Dear Reader,
All the entries are in and we're just two weeks away from making the first big announcement of the 2025 Non-Obvious Book Awards! We will share the top 100 non-fiction books of the year on December 2nd, followed by the announcement of the final winners on the 16th. Next week, we'll have a special Non-Obvious 2025 Gift Guide edition of the newsletter where I share some of my picks for the best deals of the season for the most non-obvious people in your life.
Lots of special editions coming ... but this week we have another robust list of fascinating non-obvious stories. Why is nostalgia so hot? What's the true story behind Friendsgiving? Are marshmallows medicinal? Can we reverse the decline of math skills? Would you eat yogurt made with ants? Are dark sky zoos going to become a global trend? Get all the answers in the stories below!
Enjoy and stay curious,
Rohit
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This Week's New Videos ...
Why Young People Have Nostalgia For a Time Before They Were Born
Here's an oxymoron for you: people are using AI generated images to evoke the nostalgia of the 90s—the last human decade without ubiquitous technology. This idea fits into the growing sense that 1997 may have been the year that culture peaked. The growing appreciation for everything retro is driving an aftermarket boom in the value of nostalgic products from the nineties. It's also leading people to seek out more retro experiences where they can live and interact in a way reminiscent of a "simpler" time without AI or cell phones.
Examples of these types of experiences come up in my newsfeed every week - like this one where the Boston Sheraton hotel created a Goodnight Moon-Themed Suite (available through Feb 2026). The irony, of course, is that my own Gen Z kids can simultaneously make fun of me for being old while wearing a "Rage Against the Machine" sweatshirt without any idea of the epic backstory behind the band. But that's the thing about modern nostalgia in 2025 ... it's not inspired by a longing to relive an experience from their own past.
Instead, it's about recreating an offline moment that they have only ever heard about in stories and are unlikely to experience in their lifetimes any other way.
The Truth About Toxic Words and Why Word Policing Doesn't Work
In closed meetings leading up to the G20 Summit happening in South Africa next week, early reports note that in addition to the Trump administration choosing to boycott the event, U.S. officials are stalling talks and obstructing agreements because they "objected to the use of terms like 'equity' and 'universal health care.'" Earlier this year, the NY Times also published a list of "words that are disappearing in the new Trump administration." This has included many banned words in relation to heath care and health policy, drawing criticism from industry trade groups like the American Cancer Society.
"Some ordered the removal of these words from public-facing websites or ordered the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included. In other cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with Mr. Trump’s executive orders."
Outside of the government, social media platforms are also banning certain words. Last week I read a book about how social media is changing the way that we talk and words that are frequently used, partially as a reaction to this word policing:
"The word kill is suppressed on TikTok, so many creators have turned to say unalive instead. And now we have kids in middle schools writing essays about Hamlet unaliving himself, and that's an example of social media algorithmic speak bleeding into the mainstream."
The interesting thing about all the rhetoric and effect of algorithms on the way we communicate is that banning a word doesn't prevent that thing from mattering or people from discussing it. It just incentivizes people to find workarounds.
Math Skills Are Plummeting. Can Testing Reverse the Trend?
Across the US, there are students bound for college who are below a middle school level with basic math skills. For years, the criticism of advanced math was its lack of practical application. When would any normal person ever actually use calculus? The combination of increasingly lax school standards and a criticism of standardized tests may have created a void where basic math proficiency is rapidly disappeared. Add to this the growing ubiquity of AI tools offering the chance for students to easily automate their homework without learning basic principles and you can see what has driven this crisis.
As Stanford math professor Brian Conrad noted, "the premise that foundational ideas don't need to be learned anymore is a recipe for idiocracy." Beyond math skills, this idea that we are losing the focus on having students learn the most basic skills such as reading comprehension or the ability to analyze ideas is becoming a very real problem. This can also be wildly inconsistent across an entire country. One unexpected solution for this may be to reprioritize standardized tests.
For years, education experts and the media alike have been critical of programs that "teach to the test" and the very idea of quantifying achievement in such a unilateral way. The biases and inequity built into standardized tests is a very real issue. To date, these tests remain the best way to measure a baseline level of math proficiency. Does this mean we may see a resurgence in the importance of standardized tests and is that the solution? Hit reply and let me know what you think.
