This weekend’s read is a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics looking at connections between drug overdose deaths and specific occupations and industries. Drug overdoses have skyrocketed over the past 10 years, largely because of the proliferation of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl — synthetic opioids now account for about two-thirds of all overdoses in the United States — and also stimulants, such as methamphetamine.
This weekend’s read is a new report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation that discusses Generation Z’s perspective on its own well-being and future prospects. “Generation Z” refers to those born between 1997 and 2011 — currently age 12 to 26. Gallup surveyed over 3,000 members of that generation living in the United States to hear their self-reported assessments of their lives, their future, what is important to them, and how well they feel the U.S. education system is preparing them for the future.
This weekend’s read is a fascinating deep dive into the social isolation of America’s economic classes. It’s been known for a while that we’re seeing increasing levels of segregation by income in our residential neighborhoods, schools, and work sites, but this new study by researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looks at how much income segregation there is while we go about our daily activities: shopping, eating out, going to church, visiting the library, walking through the park, etc. These “third places,” as sociologists like to call them (as opposed to home and work), make up a large portion of the time we interact with other people, so it’s important to understand whether they are bringing us together or further isolating us.
Through most of the late 2010s, we here in Seattle were told the city was going through an unprecedented population boom, fed in large part by furious hiring by tech companies. Then, many of us were surprised when the 2020 census results were published, which knocked tens of thousands off even the U.S. Census Bureau’s own estimates (the Census Bureau takes an official count every 10 years, then uses various methods in between to generate annual estimates of year-to-year growth). Was it the pandemic, or the high cost of living, or perhaps just “irrational exuberance” in how the estimations were done that fed a desired narrative of a booming Seattle?
There was big news last week for the cannabis industry: The Biden administration is looking to move marijuana from the Schedule I list of drugs to the Schedule III list under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Schedule I drugs are believed to have no medicinal value, they have the tightest controls, and handling money on behalf of people buying or selling them is usually illegal — which makes it nearly impossible for a marijuana-related business to have a bank account.
This weekend’s read is an essay looking at the phenomenon known as “MrBeast,” a man named Jimmy Donaldson who has made himself rich and enriched others through a pair of truly unique YouTube channels.
This weekend’s read is a stunning report on what’s happening to incarceration rates in the United States, written by researchers at the State University of New York and the University of Wisconsin. From 1972 to 2009, America saw a “prison boom”: The number of individuals incarcerated increased by more than 700%. And the prison boom dramatically and disproportionately affected Black men: 22% of Black men born between 1965 and 1969 served time in prison by age 35, and in 2003, an estimated 1 in 3 Black men born in 2001 could expect to serve time in prison over their lifetime (compared with 1 in 17 white men).
This weekend’s read is a report from 2021 analyzing the results of the “War on Poverty,” declared in 1964 by then-President Lyndon Johnson. This isn’t the first attempt to decipher whether the “war” has been won or lost, nor will it be the last. But it turns out to be an interesting dive into the issues around how we define poverty.
This weekend’s read is a report by the Congressional Research Service on the formation of a new agency in the federal government: the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
This weekend’s read is a new report from Pew Research, profiling the top-rated podcasts in the United States as of last summer. According to its research, 49% of U.S. adults listened to a podcast in the past year; it’s no longer a “fringe” way to consume content.
