Carl Reiner

NEW YORK >> Carl Reiner, the ingenious and versatile writer, actor and director who broke through as a “second banana” to Sid Caesar and rose to comedy’s front ranks as creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and straight man to Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man,” has died. He was 98.

One of show business’ best liked men, the tall, bald Reiner was a welcome face on the small and silver screens, in Caesar’s 1950s troupe, as the snarling, toupee-wearing Alan Brady of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and in such films as “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

In recent years, he was part of the roguish gang in the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies starring George Clooney and appeared in documentaries including “Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age” and “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.”

Tributes poured in online, including from Steve Martin, who said: “Goodbye to my greatest mentor in movies and in life. Thank you, dear Carl. Actor Josh Gad called Reiner “one of the greatest comedic minds of all time” and Sarah Silverman said “his humanity was beyond compare.” Actor Alan Alda tweeted “His talent will live on for a long time, but the loss of his kindness and decency leaves a hole in our hearts.”

Films Reiner directed included “Oh, God!” starring George Burns and John Denver; “All of Me,” with Martin and Lily Tomlin; and the 1970 comedy “Where’s Poppa?” He was especially proud of his books, including “Enter Laughing,” an autobiographical novel later adapted into a film and Broadway show; and “My Anecdotal Life,” a memoir published in 2003. He recounted his childhood and creative journey in the 2013 book, “I Remember Me.”

But many remember Reiner for “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” one of the most popular TV series of all time and a model of ensemble playing, physical comedy and timeless, good-natured wit. It starred Van Dyke as a television comedy writer working for a demanding, eccentric boss (Reiner) and living with his wife (Mary Tyler Moore in her first major TV role) and son.

“The Van Dyke show is probably the most thrilling of my accomplishments because that was very, very personal,” Reiner once said. “It was about me and my wife, living in New Rochelle and working on the Sid Caesar show.”

Reiner had joined the classic comedy revue “Your Show of Shows” in 1950 after performing in Broadway plays. Much of Reiner’s early work came as a “second banana” — although, as Caesar once put it, “Such bananas don’t grow on trees.” He performed in sketches — satirizing everything from foreign films to rock ‘n’ roll — and added his talents to a writing team that included Brooks, Simon, Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart.

It was during the “Show of Shows” years that Reiner and Brooks started improvising skits which became the basis for “The 2000 Year Old Man.” Reiner was the interviewer, Brooks the old man and witness to history.

Reiner: “Did you know Jesus?”

Brooks: “I knew Christ, Christ was a thin lad, always wore sandals. Hung around with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once they asked for water.”

After the pair performed the routine at a party, Reiner said Steve Allen insisted they turn their banter into a record. The album, “2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks,” appeared in 1960 and was the start of a million-selling franchise.

Reiner, inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame, remained involved in other entertainment projects. In the 1990s, he reprised the Alan Brady character for an episode of “Mad About You.”

waste time

The Biggest Wastes Of Time We Regret When We Get Older

There are things we all do, or don't do, that lead us to waste far more time than we realize in the moment.

Lifehacker | Kristin Wong

We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren't spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy.

Not Asking for Help

My first week on my first job out of university, my boss handed me a huge spreadsheet. He told me to organise it in a way that made zero sense to me. Being a quiet, timid person, I simply nodded, walked back to my desk and stared at that spreadsheet for like an hour, hoping to make some sense of it (yep, just like George Costanza and the Penske file).

Finally, my coworker came in, and I confessed I had no idea what to do. He broke it down for me, then dropped some advice that's stuck with me ever since: "You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don't get it because you failed to ask."

It was harsh, but true. And not only did I look like an arse, I could've also saved a fair amount of time that day by simply asking my boss what he meant. It made me wonder how much time I'd wasted by not asking for help over the years. As dumb as you might feel asking questions, it's the fastest way to get an answer.

Similarly, asking for help is a great way to, well, get help. This is why networking and finding a mentor are hugely valuable. If you feel stuck in your career or need to learn new skills and have no idea how to get started, talking to other people in your field will go a long way. Even if it's just shooting someone a short email, asking for help is like a shortcut for your career. Try Leo Widrich's formula for asking for help via email:

2-3 sentences of honest appreciation. There is a reason you are asking someone for help. They have a lot of experience in that field, worked on a startup/idea related to what you are working on or else. If you do this, it shows them you have thought about why picking them out to ask for help.

1 sentence that states a single, focused question people can give you an answer to. Here is one that worked very well when I asked Noah:

"What was the single, most valuable user acquisition strategy for Mint after you hit 100K users?"

Here's another way to look at it: if you're not asking for help, you're probably not challenging yourself enough. If you have all the answers, you're not learning new skills, trying new things or moving forward and out of your comfort zone. There are a handful of reasons we don't ask for help, but it's usually because we're too proud or scared, and that's a huge waste of time, because it keeps you from moving forward.

Trying to Make Bad Relationships Work

Relationships require maintenance, but there's a difference between maintaining a good relationship and trying to force a bad one that doesn't make much sense to begin with.

There's a lot of emotion in romance and friendships, so sometimes it's hard to tell when you should keep trying or you should just call it quits. Like a lot of people, I made some common bad decisions that wasted both my time and the time of the person I was with. For example:

There are good reasons for wanting to make a relationship work, but those aren't good ones. They cloud your judgment, prolong your unhappiness and distract you from things that matter to you most. At the same time, it's hard to say all bad relationships are a total waste of time, because you learn a lot about yourself from them. That's a valid silver lining, but still, the sooner you learn those lessons, the better.

