Flying on a Plane with Two Tiny Children

By the time you read this, I will likely be on a plane flying cross-country with my entire family for the first time since we had a second kid.

Pray for me.

At a certain point, I think we had begun to figure out how to travel with one tiny child. The solution was to treat any trip over two hours as though we were simultaneously permanently moving to this new location AND as though we were transporting a live orca that needed to be fed and watered continuously to survive the journey.

Going away for 2 weeks? Pack everything we own.

Going away for 10 hours? Pack the exact same amount.

The amount of snacks, milk, water bottles, books, and toys we would strap to our bodies was almost incomprehensible. And that was just for traveling with one kid! We outnumbered him 2-to-1!

Now, we’ve got a second and we’re still planning on filling this plane’s entire cargo hold with diapers and changes of clothing. But we aren’t going to be able to maintain the same level of exotic animal transportation that we could previously achieve. I have no idea what the result will be, but our new technique is to essentially treat this airplane like The Purge1: the are no laws in the sky.

Normally, we’re pretty conservative on sweet snacks and screen time. But you better believe that once we reach cruising altitude, you can stare into an iPad for as long as you want if you’re staying quiet and calm. You want to gulp down a snack pouch? Be my guest. Just let us survive this journey. It’s like Oregon Trail, except with toddler meltdowns and infant diaper blowouts instead of fording the river and dysentery. But actually, let’s not be too overconfident on the dysentery front, what with what I’ve been reading about eating lettuce and raspberries.

As the great Dave Barry put it:

My upcoming events and other projects:

VIRTUAL EVENT: Thursday, August 20th at 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Finding the Funny in Hard Times. I’ll be doing a live conversation with the Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley). It’s free and open to the public (600+ already signed up to attend), but you need to RSVP if you want to join. More details here

SAN DIEGO BOOK FESTIVAL: Saturday, August 22nd at UC San Diego. I’ll be doing a book talk, signing, and Q&A as part of the fest sponsored by KPBS! Free and open to the public. I’m still not sure the exact timing of my talk, but it will be announced on their website.

MY BOOK: Humor Me is out in bookstores everywhere

MY PODCAST: I find it really fascinating when there appears to be a cultural consensus around a solution, but the scientists studying the issue keep trying to get people to look at the actual data. Right now, there’s a huge push to ban social media for kids’ mental health, but the youth mental health experts are not onboard. This week on How to Be a Better Human, I talked with researcher Candice Odgers about what makes kids thrive, what makes them struggle, and how social media bans may dramatically backfire. It’s a thought-provoking one! What the data shows about youth mental health (w/ Candice Odgers)

This week’s list

GREAT:

Jo Firestone is the funniest and most charming person on the planet. That’s a hill I will die on. Her new book, a murder mystery, is out now and it’s spectacular. But even more spectacular is this appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers where she threatens to give birth in the studio, quotes Mary Oliver, and claims to have spent 65 years of her life watching Love Island.

FUNNY:

Marcello Hernandez is on a press tour right now for… honestly, I’m not sure what. Maybe a movie? It doesn’t matter. He is clearly having a great time and he’s so funny. This bit where he roasts Kevin Hart’s instagram photos made me laugh a lot. What absolutely killed me was Marcello’s interview on Hot Ones, specifically the story about him getting his elementary school teacher to write a note home about his behavior.

INTERESTING:

I think I may have recommended this book several years ago, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently with all the conversation around AI. Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human is a story about a side competition during the annual Turing test competition, where humans compete (using only computer chat interfaces) to prove to other humans that they are, in fact, real. It turns out that even a decade ago, it was extremely difficult to convince people you were a person. It’s only gotten harder (and more important) now. In the book, Christian uses AI’s “astonishing achievements as well as their equally fascinating failings to reveal our most human abilities: to learn, to communicate, to intuit and to understand. And in an age when computers may be steering us away from these activities, he shows us how to become the most human humans that we can be.”

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That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

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Boy, are my arms tired!

Chris Duffy

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

…wait, who are you?

I’m Chris Duffy. I’m a comedian, I host TED’s How to Be a Better Human podcast, and I’m both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I wrote a book called Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy that’s out now from Doubleday.