The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"The cost of raising a child through high school has risen to more than $300,000 because of inflation that is running close to a four-decade high, according to a Brookings Institution estimate.

It determined that a married, middle-income couple with two children would spend $310,605—or an average of $18,271 a year—to raise their younger child born in 2015 through age 17. The calculation uses an earlier government estimate as a baseline, with adjustments for inflation trends.

The multiyear total is up $26,011, or more than 9%, from a calculation based on the inflation rate two years ago, before rapid price increases hit the economy, the Brookings Institution said."

This paragraph comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal.  The article is titled: "It Now Costs $300,000 To Raise a Child."  The author is Rina Torchinsky.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-now-costs-300-000-to-raise-a-child-11660864334

Zac and Don discuss the new average cost to raise a child.  They also discuss other numbers that they have seen in the news recently.  

Below are links to the other stories discussed:

$75 Fine Dining Menu for Dogs in San Francisco

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/dogue-restaurant-dogs-17484518.php

12% Chance of a Nuclear Detonation

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/09/will-a-nuclear-weapon-be-launched-in-combat-by-the-end-of-2023.html

6PM Is the New Dinner Hour in New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/t-magazine/eating-early-new-york-restaurants.html

2:01:09 Is the New Marathon Record

https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2022/09/25/eliud-kipchoge-berlin-marathon-world-record/#:~:text=Kipchoge%20slowed%20in%20the%20final,%3A40%2C%E2%80%9D%20Kipchoge%20said.

20 Quadrillion Ants are on Earth

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/

20,000 Uses of Cotton Bag = Single Use Plastic Bag

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1566797139023462405

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.

This paragraph comes from an essay written on Forbes.com.  The title is "Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better."  The essay is written by Ida Auken.  You can read the full essay here:

Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better (forbes.com)

Zac and Don discuss this vision of the future.  They try and decide if this is a positive or negative future and how realistic of a vision it is.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Under scenarios deemed likely by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a connection between ocean currents and discharge would increase the overall discharge rate in one region of the continent by some 10% by the end of the century. But to emphasize the idea being tested, the modelers used human influences almost three times larger. Even though that fact is stated in the paper, reporters rarely catch such nuance, and the media goes with headlines such as “Antarctic Ice Melting Could Be 40 Percent Faster Than Thought” with the absurd statement that “a massive tsunami would swamp New York City and beyond, killing millions. London, Venice and Mumbai would also become aquariums.” A more accurate headline would read: “Ocean currents connecting antarctic glaciers might accelerate their melting.”

This paragraph comes from an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal By Steven Koonin.  The title of the article is "Don’t Believe the Hype About Antarctica’s Melting Glaciers"  You can read the full article here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-believe-the-hype-about-antarcticas-melting-glaciers-ice-sheet-climate-change-global-warming-sea-levels-greenland-iceberg-ocean-11663618509

Zac and Don are joined by Dr. Elizabeth Herndon of Oak Ridge National Labs.  They discuss climate headlines and whether the media does an accurate job matching the headline to the science.  They talk about the challenges of communicating complex ideas to people without a science background.  They also discuss climate change solutions and how best to think about the issue.

Here is Dr. Herndon's contact information and biography:

https://www.ornl.gov/staff-profile/elizabeth-m-herndon

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

I drive a stick shift. It’s a pain, sometimes. Clutching and shifting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wears you out. My wife can’t drive my car, which limits our transit options. And when I’m at the wheel, I can’t hold a cold, delicious slushie in one hand, at least not safely. But despite the inconvenience, I love a manual transmission. I love the feeling that I am operating my car, not just driving it. That’s why I’ve driven stick shifts for the past 20 years.

This paragraph comes from The Atlantic in an essay titled: "The End of Manual Transmission."  The essay is written by Ian Bogost.  You can read the full essay here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/stick-shift-manual-transmission-cars/671078/

Zac and Don discuss their experiences with driving manual transmissions.  They wonder if it's a big deal that manual transmissions in cars are going away.  They evaluate the author's premise that the human machine relationship has become out of synch.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Technology is disrupting the market for education just as it has disrupted the market for news. We do not yet know how the industry will shake out, but a few points can be made with confidence. Online education offers tremendous savings both in terms of money and of time. Online education will also increase the quality of education for many but not all courses, especially as investment in complementary technologies increases. The for-profit universities have already moved heavily into online education and the non-profits are poised to follow. What is less clear is who will be delivering the online content of the future, how knowledge will be assessed, and how learning will be credentialed.