Similarly, not dealing with the emotional impact of a breakup is also a big waste of time. When a relationship ends, we usually go through the typical stages of grief associated with loss. It's easy to get comfortable with denial and convince ourselves we don't really care and we're fine. In reality, ignoring the pain only prolongs it. Our work suffers; the rest of our relationships suffer.

Dwelling on Your Mistakes and Shortcomings

Learning from your mistakes is one thing. Dwelling on them wastes your time, diminishes your confidence, and keeps you from getting on with your life.

Dwelling also makes you more apt to repeat your mistakes. In a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, researchers asked subjects to spend money during an imaginary trip to the mall. Before "shopping", some subjects were asked to recall a past financial mistake. They found those subjects were more likely to incur debt. A press release for the study concluded:

Perhaps the most surprising, Haws said, is that searching through the past can negatively affect behaviour, depending on the ease of recall, even when past examples are positive...Instead of dwelling on the past, Haws said, her research into behaviour suggests that setting goals for the future can positively change present behaviour...In short, if we want to have better self-control, "Look forward," Haws says. "Don't look back."

When you think about your own experiences, it probably makes sense. Dwelling makes you feel like a failure. When I feel like a failure, it's easy to tell myself there's no point in trying, because I already suck. (Hence, getting further into debt when you already feel like an overspender.)

Of course, you don't want to skip over your mistakes and ignore them either. The goal is to glean something from them, then release the failure. I like Emilie Wapnick's process for doing this:

In order to let the past go, you must forgive yourself officially.

Feel the embarrassment or shame one final time. Really feel it throughout your body. Next, tell yourself that everyone makes mistakes and you know you that that outcome was not your intention. It was an accident. Finally, make the decision to forgive yourself and do it. It helps to even say it out loud.

From now on, it's OK. You are forgiven.

Every time the thought comes back, simply remind yourself that you have already been forgiven, so there's no reason to feel bad anymore. Then push the thought away.

One of my other big time regrets is not allowing myself to fail out of fear of my own shortcomings.

For years, I stayed in a comfortable place and didn't try to do things I wanted to do. I wanted to travel after high school, but I went to university close to home instead, because I was too shy to meet new people, and I was afraid I couldn't make it in another city. After university, I wanted to be a freelance writer, but I decided to find a more stable, accessible job instead, because that was easier. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live a stable, comfortable life, but I was doing it for the wrong reasons: because I was afraid to fail.

Eventually, I got tired of this. I decided to find work I actually enjoyed, travel more and live somewhere else. I made a ton of mistakes along the way, and even when I did succeed, I felt like an imposter. Still, I think the bigger mistake was not trying sooner. Even if I failed, I would have learned from my mistakes much sooner.

Worrying Too Much About Other People

It's easy to waste time worrying about other people, too. Don't get me wrong — your friends and loved ones mean a lot to you, and you want to spend time nurturing them. But we also spend a lot of time fretting over problems that don't matter in the long run.

For example, I spent years getting annoyed with people who undermine me. I complained about them, tried to understand them, wondered what was wrong with me that I inspired that kind of behaviour. Those habits always lead to a dead end, because they didn't involve action. The older I got, the less tolerant I became of this behaviour, and I learned to nip it in the bud.

I also indulged another time wasting emotion: jealousy. I compared myself to everyone, wanted what they had, and felt inadequate. Like most negative, destructive feelings, the first (and biggest) step to overcoming it is understanding it.

I paid attention to my jealousy and what triggered it, then learned that it was less about the other person and more about my own feelings of inadequacy. In short, I embraced that jealousy. Envy is a bit different, but it often comes from the same place, and here's what writer Trent Hamm suggests in dealing with your envy:

The question is, why do you want it in your life? I like to use the "five whys" when handling a question like this. Whenever I'm trying to answer a "why" question, I repeat it five times, asking it of the answer I come up with for each question. When you identify a particular strong desire that you have, step back for a moment and break it down into small pieces. Then, see if there isn't a way for you to address those smaller pieces in your own life. Again, let's take that international trip. What elements am I desiring when it comes to that trip? I want to expose my children to different cultures…. The thing is, when I start breaking that trip down into small pieces, I start seeing pieces that I can easily incorporate into my own life.

Once you understand why you feel jealous or envious, you can take action to take care of the problem, whether that means processing the emotions or coming up with goals for yourself. Either way, that's a lot more productive.

Most of us are probably guilty of all of these at some point, and really, they're human nature. Regret is another big waste of time, so there's no point in beating yourself up over these. The sooner you learn from them, though, the sooner you can free up your time and energy to live the life you want.

--- This post originally appeared on Lifehacker and was published May 29, 2018. This article is republished here with permission.

Must Keep TV

After three years of steadily climbing up the charts, SVOD pioneer Netflix took the top spot in Solutions Research Group’s 13th annual “Must Keep TV” ranking, ousting broadcaster ABC from the pole position.

SRG said it conducted 1,400 online interviews across the country between May 22 and May 26 with consumers aged 12 and older, a little more than two months into the coronavirus lockdown where most had a good chance to consume their regular brands and sample some new options.

According to SRG, respondents are shown a list of 79 broadcast, cable and high-penetration streaming brands and are asked to identify which ones would be on their “must keep TV” list if they had to choose a limited number.

