The Best Paragraph I've Read...

By Zac & Don

A podcast that discusses an interesting article or concept.... more

· Education

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How many episodes does The Best Paragraph I've Read... have?

The podcast currently has 269 episodes available.

The Best Paragraph I've Read... episodes:

March 24, 2021 Why Have An NCAA Basketball Tournament if Most of the Teams Are Losing Money? Are College Sports Just a Loss Leader? Does Anyone Care About Basketball Brackets Anymore?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
Each year, March Madness opens a fire hose of cash, as gamblers, advertisers and television networks try to get in on the action.
Americans wagered an estimated $8.5 billion in 2019 on the NCAA’s Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, as March Madness is formally known. Television networks paid $1.1 billion to broadcast the games. And businesses spent an estimated $898 million to advertise during the tournament, according to Kantar Group.
But fewer than 10% of Division I athletic departments—the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association—generated enough revenue to cover the expenses of their sports programs.
This article comes from the Wall Street Journal titled: "March Madness Is a Moneymaker. Most Schools Still Operate in Red." The article is written by Jo Craven McGinty. You can read the article here:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/march-madness-is-a-moneymaker-most-schools-still-operate-in-red-11615545002
Zac and Don discuss and wonder why college athletics departments continue to operate if most of them consistently lose money.
Another Best Paragraph I've Read:
The odds of it happening are one in 9.2 quintillion: you’re more likely to die an excruciating death by vending machine, become president, win the Mega Millions jackpot or die from incorrectly using products made for right-handed people (if you're a lefty) than fill out a perfect NCAA basketball bracket in 2014.
The odds are definitely never in our favor—but that isn’t enough to quell America’s fascination with the tournament bracket. Over 60 million Americans fill out a bracket each year, with 1 billion dollars potentially spent on off-book gambling.
This paragraph comes from Smithsonian Magazine in an article titled: "When Did Filling Put A March Madness Bracket Become Popular." The article is written by Natasha Geiling. You can read the article here:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-did-filling-out-march-madness-bracket-become-popular-180950162/
Zac and Don talk about whether America still enjoys completing NCAA brackets.
Zac and Don also discuss this match from the tournament that happened at Wrestlemania IV.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3es9ki
...more
36min
March 17, 2021 Modern Parenting! Is Parenting Harder Now than in the Past? Are Today's Parents Trying Too Hard? Is There Something Parents Are Afraid of? Should We Look to the Tiger Mom for Solutions?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
The time parents spend in the presence of their children has not changed much, but parents today spend more of it doing hands-on child care. Time spent on activities like reading to children; doing crafts; taking them to lessons; attending recitals and games; and helping with homework has increased the most. Today, mothers spend nearly five hours a week on that, compared with 1 hour 45 minutes hours in 1975 — and they worry it’s not enough. Parents’ leisure time, like exercising or socializing, is much more likely to be spent with their children than it used to be. While fathers have recently increasedtheir time spent with children, mothers still spend significantly more.
This paragraph comes from the New York Times. The article is titled: "The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting." The story is written by Claire Cain Miller. You can read the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html
Zac and Don are joined by their wives to discuss parenting and how it may or may not be different from the past. Are parents today working harder and feeling more stressed out?
The group also references the following articles and books:
The Atlantic: There's a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/03/hunt-gather-parent-timeless-advice-for-modern-parents/618172/
Book: iGen
https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy-Adulthood/dp/1501151983
Book: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Hymn-Tiger-Mother-Chua/dp/0143120581
...more
1h 8min
March 11, 2021 What's the Best Deal? Giving Away 8% Of Your $340 Million Baseball Contract? Trading Sneakers? Collecting Digital Basketball Cards? Having Two Password Attempts at Unlocking 7,002 Bitcoin?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
Big League Advance uses a proprietary algorithm to project the performance and earning potential of players, in order to establish the set amount it would be willing to pay a player in exchange for each percentage point of future major league earnings that player is willing to give up. For instance, if Big League Advance offers a minor leaguer 100,000 up front for 1% of his earnings, that player can then decide to accept 500,000 in exchange for 5% or 1 million for 10%. A player valued as highly as Mr. Tatis could receive a couple million dollars from Big League Advance.
This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal. The article is titled: "An Investment Fund Mines the Diamond." The article is written by Jared Diamond. You can read the article here:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fernando-tatis-jr-340-million-investment-fund-padres-11613732572
Zac and Don talk about who is getting the best deal. Besides talking about baseball players signing away part of their big league contract they also talk about the following ideas from the following articles:
Bloomberg
Sneakerheads Have Turned Jordans and Yeezys Into a Bona Fide Asset Class
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-sneaker-investment/
The Athletic
NBA Top Shot is no joke. Could it become a crucial part of the league’s future?
https://theathletic.com/2429403/2021/03/05/nba-top-shot-digital-revenue-explained/
The Digital Art of Beeple
https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview/
Picture of Man Binge Watching
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/binge-watching-healthy-diversion-or-waste-time
