Less Toys for Kids, Daily Commutes, Spices How to, Family Mental Health, Set My Heart to Five

Fewer Toys for Kids (0:00:00) Kids love to play, and they need plenty of toys to keep them entertained. In fact, I think most parents can agree that it feels like there are never enough playthings to satisfy their children. They can hardly keep up with their birthday and Christmas wish lists. However, experts say that giving your child too many toys can be harmful. Great! But how do you not give them toys when that’s all they want?  Here to help us out is Kim Payne, the author of the book Simplicity Parenting. The Value of a Daily Commute (0:20:31) According to the Washington Post, in 2018 the average person spent 225 hours of their year, or 9 full calendar days, commuting to and from work. And, if your commute is anything like mine, most of it is spent on the freeway, stuck behind a line of cars and accompanied by mounting stress and frustration. Sometimes it can feel like the commute is more stressful than the job itself. But new research from the Harvard Business School suggests that your commute actually plays a valuable role in creating boundaries between work and home. Here to discuss these new findings and what you can do to maximize your commute time, is the mind behind the research—assistant professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, Dr. Jon Jachimowicz. A Spices How To (0:35:58) In all our quarantine cooking we’ve come to realize how little I know about spices, how to use them creatively, and even how to store them. That’s why we’ve asked friend of the show Carrie Ann Rhodes to help us become seasoned spicers. Mental Health and Family History (1:12:32) When it comes to researching our family history, the logistics of doing so are often confusing and discouraging. So, we invited family history expert Taralyn Parker on the show to give us some advice for finding our family members and why it’s important to our mental health. Taralyn is one of the founders of the 21 Day Family Connection Experiment. Set My Heart to Five (1:27:07) In the new, highly-acclaimed novel “Set My Heart to Five,” a robot named Jared living in the year 2054 explores what it means to be a human and finds that it’s much more complex than you think. Here to tell us about this timely and touching book is the author himself, Simon Stephenson.