While Netflix took the overall lead, broadcasters made up the rest of the top five in the rankings, with ABC No. 2, followed by CBS, NBC and Fox. Amazon Prime Video was No. 6 and Disney Plus, which launched on Nov. 12, debuted at No. 13 on the list.

ESPN was the top cable brand (No. 8 overall) for the 13th year in a row, despite the lack of live sports programming during the lockdown. PBS was ranked No. 9 and CNN came in at No. 10 as viewers increasingly tuned in news during the pandemic.

Disney Plus was the most significant momentum brand of the year, placing 13th among the total 12+ population – a higher entry position than Amazon Prime Video and Hulu which entered in No. 14 and No. 22 respectively in 2017 when they were added to the lists.

Other brands on the rise in 2020 include Discovery, Food Network, Cartoon Network and FX, SRG said. Big gainers included TLC, which leaped from No. 41 last year to No. 21 this year and MSNBC, which rose from No. 46 to No. 39 this year. Brands that lost ground include AMC, The CW and HBO. According to SRG, HBO fell from the top 10 for the first time since 2013.

Overall, Netflix was No. 1 with adults aged 18-34 for the fourth year in a row, followed by Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, ABC, and Fox.

Netflix continued its three-year streak as the top brand for men aged 18-49, followed by ESPN, ABC, Fox and CBS. Amazon Prime Video and Hulu placed No. 6 and No. 8, respectively in this demo. and Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, which each rose two spots in the rankings for that demographic.

why you so fat?

There’s a meme aimed at Millennial catharsis called “Old Economy Steve.”

It’s a series of pictures of a late-70s teenager, who presumably is now a middle-aged man, that mocks some of the messages Millennials say they hear from older generations—and shows why they’re deeply janky.

Old Economy Steve graduates and gets a job right away. Old Economy Steve “worked his way through college” because tuition was $400. And so forth.

We can now add another one to that list: Old Economy Steve ate at McDonald’s almost every day, and he still somehow had a 32-inch waist.

A 2016 study published in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.

The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans between 1971 and 2008 and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI.

They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.

“Our study results suggest that if you are 25, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than those older, to prevent gaining weight,” Jennifer Kuk, a professor of kinesiology and health science at Toronto’s York University, said in a statement. “However, it also indicates there may be other specific changes contributing to the rise in obesity beyond just diet and exercise.”

Just what those other changes might be, though, are still a matter of hypothesis. In an interview, Kuk proffered three different factors that might be making harder for adults today to stay thin.

First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight.

Second, the use of prescription drugs has risen dramatically since the ‘70s and ‘80s. Prozac, the first blockbuster SSRI, came out in 1988. Antidepressants are now one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S., and many of them have been linked to weight gain.

Finally, Kuk and the other study authors think that the microbiomes of Americans might have somehow changed between the 1980s and now. It’s well known that some types of gut bacteria make a person more prone to weight gain and obesity. Americans are eating more meat than they were a few decades ago, and many animal products are treated with hormones and antibiotics in order to promote growth. All that meat might be changing gut bacteria in ways that are subtle, at first, but add up over time. Kuk believes the proliferation of artificial sweeteners could also be playing a role.

The fact that the body weights of Americans today are influenced by factors beyond their control is a sign, Kuk says, that society should be kinder to people of all body types.

“There's a huge weight bias against people with obesity,” she said. “They're judged as lazy and self-indulgent. That's really not the case. If our research is correct, you need to eat even less and exercise even more” just to be same weight as your parents were at your age.

The exercise part is perhaps one area where Old Economy Steve doesn’t have an edge. A membership at one of the newfangled fitness centers of 1987 would go for about $2,800 per year in today’s dollars, and that’s still what it costs today.

hard habit to break?

The Behavioral Economics Diet: The Science of Killing a Bad Habit

What really motivates you more, the promise of a reward if you succeed or a debt if you don’t?

Nir Eyal

Diets don’t work. Studies show that temporary fixes to old habits actually make people gain weight. Essentially, the dieter’s brain is trained to gorge when off the diet and inevitably the weight returns.

In my previous essay, I shared the story of my father's struggle with bad eating habits. He had put on weight over the last few decades and despite several attempts, he had trouble taking it off. In his late 60s he faces pre-diabetes and a daily ritual of taking a handful of pills.

But over the last five months, something has changed. He’s found a new way to resist the temptation of the food he’s been trying to stop eating for years.

We Took a Bet

My father and I shook on a $25,000 wager that binds him to never eat refined carbohydrates again — no processed sugars, no processed grains. Many people are shocked by the dollar amount of the bet but that’s missing the point. My objective is to never win the money. The bet just has to create a moment of consequence to disrupt the current habit with an amount large enough to be meaningful.

So far it’s working. My father has lost about 2 pounds per week and his improved blood work convinced his doctor to take him off some of the meds.

Why It Works

Admittedly, my father is just one person.  His story provides little more than anecdotal evidence. However, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine provides some supporting evidence that putting some skin in the game makes people more likely to accomplish their goal of stopping a bad habit.

The study followed three groups of people trying to quit smoking. The control group was offered information and traditional methods for smoking cessation like free nicotine patches. After 6 months, 6% of the people in this group stopped smoking. The next group, called the “reward” group, was offered $800 if they were smoke-free at 6 months. Of those, 17% quit. From just these two groups, we see paying people does indeed provide an incentive to stop a bad habit, at least short term.