New York Times
Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html
...more
52min
March 05, 2021 Cheating on Tests! Does Chegg Prove Society Is Ok With Cheating? Or Does On Demand Cheating Prove We Use Bad Assessments? If Everyone Is Cheating Do We Care If Nothing Is Learned?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
The size of the problem is difficult to measure, says Penn State professor Linda Treviño, coauthor of the 2012 book Cheating in College. Part of the challenge is defining what constitutes cheating. Is it getting an answer to a homework problem from a friend, peeking at a classmate’s paper during an exam, paying someone to take a test for you, plugging in answers from Chegg? It’s also tough to get reliable information. “You’re depending on people who cheat to be honest with you about whether they cheated,” Treviño says. Her book pegs the share of college students who cheat at roughly two-thirds.
Students cheat for several reasons. To get better grades so they can get into an elite law or medical school. To pass required distribution courses (engineers forced to study Shakespeare and vice-versa) that they don’t care about. To save time so they can play varsity football or work a job that pays for school and supports loved ones. And because they feel that everyone else does it, and they don’t want to be at a disadvantage if they don’t cheat too.
They don’t worry about getting caught. Even more troubling, they either don’t think they’re doing anything wrong or they don’t care.
This paragraph comes from Forbes. The article is titled: "This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid." The article is written by Susan Adams. You can read the article here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/01/28/this-12-billion-company-is-getting-rich-off-students-cheating-their-way-through-covid/?sh=17ea5baa363f
Zac and Don talk about cheating in college and in public school. They discuss whether cheating is an indication of bad test design and instruction. They also wonder if cheating is a big deal anymore in society.
Zac and Don also mention the following books in the podcast:
The Case Against Education
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691196451/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1614555061&sr=8-1
Race Against the Machine
https://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI
...more
44min
February 26, 2021 Does Facebook Need It's Own Supreme Court? Will this Improve or Hurt Free Speech? Can the Entire World Live Under the Same Speech Policies? Who Should be on the Court?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
For our first case, the moderator projected a picture of a smiling girl in a yearbook photo, with a cartoon thought bubble that read “Kill All Men.” Facebook had removed the post for violating its hate-speech rules, which ban attacks based on “sex, gender identity.” To many, this seemed simplistic. “It’s a joke,” one woman said. “There has to be an exception for humor.” Facebook’s rules did include a humor exception, for instances in which the user’s intent was clear, but it was difficult to discern this person’s motivation, and attendees worried that a broad carve-out for jokes could easily provide cover for hate speech. Carmen Scurato, who works at Free Press, an Internet-advocacy organization, pointed out the historical disadvantage of women, and argued that hate-speech policies ought to take power dynamics into account. In the end, the group voted to restore the photo, though no one knew exactly how to write that into a rule.
This kind of muddy uncertainty seemed inevitable. The board has jurisdiction over every Facebook user in the world, but intuitions about freedom of speech vary dramatically across political and cultural divides. In Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy movement has used social media to organize protests, activists rely on Facebook’s free-expression principles for protection against the state. In Myanmar, where hate speech has contributed to a genocide against the Rohingya, advocates have begged for stricter enforcement. Facebook had hoped, through the workshops, to crowdsource beliefs about speech, but the results were more contradictory than anticipated. In New York, for example, sixty per cent of people voted to reinstate the “Kill All Men” post, but only forty per cent did so in Nairobi. Amid other theories,... “Where countries are perhaps more concerned about safety, because they live in an area with less rule of law—and therefore there’s a chance of a group actually maybe trying to kill all men—there’s less concern about free speech.” The full explanation is likely more complex; regardless, the divergent results underscored the difficulty of creating a global court for the Internet.
This paragraph comes from the New Yorker. The article is titled: "Inside the Making of Facebook's Supreme Court." The article is written by Kate Klonick. You can read the article here:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/inside-the-making-of-facebooks-supreme-court
Zac and Don discuss if there is merit in having a company appointed court that decides issues of speech on Facebook. They discuss the difficult questions that the court will have to rule on. They also talk about the best way to decide who is on the court.
...more
41min
February 18, 2021 Are the Olympics Still Relevant? Good Idea to Add Breakdancing? Should Tug of War be an Event? Does Anyone Care About the Olympics Anymore?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The International Olympic Committee's pursuit of urban events to lure a younger audience saw street dance battles officially added to the medal events program at the 2024 Paris Games. Also confirmed for Paris by the IOC executive board were skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing.
Those three sports will make their Olympic debuts at the Tokyo Games which were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic by one year to open on July 23, 2021. Alongside the additions, the IOC made subtractions: The slate of 329 medal events in Paris is 10 fewer than in Tokyo, including four lost from weightlifting, and the athlete quota in 2024 of 10,500 is around 600 less than next year.
Two sports with troubled governing bodies -- boxing and weightlifting -- saw the biggest cuts to the number of athletes they can have in Paris.

