The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The childhood mental-health crisis risks becoming self-perpetuating: “The worse that the numbers get about our kids’ mental health—the more anxiety, depression, and suicide increase—the more fearful parents become. The more fearful parents become, the more they continue to do the things that are inadvertently contributing to these problems.”

This paragraph comes from an article in the Atlantic by Kate Julian titled: "What Happened to American Childhood?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/

Zac and Don discuss the topic of rising child/teen anxiety in America.  They share their experiences as both parents and educator.  They comment on the wealth of examples, causes, and solutions that this extraordinary article provides.

Anyone who is a parent, educator, or has a relationship with young people should read this article!  Then you should of course listen to the podcast!   

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"This spring, America took an involuntary crash course in remote learning. With the school year now winding down, the grades from students, teachers, parents and administrators is already in: It was a failure."

This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal in an article titled: The Results Are in for Remote Learning: It Didn't Work.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-results-are-in-for-remote-learning-it-didnt-work/ar-BB155PAl?ocid=se2

Zac and Don discuss whether schools failed during the opening months of the Covid-19 pandemic.  They discuss how remote learning impacted students,  teachers, and parents.  They also discuss another way to evaluate school performance during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The whole nature of crises is that they’re new and shocking.  And inevitably, as soon as you’ve thought about and lived with the crisis for a while, it becomes the new normal... ... ...  And what I think is interesting is that, particularly among the younger generations, the existence of some form of existential crisis—be it fiscal, environmental, democratic, medical—is the new normal. In many ways, the respite that you get now, between the next crisis crashing down on you, is increasingly small...  …  …  We live in a media-saturated context, where catastrophizing is the common denominator. If there's a molehill, it will become a mountain. And this degree of social amplification, driven by 24/7 social media, driven by the fact that now everybody can be an expert, the low cost of access to mass global platforms—it means that the noise level is constantly at a very high volume. So I think there is a big issue out there around almost the layering, or sedimentation, of crises upon crises upon crises, that risks eroding our sense of social achievement, actually, and resilience.

This paragraph comes from an interview with Matthew Flinders in Wired Magazine:  https://www.wired.com/story/covid-crisis-modern-paradox/

Zac and Don discuss the idea of Crisis Fatigue and whether it is impacting us today.    

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"The cost of keeping children out of classrooms is high, educationally and socially. Lost instructional time is hard to recapture; some high-school students may drop out. Schools provide meals, social services, and, for many students, a safe haven, and they allow parents to go to work."

This paragraph comes from the New Yorker in an essay titled: The Complex Question of Reopening Schools.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/01/the-complex-question-of-reopening-schools

Zac and Don discuss many of the issues surrounding whether schools can safely reopen in fall.  Their discussion includes the challenges of teaching children at home, the multiple roles that schools serve for their communities, and the growing desire for people to get back to a sense of normal - which means sending their kids back to school.

Another Best Paragraph I've Read:

"Teachers ask kids to do a lot to build this environment. Teachers ask kids to pick up the new handout on the way in, get the old handout from yesterday, get an extra if you lost it or if you were absent, get out your pencil, get an extra pencil off my desk if you need one, find your seat, and sit down on your seat that several other students have already sat on. We ask them to find a partner, find a new partner, go to the corner of the room that corresponds with the character you most agree with, film a video outside, form a circle, two circles, now switch. We ask them to get a Chromebook from the class’s Chromecart that four classes have already touched that day. They’ll need to line up to put away the Chromebooks and make sure to plug them in. Sometimes they need to go to the back and get the markers, crayons, paintbrushes, tissues, paper towels, bandages (so many bandages), and textbooks, and they’ll do this a dozen times in a class period. As they weave in between the desks, they nudge and bump their peers and step on their backpacks, breathing one another’s air and smelling one another’s stink."