However, the third group provided the most interesting results. In this group, called the “deposit” group, participants were asked to put down $150 of their own money, which they would receive back if they successfully quit in 6 months. In addition, they were given a $650 bonus prize from their employer if they quit. Of those who accepted the deposit challenge 52% succeeded.

On the surface, this makes no sense. Why would winning $800 be less effective than winning only $650 plus $150 of your own money back?

Perhaps people in the deposit group were more motivated to quit smoking in the first place? The researchers admitted that over 85% of people who were offered the deposit deal refused to take it. However, the study authors took efforts to scrub the effect of extra motivation by only using data from smokers willing to be in either group.

Loss Aversion, Commitment, and a Social Out

So what else might explain the results? For one, the study authors write, “people are typically more motivated to avoid losses than to seek gains.” This irrational tendency, known as “loss aversion,” is a cornerstone of behavioral economics. As Nudge author Cass Sunstein, wrote, “a 5-cent tax on the use of a grocery bag is likely to have a much greater effect than a 5-cent bonus for bringing one’s own bag.”

There are other factors at work as well. Commitment contracts — like putting money down or taking a bet — have proven to be effective at changing behavior because they make us accountable to our future selves. People are notoriously bad at predicting their behavior due to a phenomenon called “time inconsistency.” Essentially, we punt difficult to do behaviors saying, we’ll “eat better tomorrow” or we’ll “clean the garage” next weekend.

Tim Urban, author of the Wait But Why blog, explains his struggle with procrastination writing, “I banked on Future Tim’s real-world existence for my most important plans, but every time I’d finally arrive at a time when I thought I would find Future Tim, he was nowhere to be found — the only person there would be stupid Present Tim. That’s the thing that really sucks about Future You — whenever time finally gets to him, he’s not Future You anymore, he’s Present You, and Present You can’t do the tasks you assigned to Future You … So you do what you always do — you re-delegate them to Future You, hoping that next time time catches up with Future You, he actually exists.”

By creating a binding commitment — like the $25,000 bet my father took with me — we make sure our future selves behave in line with our present goals. A website called stickK.com uses commitment contracts to help its’ users accomplish their goals. People sign legally binding agreements where they have to pay a third party if they don’t meet their obligations to stop smoking, exercise, or finish their novel, for example. The site, founded by two Yale professors, has proven effective for those brave enough to take the bet.

There’s one more important and often overlooked reason these types of commitments work — they change the language we use. When I asked my father how he manages the temptation to not cheat with just a bite of cake now and then, he told me, “I just don’t. It’s actually not a big deal any more.” Frankly, I was surprised he is having such an easy time with it. Here’s a man who has struggled with his weight for over 30 years but who suddenly finds giving up some of his favorite foods to be, well, a piece of cake. What gives?

It turns out that the way we describe our behaviors can have a dramatic impact on what we will and won’t do. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people who were prompted to use the words “I don’t” versus “I can’t” were nearly twice as likely to resist the temptation of choosing unhealthy foods. The researchers believe using “I don’t” rather than “I can’t” gave people greater “psychological empowerment” by removing the need to make a decision. “I don’t” is outside our control while “I can’t” is self-imposed.

Now when my father goes out to lunch with his friends and dessert is brought to the table, he has a story to tell. “When they offer me a bite, I let them know it would be a very expensive mouthful,” he said. “I explain I just don’t eat that stuff anymore because the bet I made is for life.” He explains, “When I tried to lose weight before, I had to explain to people that I was on a diet. Eventually, I would get tired of saying ‘I can’t’ and I’d cave-in and tell myself, ‘just this once.’ But now with this bet,” my father joked, “I can just blame you!”

Here’s the Gist:

- Creating a commitment to stop a bad habit can increase the odds of quitting certain behaviors.

- Though not appropriate for all behaviors (I discuss the limitations in my next essay), the technique works because it uses loss aversion, a commitment contract, and provides a social out for not doing the behavior by changing the language we use to describe our actions.

This post originally appeared on Nir Eyal and was published May 26, 2015. This article is republished here with permission.

live long and healthy

8 Simple Tips to Live Longer and Healthier

Turns out extending your lifespan is pretty damn easy. Just follow these definitive, scientific, time-tested methods.

Over the past few years, there has been an ever-increasing obsession with biohacking and life extension: FDA-approved studies to see if metformin, a drug historically used to treat Type 2 diabetes, can slow aging. A supplement called Basis, which purports to extend life and is backed by multiple Nobel Prize–winning scientists. Transfusing the blood of younger individuals into older ones. Plus a whole manner of other hacks, such as dumping loads of butter into your coffee and wearing headbands that allegedly improve brain function.

Although these approaches are intriguing and arguably worth studying further (at least some of them), too many people seem to have forgotten that there already exists a scientifically proven method—one supported by decades of peer-reviewed research—to extend both the quantity and quality of your life: adopting a few healthy, quotidian habits.

“We’ve known since the mid-1960s that lifestyle behaviors have an outsize influence on health and longevity,” says Michael Joyner, a researcher and expert on health and human performance at the Mayo Clinic. Since then, evidence to support the positive impact of healthy living has mounted, he says, even as more people try to find the elixir of youth. Consider research published in 2011 in the American Journal of Public Health demonstrating that adopting healthy lifestyle behaviors—regular exercise, a wholesome diet, no smoking—can increase lifespan by 11 years. Or a 2016 study published in the British Medical Journal that found a healthy lifestyle reduces one’s chance of all-cause mortality by a whopping 61 percent.

