Public Good

Burnout, low pay, no respect: why are 23-year-olds racing toward the classroom?

As one generation flees the classroom, another steps in.

By every metric, teaching looks like a profession in freefall. Pay is down, stress is up, and 53% of teachers report being burned out. Veteran educators are walking out the door faster than schools can replace them.

So why are thousands of Gen Z grads sprinting in?

Mark Wales digs into a counterintuitive trend: the most isolated, screen-saturated, anxiety-ridden generation on record is choosing the one job that demands eye contact, patience, and showing up at 7 a.m. for thirty kids who didn't ask to be there. Teach for America just welcomed 2,300 new graduates from 600 colleges. The Guardian flagged the same pattern overseas.

One TFA exec thinks she knows why. And a 23-year-old math teacher in Fairfax has a philosophy that might explain the rest.

Do you have a GOOD picture to share?

Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.

Previous Results

Yesterday, we shared eight tips for saving on gas costs from the people who hurt the most at the pump: truckers! You should steal these tips, really.

The story inspired a little quiz! At highway speeds, what's actually better for your gas mileage: windows down, or AC on? I thought I had a tough one this time, but almost half of you got it right.

• Windows down, always. AC is a fuel hog. (16.8%)

• AC on. Open windows mess with aerodynamics. (47.7%) ✅

• It's a wash. They cancel each other out. (18.1%)

• Sunroof open, windows up, AC off. Obviously. (17.4%)

That’s right, AC on. The crucial part of the question was “at highway speed.” At about 55+ mph, open windows create enough aerodynamic drag that they hurt fuel economy more than running the AC does. Below ~40 mph, windows down wins. 

Well-being

Your dog is doing more for your blood pressure than your therapist

A growing number of doctors are putting pets on the chart.

Ten minutes is all it takes for a dog on your lap and a hand on its head to drop your cortisol, raise your oxytocin, and reset whatever the day's been doing to you. The dog gets the same hit, by the way. It's a closed loop of mutual chemistry, and apparently it's strong enough that 1 in 5 pet owners now say a doctor or therapist has actually recommended pet ownership as part of their care.

A new piece by Christine Abdelmalek pulls together the research, and the numbers don't stop at the lap. Dog owners have a 31% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Pet ownership is associated with life satisfaction gains comparable, in one model, to a sizeable income bump. And one estimate puts the total savings to the U.S. healthcare system at $22.7 billion a year.

Which raises an awkward question for everyone who's ever felt vaguely judged at the vet checkout: what if the dog is the one taking care of you?

Science

Only 17% of people pass this 3-question test on the first try

It takes most people less than 60 seconds to fall into the trap.

Did you take the quiz above? A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. Quick: How much is the ball? Did you get it right?

If your brain just blurted out an answer, congratulations, you've met the Cognitive Reflection Test. Designed by Yale's Shane Frederick and made famous by Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, it's a set of three short questions that have been quietly humiliating smart people since 2005. Roughly 83% of test-takers miss at least one. Ivy League undergrads, Wall Street analysts, your mathiest friend: all routinely tripped up by the same fast-thinking shortcut.

In this piece, Adam Albright Hanna walks through what the test actually measures, why your gut is so confidently wrong, and what System 1 thinkers tend to have in common with people who make worse financial decisions. The questions are deceptively simple. 

On May 1, 1931, President Herbert Hoover sat down at his desk in the White House, pressed a golden telegraph key, and turned on every light in a building 200 miles away. The Empire State Building was open for business. Whether anyone wanted to rent space in it was, at that moment, a separate question.

The whole thing was the result of one of history's pettiest bets. Walter Chrysler had just topped out his gleaming Chrysler Building, and General Motors exec John Jakob Raskob decided he could do better. He gathered investors, hired the firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, and gave them a deadline designed to fail: open by May 1, 1931. They did it in 410 days, with up to 3,400 workers slapping together as many as four-and-a-half floors a week. The final tab came in around $41 million, roughly $880 million today, which was both an enormous sum and a screaming bargain. Then came the catch: the Depression had gutted the office market, locals nicknamed it the "Empty State Building," and it didn't turn a profit until the early 1950s.

The Grand Old Lady is aging beautifully, though. A recent retrofit refurbished all 6,514 windows on site, cutting energy use by 38%, and in late 2025, she became the largest LEED v5 Platinum-certified building in the country. Not bad for a 95-year-old skyscraper born from a grudge.

Do you have something GOOD to share?

We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

Who’s a GOOD boy/girl?

Image of the Day has its own lane, but the pet pics keep arriving, and I am not made of stone. So every Friday, I’ll share one reader-submitted photo of a favorite pet. Want yours featured? Send it along.

💬 From the group text…

It’s happening! The animals are learning to speak.

Join the Group Text! Send us your social media gold.