August BONUS

Two of these in one month is rare. As in never-happened-before rare. But as I mentioned in the last Zaleski Minute, it’s really hot, which means I’m full of hot air, which I’ll now use to yell here in newsletter form. As always, if this takes you longer than 60 seconds, complain to management.

What I Was Writing:

1. For CityLab: Promoting the health benefits of talking to strangers might seem to reflect a certain pre-2020 mindset, before avoiding the respiratory droplets of others became a biological imperative. But in his new book, The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane makes the case for doing something my grandmother has always been good at: striking up conversations with randos, which evidently makes us happier and healthier.

2. For Medium (sort of): This is a story I published first in Popular Science in 2019, now republished this month on Medium. It’s about Gene DeSantis, Baltimore’s very own Johnny Appleseed, who has planted more than 15,000 trees throughout the city in the last four decades.