The great irony is that “the idea behind a lot of these moon-shot fountain of youth drugs, supplements, and gadgets is to replicate the already proven biological and physiological effects of a few key behaviors,” says Joyner.

Aubrey de Grey, a pioneer in the anti-aging movement and chief science officer at the SENS Research Foundation, a Silicon Valley–based longevity institute, told the New Yorker that by doing things like optimizing his mitochondrial mutation, “I can drink as much as I like, and it has no effect. I don’t even need to exercise, I’m so well optimized.” Perhaps. But in the meantime, there’s an easier, proven method to life extension.

#1. Move

If exercise could be bottled up and sold as a drug, it would be a billion-dollar business. Decades of studies show that just 30 minutes of moderate to intense daily physical activity lowers your risk for physiological diseases (like heart disease and cancer), as well as psychological ones (like anxiety and Alzheimer’s). According to Joyner, many of the newfangled longevity elixirs aim to prevent mitochondrial dysfunction, or the breakdown of a cell’s ability to properly use energy, which is a normal part of aging. “But people who exercise can double the number of mitochondria in their skeletal muscle and improve its function throughout the body,” he says. “This is why exercise has such a potent anti-aging effect.”

#2. Eat Real Foods

Avoid stuff that comes wrapped in plastic. “Foods that undergo ultra-processing tend to see much of their nutritional bounty stripped from them,” says Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa-based obesity doctor and author of The Diet Fix. Another reason to avoid processed foods is related to energy density, or calories per gram of food. “Generally speaking, ultra-processed foods are much higher in energy density than foods made from fresh, whole ingredients,” says Freedhoff, “which isn’t great for maintaining a healthy weight.”

Freedhoff’s ideal diet for health and longevity? “One that is rich in whole foods that in turn are especially filling. You can keep calories at bay while maximizing nutrition,” he says. “This means a diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, fish, and leaner meats with regular but not excessive consumption of fruits, nuts, and healthy oils.”

#3. Call Your Friends

A mounting body of evidence is revealing that hanging out with friends and family doesn’t just make you feel good in the moment—it’s also good for long-term health. Social connections are associated with reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol, improved sleep quality, reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, slowed cognitive decline, lessened systemic inflammation, and improved immune function.

In a 2010 study published in PLOS Medicine, researchers from Brigham Young University followed more than 300,000 people for an average of 7.5 years. They found that the mortality risks associated with loneliness exceeded those associated with obesity and physical inactivity and were similar to those associated with smoking.

#4. Avoid (Nearly) All Supplements

Americans spend more than $30 billion every year on dietary supplements, yet the vast majority don’t work and may even cause harm. A 2016 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association cited more than 20 years of research and concluded that “studies evaluating dietary supplements have yielded predominantly disappointing results about the potential health benefits, whereas evidence of harm has continued to accumulate.”

Though supplements are often pristinely packaged in alluring promises, Freedhoff says that “it’s smart to have a policy of ‘just say no.’ There simply aren’t any supplements with sufficient evidence behind them to support their use in a person who doesn’t have a particular proven deficiency or need.”

#5. Sleep 8 Hours at Night

Regardless of what the biohackers may tell you, you simply cannot nap or intermittently sleep your way to optimal health and functioning. It’s only after you’ve been sleeping for at least an hour that anabolic hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone—both of which are critical to health and physical function—are released. What’s more, a 2007 study published in the journal Sleep showed that with each additional 90-minute cycle of deep sleep, you receive even more of these hormones. In other words, there are increasing marginal benefits to sleep, and hours seven through nine—the hours most people don’t get—are actually the most powerful.

Deep sleep is also beneficial to mental health. Researchers from Harvard found that it’s only during deep sleep when your brain combs through, consolidates, and stores all the information you came across during the day. “There’s a reason all the bodybuilders and super-intellectual people I know are obsessed with sleep,” says Joyner. “Sleep works wonders.”

#6. Enjoy Nature

In Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir, Wild, her mom tells her that the cure for much of what ails her is to “put [herself] in the way of beauty.” Turns out she was right, at least according to the latest science. Time in nature is an antidote to the ill effects of stress, prevents and in some cases even helps cure anxiety and depression, and enhances creativity. Though the exact causal mechanisms are not yet known, researchers speculate there is something unique about nature—perhaps related to the fact that we evolved to be in it—that puts both our bodies and minds at ease, promoting physical and psychological restoration and subsequent functioning.

#7. Don’t Smoke

Smoking is associated with dozens of types of cancer, as well as heart disease, dementia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. According to the American Cancer Association, smoking causes one out of every five deaths in the United States, killing more people than alcohol, car accidents, HIV, guns, and illegal drugs combined. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, your body literally starts repairing the damage caused by smoking within days of stopping.

#8. Don’t Drink Too Much

Like smoking, excessive alcohol use is associated with a number of chronic diseases, such as liver cirrhosis, throat cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Drinking too much also impairs sleep and daily function. The good news is that if you enjoy alcohol, drinking reasonably—one drink per day for women and up to two for men—carries minimal risk. “Moderation is key,” says Joyner.

Brad Stulberg (@Bstulberg) writes Outside’s Science of Performance column and is a co-author of the new book Peak Performance: Elevate your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success.

drink water my friend

If you’re reading this: Drink a glass of water. You likely need it, as 75 percent of Americans are described as “chronically dehydrated.”

