Good morning John.
So I was on Tiktok a couple of days ago,
and let’s be honest all of the other days a well.
But on that particular day, I witnessed a lie.
Or at least a misinformation.
It was one of those things
where you say “I was today years old when I found out.”
This particular person was today years old when he found
out that the news stands for “notable events, weather, and
sports.”
This is what we call a folk etymology.
People come
up with origins of a word that make sense but aren’t real.
And they spread around because they make sense
and they sound good to people. My favorite of these is “hangnail.”
Cus it sounds so extremely straightforward.
Hangnail-- it’s a hangy part off the side of your nail. The nail in
question in “hangnail” isn’t a fingernail. It’s a nail.
Like a nail that you would hammer into something.
And that’s what they call like a corn, because it was
a patch that was very hard.
Like somebody had nailed
a nail into you I guess.
And then “ang” is a prefix
you put on something to say that it’s painful.
This is where “angry” comes from.
So any painful
hand condition was called an “ang nail.”
And probably because it makes more sense for
hangnail than other painful foot and hand conditions,
it stuck around as hangnail for just that one condition.
Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.
While news does not stand for
“notable events, weather, and sports” there is something interesting
we can learn from the etymology of the word “news.”
The actual source it will be unsurprising to hear is from
the word “new.”
We took an adjective and we noun-ed it.
It’s just a pluralization of “new.”
Like what’s new with you?
That’s your news.
But over time it became the news.
Not like my new information.
Just The News.
And we need to understand that the news is not necessarily the importance.
So let’s say for example that suddenly one day, 2,000
people in America die of a disease.
That would be news.
But if 2,000 people die in America of a disease every day,
it’s not news anymore because it’s not new.
And this isn’t a function of all the terrible people in the news industry.
This is human nature.
And probably for a good reason,
like the new stuff is the stuff that you understand the
least, that you do not necessarily know how to deal
with or live with or how it will impact you.
But our bias for
the new can break us a little bit.
Like it can make it so we are not properly understanding the world.
This definitely hurts us
when it comes to how we interface with ongoing crises.
As an example, in most of the places where this video is
being watched, the number of infants who die per thousand
births is below 6. In Sierra Leone, it is 80.
And I understand sometimes
now wanting to sit with a statistic like that.
It is kinda devastating. And it is also not news.
In fact, it is down from 160 deaths per thousand when I was born in 1980.
And if you want to talk
about it in terms of news, going from 16% infant mortality to 8%
infant mortality is good news. Regardless, 8% infant
mortality is a bad situation. John, humans have a lot of
biases that prevent us from understanding our world correctly.
That’s just a thing.
And personally I didn’t get this
until you like spent the time with me and helped me understand
that we are just bad at dealing with ongoing long term crises.
But because you did that, and you also did the work to
figure out the best ways to interface with problems like these,
we now have raised 10s of millions of dollars for Partners in
Health. And if you have donated or you’ve been a member of the
Awesome Socks Club or have bought something during
Pizzamas or have just been a member of this community,
you have been a part of that.
Because that’s what strong
community can do, it can look past what is new to see what is important.
And yes, Pizzamas starts monday in which John
and I make videos like we did in 2007. 5 days a week.
Am I excited or overwhelmed?
Porque no los dos?
Honestly I am extremely excited and I am doing a thing. So, we have text message updates
this year. You can sign up there’s a link in the description.
People who sign up for that, you will get messages from me throughout
Pizzamas but then never again. So don’t worry about that it will not
be an ongoing thing.
Everyday you will get one pizza-themed
Dad joke from me.
I will make this happen. I’ve got a fair number.
I’m not all the way there.
I’ll get there.
But also if you sign up for the
text you might some, uh, special access to some stuff.
And if you want to get the text message pop-up every time you can open
up Pizzamas.com in an incognito browser. Which I know is a very,
very weird sentence.
John, I’ll see you Tuesday.
Monday!