The Best Paragraph I've Read...

Mascots? Color? Caitlin Clark!!! Statistics Suggest Picking Your NCAA Bracket By Mascot or Color. Good Idea? What's It Like to Be the Men Who Guard Caitlin Clark? March Madness Is Here!

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Filling out brackets for the NCAA tournament is a rite of March. It’s also a famously inexact science, where the grandmother who picks teams based on their mascots has as good a chance of winning as the analytics geek who spent hours poring over team sheets. You could reference the Madness Machine, The Wall Street Journal’s bracket generator based on reams of data from the NCAA and basketball statistician Ken Pomeroy. Or you could go for a more subjective approach: Is red your favorite color? Are you more of a dog person or an ornithophile? Do you like to watch teams where super tall players dominate? As it turns out, there is a way to quantify whimsy. The Journal looked at all-time results from the NCAA tournament since 1985, when the field expanded to 64 teams, to determine which mascots and colors performed the best, and whether bigger was indeed better come March. It’s an objective look at subjectivity. This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal. The article is titled: "Cats vs. Birds: The Whimsical Way to Fill Out Your NCAA Tournament Bracket." The article is written by Rosie Ettenheim and Laine Higgins. You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cats-vs-birds-ncaa-tournament-bracket-march-madness-b91b86ec Zac and Don discuss the merits of filling out an NCAA tournament bracket according to historical data on mascots, color, and height. Zac and Don also discuss the men who have to guard Caitlin Clark in practice. You can read the Caitlin Clark article here: https://theathletic.com/5190331/2024/01/30/caitlin-clark-kamilla-cardoso-juju-watkins-practice-players/

Cold Water Plunges & Ice Baths! Why Is this America's Hottest New Trend? Does Ice Water Actually Help with Mental & Physical Health? Should Schools & Everyone Else Be Doing This? Zac Does Research.

The Best Paragraph I've Read: KLAY THOMPSON was skeptical at first. This was back in 2018, when Warriors coach Steve Kerr had arranged for the motivational speaker Tony Robbins to visit practice. Robbins spoke about many things that day, but what stuck for Thompson was Robbins’s habit of keeping his pool just above freezing and jumping in every morning. Robbins swore it was the best way to start the day. Thompson was not much of a cold guy, but he did have an outdoor pool at his Oakland home and he did have a hard time waking up. So one winter morning he headed out and leaped in. It was, Thompson says, “very hard, very cold.” Upon getting out, however, the chill had given way to mild euphoria, the result of what one researcher termed a flood of “the happy hormones”—endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin—activated by the body’s cold response. So the next day, and the day after that, Thompson did it again. “You get out and you just feel like you can accomplish anything,” he said recently, sitting in a hallway in Chase Center after practice. “Everything throughout the day seems a lot easier.” This paragraph comes from Sports Illustrated. The article is titled: "Ice? Ice, Baby!" The article is written by Chris Ballard. You can read the full article here: https://www.si.com/basketball/2024/02/01/ice-baths-athletes-klay-thompson-lebron-james Zac and Don discuss the latest trend in America - cold water plunges & ice baths. They wonder if cold water can actually help people mentally and physically. Zac does some research and shares his results.

Don Ponders Retirement! Should Relevancy Be His Biggest Factor to Consider? What About Hobbies & 2nd Career? Do People Discount How Much they Matter to Others? Will Don Opt In or Out for Next Year?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "The arc of corporate life used to be predictable. You made your way up the career ladder, acquiring more prestige and bigger salaries at every step. Then, in your early 60s, there was a Friday-afternoon retirement party, maybe a gold watch, and that was that. The next day the world of meetings, objectives, tasks and other busyness faded. If you were moderately restless, you could play bridge or help out with the grandchildren. If you weren’t, there were crossword puzzles, TV and a blanket. Although intellectual stimulation tends to keep depression and cognitive impairment at bay, many professionals in the technology sector retire at the earliest recommended date to make space for the younger generation, conceding it would be unrealistic to maintain their edge in the field. Still, to step down means to leave centre stage—leisure gives you all the time in the world but tends to marginalise you as you are no longer in the game." This paragraph comes from The Economist. The article is titled: "Why you should never retire." The essay is written by Bartleby. You can read the whole article here: https://www.economist.com/business/2024/01/25/why-you-should-never-retire Zac & Don discuss the idea of Don retiring. They also discuss the idea of relevance at work and whether that is a good idea for not retiring.

The Midwest!!! Why Does Everyone Believe they Live There? Are Montana, Idaho, & Colorado Midwest? What's So Special About Identifying As Midwest? Which States Should Not Be Considered Midwest?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: "Lynn Shelmerdine passes oil rigs and tumbleweed on her way to work. Most men she knows drive pickup trucks and quite a few wear cowboy hats. But she’s emphatic that her part of Montana, despite being in Mountain time, is the Midwest rather than the Wild West. It’s “family, family, family and I think that’s what Midwestern people are—family comes first and working hard and providing for your family,” says Shelmerdine, a 60-year-old retired teacher who runs Elks Lodge #1782 in Sidney, Mont., a small oil and agricultural city about 10 miles from the North Dakota border.  “Meat and potatoes…county fairs and we definitely have lots of casseroles—we call them a hot dish,” she says. Don’t forget marshmallows in salads. “You got a church potluck, you’re gonna get that.”  Everyone knows places such as Ohio and Minnesota are solidly in the Midwest. But a recent poll finds that the Midwest is more a state of mind than just a place you can point to on a map." This paragraph comes from the Wall Street Journal. The article is titled: "It's Amazing How Many Americans Think They Live in the Midwest. When they Don't." The authors are Ben Kesling and Jennifer Levitz. You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/midwest-u-s-survey-west-geography-97c18794 Zac & Don discuss the borders of the Midwest. They wonder why so many Americans want to see themselves as part of the Midwest. They also share their thoughts on which states should be included in the Midwest.  

Is Fun Dead? Did Americans Forget How to Have Fun? Do We Need Fun Coaches? Are We Too Busy Acting Our Fun on Social Media? Why Does Fun Feel Like An UnFun Slog When It's Over? Are There Any Solutions?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Sometime in recent history, possibly around 2004, Americans forgot to have fun, true fun, as though they’d misplaced it like a sock. Instead, fun evolved into work, sometimes more than true work, which is where we find ourselves now. Fun is often emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, pigeonholed, hyped, forced and performative. Adults assiduously record themselves appearing to have something masquerading as “fun,” a fusillade of Coachellic micro social aggressions unleashed on multiple social media platforms. Look at me having so much FUN! Which means it is nothing of the sort. This is the drag equivalent of fun and suggests that fun is done. When there are podcasts on happiness (“The Happiness Lab,” “Happier”); a global study on joy (The Big Joy Project); David Byrne offering reasons to be cheerful; workshops on staging a “funtervention”; fun coaches; and various apps to track happiness, two things are abundantly clear: Fun is in serious trouble, and we are desperately in need of joy. This paragraph comes from the Washington Post. The article is titled: "Fun is dead." The author is Karen Heller. You can read the full article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2023/12/23/fun-is-dead/ Zac and Don discuss whether fun is dead. They wonder if maybe people have expectations for fun that are unreal. They wonder if maybe fun is about who you are with and not what you are doing. They also wonder if specific age groups struggle with fun more than others...