While achieving a state of hydration might seem enviable and impossible, fret not because it’s doable. And the health benefits are not only encouraging, but they are also downright inspiring in the immediate short term, but especially in the long run.

“Long-term hydration is the single best thing we can do to prevent chronic illness,” says Dr. Dana Cohen, an integrative medicine specialist in New York and coauthor of Quench: Beat Fatigue, Drop Weight, and Heal Your Body Through the New Science of Optimum Hydration.

Though the eight-cup rule is popular, there is no one-size-fits-all number. Instead, it’s more of an individual approach. The new general rule of thumb is half your weight in ounces, according to Dr. Cohen. For example, if you weigh 120 pounds, you need to drink 60 ounces of water a day.

Without further ado, here are the glorious things that happen when you drink the ideal amount of water.

After One Day

Inadequate hydration can cause extreme fatigue, poor memory, dizziness, constipation, and even mood shifts. But the great news is that water can have immediate benefits, even within 10 minutes or less. “That charge increases the cells’ functional efficiency, leading to better energy, clearer thinking, and less brain fog,” says Dr. Cohen. In addition, you can also feel an improvement in muscle cramps and headache relief.

After One Week

Within seven days of being properly hydrated, you’ll have fewer aches and pains and bowel movements will become more regulated and frequent.

Also, your skin clarity will improve. “A body that has been suboptimally hydrated will, over time, shunt water toward essential organs like your heart and away from nonessential tissue like your skin and muscles,” says Dr. Charles Passler, a celebrity nutritionist and founder of Pure Change Detox. “This can lead to wrinkled or drooping skin, as well as reduced muscle strength.”

After One Month

One month into drinking your daily recommended ounces of water, and you’ll be hitting your stride. You can expect clearer, less bloated skin, plus continuous benefits in mental clarity, muscle strength, and stamina, says Dr. Passler.

After Six Months

“Having our cells properly hydrated creates homeostasis in the body and flushes out toxins,” says Dr. Passler. Beyond just looking and feeling great, proper hydration is necessary for the proper functioning of every single organ and tissue in your body. “The long-term benefits of avoiding dehydration play an important role in reducing the risk of diseases and disorders, like urinary tract infections, hypertension, coronary heart disease, glaucoma, and gallstone disease,” says Dr. Passler.

Race you to the faucet?

Kristin Limoges is the Wellness Editor at Domino.

regaining lost muscle

Pandemic life has a way of revealing our weaknesses. For those of us of a certain age, I mean that literally. If you are feeling like certain household activities — toting groceries, hoisting children, moving furniture, carrying laundry — are more difficult than they were in the past, you aren’t alone. And you aren’t imagining it.

This isn’t a new phenomenon; it just wasn’t until the 1800s that many of us lived long enough to experience this decline. For me, it started a few years ago, when I noticed that lifting an air conditioner, carrying a child up to bed or bringing in a load of firewood seemed harder than they once did. I summoned excuses for each difficulty (“Darned kid gained 20 pounds today!”), but now, at age 54, I’m ready to concede: I simply can’t lift as much as I once could.

Starting sometime in our 30s (the data aren’t precise), we lose up to 8 percent of our muscle mass per decade, a decline called sarcopenia, along with up to 30 percent of our strength and power. This leaves us weaker, less mobile and — especially after we cross age 50 — more vulnerable to injury from falls and similar accidents.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Men and women can regain some of that lost muscle mass and, importantly, stay strong enough to enjoy youthful activities well into their winter years, experts say. The key is strength training.

“I have people who start in their 60s, 70s and even 80s,” says Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine physician at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. “Building and maintaining strength is one of the most important things you can do at any stage of life, and it’s extremely important after age 50.”

Why? Strength training improves your “economy of movement,” Metzl says, meaning the amount of energy you expend to complete a task, and it “offloads joints, so you can do the same amount of work with less pain and lower risk of injury. You’re essentially getting more juice out of your muscles.” Metzl is personally vested in this quest: He has run 35 marathons and competed in Iron Man triathlons, and he says he aspires, even as he approaches his mid-50s, “to keep going forever.”

But what if your marathons are measured in Netflix episodes or you just need to jump-start an engine that’s been accumulating rust for years? Again, you’re not alone, says Dixie Stanforth, associate professor of instruction in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Kinesiology and Health Education.

“Most people are professional sitters,” she says. As a result, many muscles in the front of our bodies — namely our hip flexors and chest muscles — become short and tight. That shuts off signals to their corresponding anterior muscles — the glutes and upper back — to keep working, so those areas become weak and inhibited. All the sitting we’re doing at home could be making things worse.

The first thing to do if you’re starting or resuming strength training, says Stanforth, a 60-year-old personal trainer and “avid athlete,” is to target major muscle groups, especially the glutes and back.

“Glutes are tremendously important, because they activate the ‘rear chain’ of the body and can produce a lot of power for movement,” Stanforth says. Rear chain muscles are critical for posture, balance, running, jumping and — yes — lifting heavy things. To strengthen those muscles, Stanforth says squats, rows and leg presses are all good, because they engage the core and require movement in multiple joints.

The exercise everyone should be doing at home during the pandemic: Squats

She advises strengthening front-facing muscles (chest, abs, biceps and quadriceps, for example), but also devoting extra time to stretching them because of how tight they become in our daily, deskbound lives. “Many people might consider a 1:2 ratio of exercises” — that is, double your strengthening time for rear-chain muscles — “but all of the major muscles [including biceps, calves and triceps] should be trained.”