This paragraph comes from ESPN. The article is written by the Associated Press. You can read the article here:

https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/30470282/breakdancing-gets-olympic-status-debut-paris-games-2024

Zac and Don discuss the new Olympic Sports and whether it is a good idea to add them. They also discuss the Olympics and how the event is seen today.

Another Best Paragraph I've Read:

Tug of War was an Olympic sport from 1900-1920. Check it out. How have they NOT brought this back? The strategic considerations are endless — and probably meaningless. I’m pretty convinced that virtually no insight or understanding is even remotely necessary to form an opinion about Tug of War. In other words: this is perfect for sports/entertainment media. Threshold decision — do you form a national team from scratch or draw from your country’s Olympic delegation, with Tug of War held just before the closing ceremonies?
Finally, I would like to see a throwback USA-USSR match. For whatever reason, the IOC decided to dump Tug of War in 1920, just as the Bolsheviks were consolidating their grip on power in Russia, depriving the world of decades of American-Soviet matches that would have made the Cuban missile crisis look like an episode of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. At the very least, there wouldn’t be any boycotting. The 1980 hockey team is a footnote if, also that year, the Americans had gone to Moscow and beat the Soviets at Tug of War — on their own commie soil. There’s just no way you boycott when Tug of War is on the program. Put simply — the absence of Tug of War for the past century might very well be one of the greatest travesties in Olympic history. Easy as it may be to hang your national pride on the performance of a bunch of pre-teen gymnasts once every four years, there is nothing more fundamental to national identity as Tug of War.

This paragraph comes from a Mailbag Question on the Bill Simmons blog. You can read the question and response here:

https://havechanged.blogspot.com/2012/08/bring-back-tug-of-war.html

Zac and Don discuss whether it is a good idea to bring Tug of War back to the Olympics.
...more
44min
February 11, 2021 Three Ideas: Turn All the Cane Toads into Boys? Russia Wins Global Warming? Learn to Love Our Great Grandchildren with the Carbon Coin?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
In the past decade or so, genetic engineering has undergone its own transformation, thanks to CRISPR—shorthand for a suite of techniques, mostly borrowed from bacteria, that make it vastly easier for biohackers and researchers to manipulate DNA. Crispr allows its users to snip a stretch of DNA and then either disable the affected sequence or replace it with a new one.
The possibilities that follow are pretty much endless. Jennifer Doudna, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the developers of crispr, has put it like this: we now have “a way to rewrite the very molecules of life any way we wish.” With crispr, biologists have already created—among many, many other living things—ants that can’t smell, beagles that put on superhero-like brawn, pigs that resist swine fever, macaques that suffer from sleep disorders, coffee beans that contain no caffeine, salmon that don’t lay eggs, mice that don’t get fat... ... ...
This paragraph comes from The New Yorker in an article titled: "CRISPR And The Splice To Survive." The article is written by Elizabeth Kolbert. You can read the article here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/crispr-and-the-splice-to-survive
Zac and Don talk about CRISPR technology and whether humans should consider using it more or less.
Another Best Paragraph I've Read:
Around the world, climate change is becoming an epochal crisis, a nightmare of drought, desertification, flooding and unbearable heat, threatening to make vast regions less habitable and drive the greatest migration of refugees in history. But for a few nations, climate change will present an unparalleled opportunity, as the planet’s coldest regions become more temperate... ... ... And no country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia... ... ...
This paragraph comes from an article at ProPublica titled: "The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate A Warming World." The article is written by Abrahm Lustgarten. You can read the article here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-big-thaw-how-russia-could-dominate-a-warming-world
Zac and Don discuss whether America should be concerned with Russia benefiting from global climate change.
Another Best Paragraph I've Read:
The tragedy of the time horizon. Meaning we can't imagine the suffering of the people of the future, so nothing much gets done on their behalf. What we do now creates damage that hits decades later, so we don't charge ourselves for it, and the standard approach has been that future generations will be richer and stronger than us, and they'll find solutions to their problems. But by the time they get here, these problems will have become too big to solve. That's the tragedy of the time horizon, that we don't look more than a few years ahead... ... ...
This paragraph comes from the book: "The Ministry For The Future." The book is written by Kim Stanley Robinson. You can buy the book here:
Zac and Don discuss the merits of a carbon coin and if the idea can help solve climate change.
...more
51min
February 04, 2021 Going to Work! Is it True that if We Love What We Do We Never Have to Call it Work? Or is Work Just About the Money? Is Crafting a Hobby or Work?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
"Meaningful work” is an expression that had barely appeared in the English language before the early nineteen-seventies... “Once upon a time, it was assumed, to put it bluntly, that work sucked...” That started to change in the nineteen-seventies, both McCallum and Jaffe argue, when managers began informing workers that they should expect to discover life’s purpose in work. “With dollar-compensation no longer the overwhelmingly most important factor in job motivation,” the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange wrote, “management must develop a better understanding of the more elusive, less tangible factors that add up to ‘job satisfaction.’ ” After a while, everyone was supposed to love work. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” popped up all over the place in the nineteen-eighties and nineties, along with the unpaid internship, the busting of unions, and campaigns to cut taxes on capital gains. It soon became, in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, a catechism. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do,” Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford in 2005. “If you love what you’re doing, it’s not ‘work,’ ” David M. Rubenstein, a C.E.O. of the Carlyle Group, said on CNBC in 2014. “Everywhere you look you hear people talking about meaning,” a disillusioned Google engineer told McCallum. “They aren’t philosophers. They aren’t psychologists. They sell banner ads.” It’s not pointless. But it’s not poetry. Still, does it have to be?
This paragraph comes from the New Yorker. The article is written by Jill Lepore and is titled: "What Wrong With the Way We Work." You can read the article here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/whats-wrong-with-the-way-we-work
Zac and Don talk about work. Should we have to love our jobs? is it true that if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life?
The following book are mentioned during the podcast:
Drive
