OMG! Some days I just can’t bear listening to any more news. No one is behaving. The good people are behaving as badly as the bad people. The future is bleak. What’s a person to do?

Here’s one recommendation: Listen to an episode of EconTalk. Specifically, I recommend the episode for July 22, 2026, “Can a Phone Be a Cow?” Two things you will appreciate about this episode, 1)  just listening to two old guys talk about how things change over time, and 2) putting things we now consider ordinary in a new light by reminding us how things were back in the day and how change occurred. 

I’ve listened to almost every episode of EconTalk since I discovered it a few years ago. The creator, Russ Roberts (please click on the link to his bio), calls his podcast “Conversations for the Curious,” and that’s just what they are. He explores so many topics and mentions so many books and articles in each conversation that I imagine that he has several bot-replicas of himself constantly reading for him. How else can he have a life and still read so much? 

Unless you live under a rock, you will know that cell phones are controversial in our world, especially regarding young people. When should a kid get one, should schools outlaw them, is there any way to keep porn and gambling away from kids, do they rot young brains? For that matter, do they rot all of our brains? Are they more good than bad? BUT… what about cell phones in parts of the world that we consider “the third world,” or less developed countries? I never gave a thought to the challenge of getting land line phone service to everyone in the world until I listened to these two old guys talking about it. Yes, or course, cell phones just skip over that problem. Put up towers here and there and everywhere and presto! Phone service for everyone. 

I also enjoyed the discussion of illumination. Yes, we’ve had fire for a while now, but light bulbs? Less than 200 years. That’s a lot of history taking place in very dim lighting. I can’t even imagine. Even the rustic summer camp I went to as a kid had a ceiling light bulb in each cabin (but not the outhouses, sigh) (just as well, perhaps). Think about this: wheels (or wheels plus axles) are basically the same as they have been for thousands of years.   Until the time of gears and then steam engines, no one traveled faster than a horse could run. Wheels were great, but they didn’t transform the world in the way that lighting did. Lighting, and the use of electricity to bring that lighting to each home, just think of the changes that have accompanied that change in illumination. Absolutely transformative. 

The only problem I have with this particular episode of EconTalk is that it was on a playlist I constructed last evening to keep my mind from trying to solve all the world’s problems instead of sleeping. Usually, I hear part of a podcast, then drift off to sleep. If I wake up, I’ll hear another podcast and drift back to sleep. But last night, I woke up to Russ Roberts chatting with his pal, and I could not stop listening! So I recommend you listen to this one while walking or running or doing housework instead of trying to sleep.