And, before you even ask: Just about every exercise you can do in a gym you can do at home — albeit with some modification. Homebound strength exercises that don’t require equipment include squats (with or without weight); chair dips; pushups; pullups; planks; lunges; burpees; and step-ups. If you have canned goods or empty milk or drink containers (a gallon of water weighs approximately eight pounds), you can use them for strength training.

Both Stanforth and Metzl recommend building muscle by performing a high number of reps of a lighter weight — i.e., one you can lift at least 15 times before failure, the fitness term for can’t . . . do . . . one . . . more.

Data show that straining to perform fewer repetitions of much heavier weights greatly increases the risk of injuries to cartilage, tendons and ligaments, without offering much benefit over lighter weights. A 2017 meta-analysis of 21 studies, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, found that people who engaged in strength training regimens for at least six weeks, performing exercises to failure, showed similar muscle cell growth regardless of whether they did high reps of low weights or fewer reps of heavy weights.

“Fatigue is fatigue no matter how you get there,” Stanforth says. “I recommend [sets of] a significant number of reps — 15, 20, 30 — and you’ll see all the gains that you would with heavier weights.” Encouragingly, studies also show that you’ll reap most of the gains from just one set of each exercise, so you can safely skip the oft-recommended second and third sets.

As for how often to train, the weekly guidelines for generally healthy people age 50 and older aren’t any different from those for other demographics: Strength train two to three days, engage in aerobic activity at least five days at moderate intensity, or at least three days a week at high intensity, and perform a stretching routine at least two days a week.

Metzl takes this up a notch by incorporating high-intensity interval training, or HIIT — short, punishing bursts of activity usually lasting 30 to 90 seconds with recovery breaks in between. “I do HIIT with people in their 70s and 80s,” he tells me. “We all change over the decades, but I don’t want people to be afraid of intensity.”

In fact, Metzl says, people should be increasing intensity as we age to “better stimulate all the cells in our bodies.” He cited a 2017 study published in the journal Cell Metabolism that showed that high-intensity training significantly improved how the body converts macronutrients into energy. But, he said: “For some people, a sprint is intense. For others, it’s walking up the stairs.”

For those who can perform them, Metzl suggests burpees, jump squats and lunges, which he says deliver full-body functional training. “Burpees utilize every muscle in your body. They’re high intensity and tremendously effective.” And, Metzl says, you’ll still reap a benefit from burpees if you opt to step — not jump — your feet back when dropping into the push-up position at the nadir of the exercise.

Stuart Phillips, director of the Physical Activity Center of Excellence at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, says that older people who regularly strength train can expect to see significant gains in strength and power, but not necessarily muscle mass. Still, the benefits of a training regimen — and the extended period of physical independence that comes with them — should be enough to motivate us all, he adds. “It’s about quality of life, and that’s not a function of muscle mass, but of strength/power.”

And, as Stanforth says, “exercise is better than any drug” in sustaining bone and countering the increased risk of osteoporosis that comes with age. “It helps tremendously. But we do have to be smarter about how we apply the dose as we age.” So, do it right, and we’ll feel stronger, and smarter for it, every day — and have one less thing to worry about.

filming the police

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers was captured on video, not once but half a dozen times. As we try to understand why a police officer continued compressing a man’s neck and spine for minutes after he’d lost consciousness, we have footage from security cameras at Cup Foods, where Floyd allegedly paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. As we wrestle with the sight of three officers standing by as their colleague killed Floyd, we have footage from the cell phones of witnesses who begged the officers to let Floyd off the ground. In the murder trial of Officer Derek Chauvin, who was patrolling despite 17 civilian complaints against him and previous involvement in two shootings of suspects, his defense may hinge on video from the body cameras he and other officers were wearing.

None of these videos saved George Floyd’s life, and it is possible that none of them will convict his murderer.

Officer Chauvin knew this. In the video shot by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, you can see him lock eyes with the teenager. He knows she’s filming, and knows that the video is likely being streamed to Facebook, to the horror of those watching it. After all, in a suburb of nearby St. Paul four years earlier, Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile while Castile’s partner streamed the video to Facebook. Yanez’s police car dashcam also recorded the seven shots he pumped into Castile’s body. He was charged and acquitted.

After years of increasingly widespread bodycam use and ever more pervasive social media, it’s clear that information can work only when it’s harnessed to power.

After Castile’s death, I wrote a piece for MIT Technology Review about “sousveillance,” the idea posited by the inventor Steve Mann, the “father of wearable computing,” that connected cameras controlled by citizens could be used to hold power accountable. Even though bystander video of Eric Garner being choked to death by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo in 2014 had led not to Pantaleo’s indictment but to the arrest of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the murder, I offered my hope that “the ubiquity of cell-phone cameras combined with video streaming services like Periscope, YouTube, and Facebook Live has set the stage for citizens to hold the police responsible for excessive use of force.”

I was wrong.

Much of what we think about surveillance comes from the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault examined the ideas of the English reformer Jeremy Bentham, who proposed a prison—the panopticon or Inspection-House—in which every cell was observable from a central watchtower. The possibility that someone might be watching, Bentham believed, would be enough to prevent bad behavior by prisoners. Foucault observed that this knowledge of being watched forces us to police ourselves; our act of disciplining ourselves as if we were always under observation, more than the threat of corporal punishment, is the primary mechanism of “political technology” and power in modern society.

