream.

In “Streamliner,” Wall makes a point of spotlighting the job that Loewy did for Studebaker, pointing to models in 1947 and 1953 as well as the Avanti in 1964 that initially allowed the automaker to compete with the Big Three. 

Other examples of Loewy’s legacy include the familiar eagle silhouette logotype of the United States Postal Service and the distinctive look of the President's white Air Force One jet.

Horrific wildfires in California have dominated the news in recent years. We think of the heroic efforts of those who fight these fires, the torment of those who have lost family and homes and to the dangers of drought and climate change.

Katherine Blunt, an energy reporter for the Wall Street Journal who has covered the story of California wildfires in recent years, adds another element to the story: years of neglect by the Pacific Gas & Electric utility.

As PG&E prioritized profits, power lines—running through the woodlands of Northern California—were left to deteriorate. As Blunt reports in “California Burning,”, it was a rusted hook, purchased for 56 cents in 1921, that split in two that sparked the deadliest wildfire in California history.

Blunt relates the story of how PG&E, even when warned, some years before, by its own engineers of the dangers inherent in neglecting needed maintenance, failed to follow through. 

Now PG&E is undertaking an alternative once considered prohibitive to stringing electrical wires through mountain forests. The utility has undertaken a program to start burying those lines—at a cost expected to top $20 billion.

As Blunt tells Steve Tarter, PG&E isn’t the only utility in the nation with aging infrastructure. The price of providing a critical service in a changing climate is likely to have to be paid by others.