The Best Paragraph I've Read:

This paragraph comes from President Joe Biden. You can read his full announcement here:

https://apnews.com/article/biden-letter-election-harris-step-down-3fb79a6ecf2a62410aec9288554e8bd6

Government Teacher Kevin Kopec joins Zac & Don to discuss the Presidential Election. The three discuss the major events over the past couple weeks and discuss the future as Vice President Harris begins her campaign.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

In 2015, Nick Rogers, now a sociologist at the University

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/pickup-basketball-sociology/678677/

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

It’s the replay, caught with super-slo-mo cameras, that makes it exactly the kind of weird I like: We see the hand approaching the face and then the impact. BAM! Phillips’s face is briefly displaced off his skull, his neck skin stretching, his face in this moment deformed like a rubber mask—that’s how unlike a face it looks!—and then suddenly it snaps back on. And in that extended instant we see the light going out. His face is almost peaceful as he falls in the aftermath of such a sudden blast of pain. The clip ends and we don’t see what happens after.

This is the money shot that Power Slap—the newer of the two American slap-fighting leagues, the one with the vastly higher budget and bigger footprint—has perfected. It’s shocking. It’s dumb. It’s fun. It’s nuts. It’s barbaric. And

https://www.esquire.com/sports/a60828501/professional-slap-fighting/

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

The use of performance-enhancing drugs, a.k.a. PEDs, remains something of a shadow world—but it may not remain so for long. Consider the shifting landscape of

This paragraph comes from GQ. The article is titled: "Why Is Everyone on Steroids Now?" The author is Rosecrans Baldwin. You can read the full article here:

https://www.gq.com/story/why-is-everyone-on-steroids-now

Zac & Don discuss the rise in Steroid & PED use. They also discuss why it has become more socially acceptable to use these drugs.

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 essay⁠ (⁠https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/⁠) on what America should do now.  His answer - Build!

Zac & Don celebrate their 200th episode by looking back at the essay and discussing what America has built over the past 4 years.

Zac & Don also reference the following Politico essay by Matthew Kaminski: "Welcome to Another 'American Century' Also: We Suck" You can read the full essay here:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/24/american-century-confidence-crisis-00153961  

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

Dating back to 2020, when the pandemic upended American education overnight, many schools have adopted a more lenient approach to grading. Some eliminated zeros or removed penalties for late work. Many

This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal. The article is titled: "Test Scores Down, GPAs Up: The New Angst Over Grade Inflation." The article is written by Matt Barnum. You can read the full article here:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/grade-inflation-education-test-scores-40196419

Zac & Don discuss grade inflation. They wonder how it happened. They discuss the theory behind Standards Based Grading. They also wonder how big of an issue is grade inflation compared to lower ACT Scores.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"Having worked in most facets of the entertainment industry since 1974, from a bottom-rung production assistant to the top of NBCUniversal’s headquarters at 30 Rock, I agree that the problems in today’s workplace are real. But I also think many management experts have

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/follow-your-dreams-and-other-terrible-career-advice-3f23590b

Zac & Don discuss whether following your dreams is bad career advice for new workers.

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

"SarahRachul grew up in the 1990s, during the so-called “Disney Renaissance”, when Disney debuted a string of critically successful films and re-released its earlier classics on VHS. Merchandising reached new heights: 7,000 products were released to promote 1997’s Hercules alone. It was, Rachul says, “almost like you couldn’t avoid having [Disney] as part of your childhood”. She wept

Over the past 100 years, the Walt Disney Company has entwined itself with our families, memories and personal histories. In many ways, Disney is a religion that one is born into, the same way a 15th-century English baby was predestined to be baptised Catholic. Choice doesn’t necessarily come into it – we see Mickey Mouse around us like our ancestors saw the cross; a symbol that both

This paragraph comes from The New Statesman. The essay is titled: "The Disney Adult Industrial Complex." The author is Amelia Tait. You can read the full essay here:

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2024/02/disney-adult-superfan-industrial-complex

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

This paragraph comes from BuzzFeed. The article is titled: "Imagine The Lawsuit If That Happened Today" Older Adults Revealed 29 Things That Used To Be "Normal" in Schools. The author is Michaela Bramwell. You can read the full article here:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelabramwell/previously-normal-things-in-schools

Zac & Don share their favorite things that used to be normal in schools. They share their own stories of being in school which connect to the items on the list. They also wonder what it says about American expectation of school twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. Finally they discuss the latest findings from study on middle school cell phone bans.

Zac & Don also reference the following findings of a cell phone ban in middle schools. You can read the findings here:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/04/the-norwegian-ban-on-smart-phones-in-middle-schools.html

The Best Paragraph I've Read:

As Beth Linker explains in her book “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America” (Princeton), a long history of anxiety about the proximity between human and bestial nature has played out in this area of social science. Linker, a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that at the onset of the twentieth century the United States became gripped by what she characterizes as a poor-posture epidemic: a widespread social contagion of slumping that could, it was feared, have deleterious effects not just upon individual health but also upon the body politic. Sitting up straight would help remedy all kinds of failings, physical and moral.

This paragraph comes from The New Yorker. The article is titled: "The Truth Behind the Slouching Epidemic." The article is written by Rebecca Mead. You can read the full article here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/slouch-posture-panic-in-modern-america-beth-linker-book-review

Zac & Don discuss whether it matters if you have good posture. They also reflect upon their own posture and discuss when posture mattered most in American history. In addition they talk about the marginal decade of one's life and whether there is anything we can do now to get ready for a better last ten years of living.

Zac & Don also reference the following article:

"How to Die in Good Health." Author: Dhruv Khullar