https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594488843/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1612312910&sr=8-2
The Last Train to Zona Verde
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Zona-Verde-Ultimate-ebook/dp/B008P94QDA/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+last+train+to+zona+verde&qid=1612312940&sr=8-1
My Losing Season
https://www.amazon.com/Pat-Conroy-Losing-Season-Hardcover/dp/B01FMW1XRY/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=my+losing+season&qid=1612312954&sr=8-2
...more
54min
January 27, 2021 Youth Screen Addiction! Did Covid-19 Make Our Kids Addicted to Screens? Is this a Problem that Parents, Educators, and Kids Should be Concerned About?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
The day after New Year’s, John Reichert of Boulder, Colo., had a heated argument with his 14-year-old son, James. “I’ve failed you as a father,” he told the boy despairingly.
During the long months of lockdowns and shuttered schools, Mr. Reichert, like many parents, overlooked the vastly increasing time that his son was spending on video games and social media. Now, James, who used to focus his free time on mountain biking and playing basketball, devotes nearly all of his leisure hours — about 40 a week — to Xbox and his phone. During their argument, he pleaded with his father not to restrict access, calling his phone his “whole life.”
“That was the tipping point. His whole life?” said Mr. Reichert, a technical administrator in the local sheriff’s office. “I’m not losing my son to this.”
This paragraph comes from the New York Times. The article is titled: "Children's Screen Time Has Soared in the Pandemic, Alarming Parents and Researchers." The article is written by Matt Richtel. You can read the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/health/covid-kids-tech-use.html
Zac and Don talk about the rise of screen time that they have seen in their own lives and in their classrooms. They talk about whether too much screen time is a bad thing.
Zac and Don also reference the following article and books:
The Guardian: "Video games have replaced music as the most important aspect of youth culture"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/11/video-games-music-youth-culture
Book: Ready Player One
https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=ready+player+one&qid=1611706186&sr=8-4
Book: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.
https://www.amazon.com/Video-Games-Learning-Literacy-Second/dp/1403984530/ref=sr_1_1?crid=12WUGT86BXOBC&dchild=1&keywords=what+video+games+have+to+teach+us+about+learning+and+literacy&qid=1611706424&sprefix=what+video+%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-1
...more
45min
January 19, 2021 Government Teacher Roundtable: Chaos in the Capital, The Presidential Transition, Social Media Bans, The World's Opinion, Is Our Political System Broken? What Does the Next Administration do?
The Best Paragraph I've Read:
"Last week, many asked whether the assault on the Capitol, fueled by Trump and his many political and media enablers, was the start of something or an end. It is neither, of course. It is a moment when we each get to decide how we want to proceed."
This paragraph comes from Ken Burns who made a guest appearance on Politico's Playbook. The paragraph and more can be read here:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/01/12/americas-fourth-great-crisis-491367
To discuss America's current political issues Zac and Don have reformed the Government Teacher Roundtable. They are joined by their Government Teacher friends Kevin and Tom. The four educators share thoughts on the recent capital riots, the presidential transition, social media bans, the world's opinion of America, and what we may see with the new administration.
The following are other articles and books that are quoted during the discussion:
"The decision Friday night by Twitter to permanently ban Trump from its platform is a signal moment — a historic move, even before we know the consequences that will flow from it."
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/09/trump-twitter-are-you-sure-456794
"The problem is that something is too obviously wrong. Too many diplomats and politicians on this side of the Atlantic now believe that the U.S. is simply too divided to stand alone in the world for much longer. It is too riven and aggrieved, shorn of a unifying cause.
Oddly, the weirdness of the moment normalizes America. It is becoming just another country, richer and more powerful than the rest, but less so than it was. So is this how greatness ends—not with a bang, but by being sullied and made normal?"
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/01/donald-trump-us-capitol-europe/617584/
"Political donations, especially the $5 or $10 hits on ActBlue or WinRed, make “you feel good about yourself. It takes five seconds. And you feel like your identity is that you’re the good guys, you’re smart, and the other side is evil and stupid,” Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University, told me. This is what politics has become in America: not a means to implement policy goals or improve people’s lives, but an expression of hatred for the other side."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/money-spent-georgia-senate-runoffs/617545/
Book: Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity: Mason, Lilliana: 9780226524542: Amazon.com: Books
...more
1h 10min

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How many episodes does The Best Paragraph I've Read... have?

The podcast currently has 269 episodes available.

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