2 . We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.

What’s the problem? It’s possible that we all don’t have enough conversational ability. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s embarrassing and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s a valuable social practice that leads to big benefits.

It is easy to consider small talk as unimportant, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist (存在) if there weren’t casual conversations. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The secret to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”

In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, professor of psychology at UBC, invited people to a coffee shop. One group was asked to interact with its waiter, the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported obviously higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network is important for our happiness and health.”

Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a greater sense of belonging, a link with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.

3 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game -changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder (素材) to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly. formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

6 . Once I told someone I wanted to get a master’s degree of fine arts in creative writing and they told me it was the second-to-worst post-graduation plan they’d ever heard from a student. Arts degrees—especially fine arts degrees, which usually come in the form of music, studio art, creative writing and theater—have been, over the years, labeled useless.

It’s true that for the most part, STEM degrees lead to higher paying jobs than liberal and fine arts degrees, and it’s understandable why young people care about a higher starting salary and financial security. Student loan debt is playing a role in the physical and mental stress of young people.

And while STEM majors usually have starting salaries that are $20,000 higher than those of liberal arts majors, by the time people reach the age of 40, the salaries between those who majored in the liberal arts and those who majored in STEM are virtually the same. For example, women who major in STEM earned nearly 50% more than social science and history majors at ages 23-25, but only 10% more by ages 38-40, a New York Times analysis reported. So even in terms of salary, which doesn’t solely determine whether or not a degree is useful, liberal arts degrees aren’t all that far behind STEM.

It seems too that since people nowadays are going to have to work longer, it’s more important than ever that we actually like and care about what we’re doing. Pursuing something enjoyable, or else a passion, is continuously found to be a key factor in maintaining healthy relationships, mental health, physical health and energy. In other words, not useless.

Art is also a method of communication. It allows people from different backgrounds, from different walks of life to communicate with each other. In a world where borders and division seem to be all over the place, we need art more than ever. We need liberal arts majors. And more than anything, we need to be able to pursue what we love with confidence, and we need to not get caught up in the ”usefulness“ of what we love.

And just because someone’s primary job isn’t in their field of study—a writer who teaches high school for example—doesn’t make the degree useless. It just means that their way of finding a stable income is different. The same goes for artists who have to work multiple jobs to support themselves. They might have to find other means of supporting themselves and their artistry. It might be copy editing or it might be tutoring,

So I am going to graduate school, and I am going to graduate school for writing. I might be paying rent by way of overnight restaurant shifts—there’s so much I’m not sure of. But one thing I am sure of is this—I would rather be a writer working two jobs to pay my bills than be no writer at all.

7 . We talk continuously about how to make children tougher and stronger, but whatever we’re doing, it’s not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?

Nassim Taleb invented the word “antifragile” and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune (免疫的) system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens (过敏原) in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.

Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive (剥夺) them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.

In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less. Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.

Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence. Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth.

What can we do to change this situation? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? We can’t guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go — and let them grow.

8 . Looking out of the window of his truck, Bob Fitzgerald sees dying forests and empty farmland. Fitzgerald says the land has been in his family since the 17th century. “I can show you land around here that people grew tomatoes on when I was a little boy. And now it’s gone.”

Climate change is making things worse. As sea levels rise, salt water is entering rivers and other waterways. As a result, the land is becoming too salty for crops to grow on. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to move inland because of rising waters.

Kate Tully, a researcher in the University of Maryland, wants to keep coastal farmers in business as the seas rise. She has seen the forests filled with pine trees killed by the increasingly salty soil. The United States Department of Agriculture gave Tully and other researchers $1.1 million to study the problem. She and her team hope to give farmers ways to stay on their land.

They are testing different crops on pieces of land around the Eastern Shore. “Sorghum (高粱) is my new favorite crop because it can grow without rain and it can grow with lots of rain.” The grain (谷物) crop may be a good choice to feed the nearly 600 million chickens kept in the area each year. As farmers know, chickens can deal with salt, dry weather conditions and heavy rains. Yet just being able to grow a crop is not enough. The crop has to bring in money.

Some people believe the land should be given back to nature. They say the fields should be turned into wetlands, which are popular with duck hunters. “There’s money in duck hunting,” Tully said. “Hunting organizations will pay farmers for hunting on their land. Farmers could make a lot of money from duck hunting.”

Tully and her team are just getting started. It will be a few years before they really understand how to save the farms.