We should also not count the old model out. Having never observed an alternative, we may not yet fully appreciate the old model’s strengths. The Oxford model weathered previous technological storms, not the least of which was the printed book. Nevertheless, the disruption potential is peaking now.

This paragraph comes from a 2012 article in the Journal Cato Unbound.  The title of the article is "Why Online Education Works."  The article's author is Alex Tabarrok.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/11/12/alex-tabarrok/why-online-education-works/

Dr. Shannon Smith of Michigan Virtual joins Zac and Don.  The three discuss the last ten years of online education.  They discuss whether online education over the past decade has met the promises that Mr. Tabarrok wrote about.  They also reflect on online education during the pandemic and current models of online instruction.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The movement, known as E.A. to its practitioners, who themselves are known as E.A.s, takes as its premise that people ought to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible. Among other back-of-the-envelope estimates, E.A.s believe that a life in the developing world can be saved for about four thousand dollars. Effective altruists have lashed themselves to the mast of a certain kind of logical rigor, refusing to look away when it leads them to counterintuitive, bewildering, or even seemingly repugnant conclusions. For a time, the movement recommended that inspirited young people should, rather than work for charities, get jobs in finance and donate their income. More recently, E.A.s have turned to fretting about existential risks that might curtail humanity’s future, full stop.

This paragraph comes from an article in the New Yorker titled: "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism."  The article is written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism

Zac and Don discuss the concept of Effective Altruism.  They wonder if this style of doing good is the best way to help the most people.  They wonder if the belief in helping future generations is the best use of today's resources.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

A shirt would only muffle the Liver King’s message: that the modern world has made men unconscionably soft, and that the only way to fight back is by living more like our earliest, most-jacked ancestors. The way to accomplish this, according to the Liver King, is by following his nine “ancestral tenets” (sleep, eat, move, shield, connect, cold, sun, fight, bond), doing the most brutal workouts imaginable, and, above all, eating more raw liver—the nutrient-dense meat favored by, as his website puts it, “lions, great whites, and other wild alpha organisms.”

This paragraph comes from a www.gq.com article.  The title is: "In the Court of the Liver King."  The article is written by Madeleine Aggeler.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.gq.com/story/in-the-court-of-the-liver-king-brian-johnson-ancestral-supplements

Zac and Don discuss the lifestyle of the Liver King.  They wonder if people want to live like him or just watch on social media.  They also discuss the rise in "soft" men and if the Liver King has a good answer for them.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The Libermans’ theory is that, in terms of stuff that America’s big wealth can invest in, people are more appealing than the current catalogue of middling venture-capital funds, shipping firms, and companies selling toothbrushes by mail. Instead of putting money into a fund for startups, investors would be free to find an ingenious entrepreneur and invest in her entire career. Rather than buying shares of Spotify, a fund could buy into a portfolio of the futures of emerging hip-hop artists, all of whom would get that cash. Most of us are more excited about our brilliant friends than about the companies they work for. And while the average age of an S. & P. 500 company is approximately twenty years—most die young—people do better. The stronger their boost off the blocks, the longer they can keep trying, increasing their odds of success.

This paragraph comes from the New Yorker.  The article is titled: "Is Selling Shares In Yourself The Way Of The Future?"  The article is written by Nathan Heller.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/01/is-selling-shares-in-yourself-the-way-of-the-future

Zac and Don talk about the idea of selling shares in oneself.  Could this be a good way to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor?  Does this allow humans a debt free way to access capital?  Are there any downsides?

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

In any case, an airplane is just transportation. A big ship is a floating manse, with a hierarchy written right into the nomenclature. If it has a crew working aboard, it’s a yacht. If it’s more than ninety-eight feet, it’s a superyacht. After that, definitions are debated, but people generally agree that anything more than two hundred and thirty feet is a megayacht, and more than two hundred and ninety-five is a gigayacht. The world contains about fifty-four hundred superyachts, and about a hundred gigayachts.

For the moment, a gigayacht is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own.

This paragraph comes from the New Yorker.  the article is titled: "The Haves and Have-Yachts."  The article is written by Evan Osnos.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/the-haves-and-the-have-yachts

Zac and Don discuss the world of yachts and the rich who own them.  They discuss why the yacht seems to make sense as something for the rich to own.  They also wonder what it must be like to have a yacht and deal with the issues that come with owning one.  

The following Wall Street Journal article about collecting basketballs for Larry Ellison's yacht is also discussed:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/larry-ellisons-overboard-basketball-retriever-tells-all-1398985562