This paragraph comes from an essay by Harley Litzelman titled:  We Cannot Return to Campus this Fall.

https://thebolditalic.com/we-cannot-return-to-campus-this-fall-1ad91b8a65e0

Zac and Don then incorporate Mr. Litzelman's ideas into the second half of their conversation.  This part of the discussion includes the practices of the modern day teacher and how they could be impacted with social distancing, school budgets, different models that schools could follow in the fall, and whether students themselves should have a say in whether they have to return to the classroom.   

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

“Via the Artemis Accords, we hope that the future will look a lot more like “Star Trek,” and a lot less like “Star Wars” by getting ahead of these issues.”

This paragraph comes from a Reuters article.  The article discusses the recent Artemis Accords that America has proposed concerning who gets to use the Moon and low earth orbit.  You can read the full article here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-artemis/star-trek-not-star-wars-nasa-releases-basic-principles-for-moon-exploration-pact-idUSKBN22R2Z9

Zac and Don discuss whether the proposed rules of the accords are fair for all people on earth.  They wonder whether the accords will allow individual rights to transcend the rights of a nation.  They also discuss whether the future of space can be different than the current human reality on earth.  Finally, there is discussion on whether thinking about future issues in space is just a waste of time.   

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Epidemiology is a science of possibilities and persuasion, not of certainties or hard proof. “Being approximately right most of the time is better than being precisely right occasionally,” the Scottish epidemiologist John Cowden wrote, in 2010. “You can only be sure when to act in retrospect.” Epidemiologists must persuade people to upend their lives—to forgo travel and socializing, to submit themselves to blood draws and immunization shots—even when there’s scant evidence that they’re directly at risk.

Epidemiologists also must learn how to maintain their persuasiveness even as their advice shifts. The recommendations that public-health professionals make at the beginning of an emergency—there’s no need to wear masks; children can’t become seriously ill—often change as hypotheses are disproved, new experiments occur, and a virus mutates.

This paragraph comes from the New Yorker.  The article is titled: Seattle's Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead.  New York's Did Not.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not

Zac and Don discuss whether America could have taken a different path in fighting Covid-19.  They discuss the challenges of persuading a skeptical population to take precautions against an enemy they cannot see.  They wonder whether the rest of America could have followed the Seattle model of fighting the virus.     

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"Our situation in this pandemic is analogous to war, in which there is a long tradition of volunteers risking their health and lives on dangerous missions for which they understand the risks and are willing to do so in order to help save the lives of others."

This paragraph comes from a letter written by thirty-five members of congress.  The representatives are urging the US government to allow challenge trials, which in theory, could speed up the development of a Covid vaccine.  But allowing these sorts of trials bring up many ethical concerns.  

Here is the full letter:  https://foster.house.gov/sites/foster.house.gov/files/2020.04.20_Ltr%20to%20HHS%20%20FDA%20on%20Rapid%20Vaccine%20Deployment%20for%20COVID-19%20-%20Signed.pdf

Don and I discuss the individual and societal opportunity costs behind using Challenge Trials.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

We came to believe that our recent history is the range of what is possible, and now we are watching charts where the y axis can't keep up with events. For its part, the future is not awaiting our wise counsel. That is the wealthy man's folly, to believe that people want your wisdom. The future is concerned with itself. The people in that time will abide your wisdom in exchange for safety. They will be amused by our clocks and space cars, but what they will want to know is, how high did the water get, please? They will want data—markers, points in space, warnings. Mind me, say the stones. Stand here when the water comes. And maybe: We are going to be OK. But only for a much larger value of we. And: I hope you leave stones of your own.

The paragraph comes from an essay written by Paul Ford in Wired Magazine.  

https://www.wired.com/story/stones-clocks-what-we-should-actually-leave-behind/

Zac and Don talk about the essay within the context of whether America will be ok.  What lesson we have learned from history.  What lessons will the future take from us.  

The Best Paragraph I've read:

Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems.

This paragraph comes from Marc Andreessen's recent essay (https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/) on what America should do now.  His answer - Build!  

Don and I talk about this essay and how its ideas fit within America's current times of coronavirus and political gridlock.  We also reference a response from Ezra Klein (https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21228469/marc-andreessen-build-government-coronavirus) in our discussion.