The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Survivalist school instructors across the country say there has been an increasing interest in their wilderness and urban-disaster preparedness courses from Americans worried about climate change. As rising temperatures bring more wildfires, droughts and destructive storms, those types of courses are no longer the domain of campers and hunters. One of these schools' fastest-growing demographics is now young families.

“It was never like that before,” said Shane Hobel, founder of the Mountain Scout Survival School. While the costs of survival school training vary across the country depending on levels and duration, Hobel charges $125 per person, $230 per couple and $460 per family for his Wilderness 1 class.

It's hard to measure the depth of the trend as there's no industry trade association tabulating statistics across the country. But Hobel estimated that increased interest in his courses is fueled by "50 percent climate change and 50 percent the 'political stuff.'" Whichever their particular nightmare scenario, there is a shared concern among some of his clientele that the foundation on which modern society rests is increasingly fragile.

This paragraph comes from an NBC News article titled: "Climate change fears spurs more Americans to join survivalist schools."  The article is written by Ethan Sacks.  You can read it here:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/climate-change-fears-spur-more-americans-join-survivalist-schools-n1275474

Zac and Don talk about disaster preparedness and the families training for it.  They wonder if the training is appropriate for kids and if maybe people should consider preparing for a climate disaster in other ways.  

Zac and Don also reference ideas from the following National Geographic Article: 

"Disaster 'prepping' was once an American pastime.  Today, it's mainstream again."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/disaster-prepping-was-once-an-american-pastime-today-its-mainstream-again

The Best Paragraph I’ve Read:

Worsley, in trying to cross Antarctica on his own, had embarked on a mission that exceeded his body’s capacity, and no amount of mental strength and tenacity could change that calculation.

But if that’s true, then why is death by endurance so rare?  Why don’t Olympic marathoners and Channel swimmers and Appalachian Trail hikers keel over on a regular basis?  That’s the riddle of a young South African doctor named Tim Noakes posed to himself as he was preparing to deliver the most important talk of his life, a prestigious honorary lecture at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, in 1996: “I said, now hold on.  What is really interesting about exercise is not that people die of, say, heatstroke; or when people are climbing Everest, it’s not that one or two die, “he later recalled.  “The fact is, the majority don’t die – and that is much more interesting.”

This paragraph comes from the book: Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.  The book is written by Alex Hutchinson.  You can find the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Endure-Curiously-Elastic-Limits-Performance/dp/0062499866

Zac and Don discuss the concept of human endurance and some of the key ideas from the book.  They talk about whether it’s the human mind that is the most important aspect to increasing endurance.  In addition, they talk about whether conventional wisdom has been wrong about hydration, using ice after competition, and consuming diets high in carbohydrates.

Zac and Don also talk about Henry Worsley, the man who attempted to ski across Antarctica.  You can read the New Yorker article here:

https://www.amazon.com/Endure-Curiously-Elastic-Limits-Performance/dp/0062499866

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"We estimate that a typical classroom in the PPSD is interrupted more than 2,000 times per year and that these interruptions and the disruptions they cause result in the loss of between 10 and 20 days of instructional time. Several findings suggest that there exists substantial scope for reducing interruptions. Administrators appear to systematically underestimate the frequency and negative consequences of interruptions. Furthermore, interruptions vary widely across schools and are largely caused by school staff. Schools might reduce disruptions to the learning environment by creating a culture that prioritizes instructional time, instituting better communication protocols, and addressing the challenges posed by student tardiness."

This paragraph comes from two educational researchers: Matthew A. Kraft and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum who wrote a research article titled: "The Big Problem With Little Interruptions to Classroom Learning."  The article can be found here at Sage Journals:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584211028856

Zac and Don discuss the article's findings on classroom interruptions.  They discuss whether student learning is impacted by interruptions.  They share some of their own experiences with classroom interruptions.  They also wonder if interruptions are just a fact of life.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

A truly consequential innovation is one that makes possible entirely new business models that touch the lives of millions. The car enabled motels and shopping malls, the internet enabled e-commerce, and smartphones and GPS enabled ride-sharing.

What business model that touches the lives of millions have cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin made possible? American motorists now know: ransomware. In such attacks, hackers encrypt and sometimes steal the victim’s data, demanding a ransom to decrypt and not release the data. Crypto is how Colonial Pipeline Ltd. paid hackers who earlier this month forced offline a conduit that supplies 45% of the East Coast’s fuel.

A few days after the Colonial attack, Tesla Inc. announced it would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for cars because of the carbon emissions generated by the computer processing necessary to mint new coins.

The two events underline how an innovation that was supposed to displace the dollar as a medium of exchange has proved largely useless for buying legal things yet frighteningly effective at facilitating extortion.

This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal in an article titled: "Cryptocurrency Has Yet to Make the World a Better Place."  The article is written by Greg IP.  You can read the article here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-has-yet-to-make-the-world-a-better-place-11621519381

Zac and Don discuss whether cryptocurrencies have brought an overall negative net value to society.  

Another Best Paragraph I've Read:

In June, 2014, a man began digging into the soft red earth in the back yard of his house, on the outskirts of Kolwezi, a city in the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. As the man later told neighbors, he had intended to create a pit for a new toilet. About eight feet into the soil, his shovel hit a slab of gray rock that was streaked with black and punctuated with what looked like blobs of bright-turquoise mold. He had struck a seam of heterogenite, an ore that can be refined into cobalt, one of the elements used in lithium-ion batteries. Among other things, cobalt keeps the batteries, which power everything from cell phones to electric cars, from catching fire. As global demand for lithium-ion batteries has grown, so has the price of cobalt. The man suspected that his discovery would make him wealthy—if he could get it out of the ground before others did.

This article comes from the New Yorker and is written by Nicolas Niarchos.  The article is titled: "The Dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush."  You can read the article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/the-dark-side-of-congos-cobalt-rush

Zac and Don continue to talk about the idea of net value while looking at the example of cobalt and how it is produced in the Congo.