ZD 24.21: Child's Play
Community and play make for healthier childhoods.
In this issue: How COVID keeps coming back; a history of the George Foreman Grill; Olympic Skateboarding; and zombie publications. We wrap with a dive into play, community and childhood.
The Distilled Spirit
💉 COVID: the Comeback Kid ()
Dr. Eric Topol does an amazing job translating leading-edge medical science into understandable terms. He explores the recurring and ongoing COVID waves, why we keep getting them and some forward-looking notes about how we can keep winning. It really is a two-wave a year disease; we should just get to six month boosters is the big takeaway.
📊 Lean, Mean Selling Machine (The Hustle)
Thirty years ago George Foreman took an unscripted bite out of a burger on QVC and the phones started ringing off of the hook. The lean, mean grilling machine went on to become one of the best selling kitchen devices ever and leads sales to this day. It made George very rich. Learn about how it started slow and became a phenomenon in The Hustle.
🛹 From the Street to the Games ()
Skateboarding was long looked down on, and often banned. It became big business and is now a celebrated part of the Olympic games. It is also pretty flipping awesome to kick back and watch beyond the Olympics.
🙋♂️Who’s Weird ()
We have got to the point where one campaign is calling the other one “weird.” The interesting rub is that the insult is sticking. Noah Smith looks at why this is the case and what that means to both sides as we continue to reset from a very strange period in American life.
The Idea
💗 Kids, Play and Community
Today’s youth are clearly more introverted than bygone eras. They are engaging less and less with each other. Smartphones are often to blame but underneath this there has been a collapse of community, leading to a collapse of childhood play.
Anxious Generation Author Jonathan Haidt writes
with some help from his peers. He has a few guest articles that explore the topic. Particularly, Seth Kaplan writes about how loss of community is upstream of the mental health crisis and suggests a few ways to help your family fight the isolation. Zach Rauch argues for a community-based childhood on the same platform. Finally Lenore Skenazy notes that parents have their own challenges with phones.Peter Gray writes
and has another spin on it — schools produce anxiety and depression and then hire therapists to reduce it. Maybe less school and more play could fix this more effectively than throwing more school psychiatrists at the problem?The Look
One of the clear advances in civilization is the global literacy rate. Two hundred years ago only 1 in 10 could read; today nearly 9 in 10 can read. Kids might not play as much as they need to but at least they can read.
