Once upon a time, Henry Ford closed his factories two days a week, and subsequent union victories brought the two-day weekend to the U.S. — and the world — for good. Why shouldn’t we do him one better? A three-day weekend represents a much-needed reprieve, reminding everyone that the goal is to have more time to kick back, not for an extra moment on Slack, not for being the Uber driver who gets there first. Write that novel, go to your kid’s play, take a nap.

It’s well past time to overhaul the job interview, which — let’s face it — is pretty flawed, what with unconscious bias, short face times that yield no real sense of the person and questions that either lend themselves to canned answers or are head-scratchingly random: What kind of tree would you be? We propose an alternative: Ditch the mechanical, robotic interviewing in favor of ... improvisation.

It’s easier to tolerate long work hours during the dark of winter, but when kids are out of school and the sun is shining, the whole darn system feels terribly cruel. So here’s one solution: The maximum legal work week for the month of August should be zero hours. If employers want their employees to stick around during inconvenient periods, like Uber drivers at 3 a.m., they have to pay overtime.

American road culture has long dictated that drivers move over to merge at their earliest convenience — politeness that translates into miles of single-lane stoppages while the adjacent lane sits empty. The Germans have a better way, by the unwieldy name of Reissverschlusssystem, or “the zipper system.” It dictates that when two lanes converge, drivers should wait to merge at the last possible point and then alternately fold together like teeth on a zipper.

Like almost every other public activity on the planet, hotel-ing while female is far worse than while male. From getting hit on in the bar to the threat of rape or sexual assault while walking to bedrooms down unfamiliar corridors populated by total strangers, women can reasonably feel unsafe in hotels. One possible solution: What about some women-only hotel floors?

Think back to the last time you traveled by plane and to all the times you were able (or felt obliged) to tip along the way: the taxi driver, the shuttle driver, the server at the airport restaurant, the hotel bellhop. Tipping just comes with the territory in America. Except, of course, when it comes to the flight attendants on your plane. There’s a fascinating history behind why this is the case — and also a case to be made for why it’s high time we start tipping those who help make our lives and journeys a bit more comfortable and safe.

Two of the best basketball teams in the league battle it out as the clock winds down. The score is close. Sweat drips, the crowd roars. It all comes down to this, these last few minutes — a showcase of the best of basketball. Just kidding. It’s Hack-a-Shaq time. Which means it’s free-throw time. And an otherwise thrilling game has come to a screeching halt. But what about getting rid of the most boring element of the game of basketball? Why not eliminate free throws altogether?

According to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, there are over 2.2 million acres of golf courses in the United States alone, roughly the size of the state of Delaware, of which about 1.5 million acres are natural, high-maintenance turf. The average U.S. course uses more than 300,000 gallons of water per day — and closer to 1 million per day for desert courses. So why don’t courses do them themselves, and the planet, a favor by moving toward a more sustainable solution like some of the surprisingly high-quality types of artificial turf?

Not so very long ago, it was hard to go anywhere in America and not see a cigarette. You could even light up on an airplane. Then came the landmark Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health in 1964, and a resulting law requiring cigarette packs to carry warning labels. Fifty years later, adult smoking rates in the U.S. had plummeted from 43% to 18%. Meanwhile, football raises many of the same uncomfortable issues about public health, hard science and protecting America’s youth as cigarettes once did. So why not give Big Football the Big Tobacco treatment, and start requiring warning labels on football gear and before NFL broadcasts?

The Carlos Watson Show!

Ancient lore says that a sneeze summons dastardly demons, and a curt “bless you” will dispel all the bad mojo in one fell swoop. We say: Spare the stock phrases and holy water. It’s just a sneeze. It’s time we take a page from East Asia, where it’s rude to bring attention to a bodily function. Let’s stop wasting our breath on those hollow, halfhearted words like “God bless you” and “Gesundheit.”

One way to reduce water consumption and save yourself money is to take fewer unnecessary showers and baths. Unless covered in mud, there’s no reason to bathe ourselves, or our children, every day. Dermatologists claim that most kids under the age of 11 need to bathe just once or twice a week, or when they get muddy or swim in public pools or lakes. Folks in their 20s to 50s can cut back to every other day — and those in their golden years can bathe even less because elderly skin tends to dry out.

The original handshake arose as an easy weapons check via the ancient Romans, who, upon first encounter, latched onto each others’ arms to feel for any weapons hidden up their sleeves.

Handshakes, as we well know thanks to COVID-19, are also natural vehicles for spreading infectious diseases. But fist bumps are too bro-ey and elbow bumps are just awkward. So what do we replace the handshake with? Let’s bow down and do the wai — the traditional bow greeting in Thailand.

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