The hope for sousveillance comes from the same logic. If police officers know they’re being watched both by their body cameras and by civilians with cell phones, they will discipline themselves and refrain from engaging in unnecessary violence. It’s a good theory, but in practice, it hasn’t worked. A large study in 2017 by the Washington, DC, mayor’s office assigned more than a thousand police officers in the District to wear body cameras and more than a thousand to go camera-free. The researchers hoped to find evidence that wearing cameras correlated with better policing, less use of force, and fewer civilian complaints. They found none: the difference in behavior between the officers who knew they were being watched and the officers who knew they were not was statistically insignificant. Another study, which analyzed the results of 10 randomized controlled trials of body camera use in different nations, was helpfully titled “Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force.”

Reacting to the DC study, some scholars have hoped that if cameras don’t deter officers from violent behavior, at least the film can hold them accountable afterwards. There, too, body cameras rarely work the way we hope. While careful, frame-by-frame analysis of video often shows that victims of police shootings were unarmed and that officers mistook innocuous objects for weapons, attorneys for the defense screen the videos at normal speed to show how tense, fast, and scary confrontations between police and suspects can be. A 1989 Supreme Court decision means that if police officers have an “objectively reasonable” fear that their lives or safety are in danger, they are justified in using deadly force. Videos from body cameras and bystander cell phones have worked to bolster “reasonable fear” defense claims as much as they have demonstrated the culpability of police officers.

It turns out that images matter, but so does power. Bentham’s panopticon works because the warden of the prison has the power to punish you if he witnesses your misbehavior. But Bentham’s other hope for the panopticon—that the behavior of the warden would be transparent and evaluated by all who saw him—has never come to pass. Over 10 years, from 2005 to 2014, only 48 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for use of lethal force, though more than 1,000 people a year are killed by police in the United States.

As he stared at Darnella Frazier, Officer Chauvin knew this, because it’s impossible to work in law enforcement in the US and not know this. The institutions that protect police officers from facing legal consequences for their actions—internal affairs divisions, civil service job protections, police unions, “reasonable fear”—work far better than the institutions that hold them responsible for abuses.

The hope that pervasive cameras by themselves would counterbalance the systemic racism that leads to the overpolicing of communities of color and the disproportionate use of force against black men was simply a techno-utopian fantasy. It was a hope that police violence could be an information problem like Uber rides or Amazon recommendations, solvable by increasing the flows of data. But after years of increasingly widespread bodycam use and ever more pervasive social media, it’s clear that information can work only when it’s harnessed to power. If there’s one thing that Americans—particularly people of color in America—have learned from George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, it’s that individuals armed with images are largely powerless to make systemic change.

That’s the reason people have taken to the streets in Minneapolis, DC, New York, and so many other cities. There’s one thing images of police brutality seem to have the power to do: shock, outrage, and mobilize people to demand systemic change. That alone is the reason to keep filming.

-- Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Technology Review

Dalai Lama to release album

NEW YORK  — Stressed out while working at a bank in New Zealand, Junelle Kunin began searching for music paired with teachings from the Dalai Lama to calm herself down and allow herself to focus.

But she couldn’t find it online.

That’s when the musician and practicing Buddhist proposed an idea to The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Let’s make an album fusing music with mantras and chants from the Tibetan spiritual leader.

She was politely turned down.

But on a trip to India — where Kunin says she typically gets a chance to meet the Dalai Lama — she asked again, this time writing a letter and handing it to one of his assistants.

Five years later, “Inner World” is born. The album featuring teachings and mantras by the Dalai Lama set to music will be released on July 6, his 85th birthday.

facts that aren't true

With endless resources at our fingertips nowadays, you'd think it would be much more difficult for folks to get away with passing off fiction as fact. And yet, myths and misconceptions are just as prevalent today as they were in a pre-internet world.

Take the knuckle-cracking myth, for instance: Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a majority of us still hold on to the belief that cracking your knuckles will lead to arthritis. (It won't.)

And somehow a shocking number of people still think that it's fine to eat food that dropped on the floor if it's only been there for five seconds—as if somehow bacteria are too slow to jump on board that fallen French fry.

And there are plenty more common myths that permeate society today.

Whether they're the result of twisted truths over centuries or rumors blindly accepted as reality, these are the well-known "facts" almost everyone believes are true but they're actually fiction.

And for more wrongs you probably need to right, check out the 25 Objects You Didn't Know You Were Using Wrong.

Aerobic exercise can improve thinking, memory in seniors

Want to give your brain a boost? Go for a swim, take a walk, or spin your partner on the living room floor.

A new study finds that aerobic exercise can improve older adults' thinking and memory, even if they're longtime couch potatoes.

This type of exercise increases blood flow to the brain and counters the effects of normal aging, according to the study published online May 13 in the journal Neurology.

"As we all find out eventually, we lose a bit mentally and physically as we age. But even if you start an exercise program later in life, the benefit to your brain may be immense," said study author Marc Poulin, of the University of Calgary School of Medicine in Canada.

"Sure, aerobic exercise gets blood moving through your body. As our study found, it may also get blood moving to your brain, particularly in areas responsible for verbal fluency and executive functions. Our finding may be important, especially for older adults at risk for Alzheimer's and other dementias and brain disease," Poulin said in a journal news release.

The study included 206 adults, average age 66, with no history of memory or heart problems.

For six months, they took part in supervised exercise program three times a week. As they progressed, their workout increased from an average 20 minutes a day to least 40 minutes. They were also asked to work out on their own once a week.

At the end of the exercise program, participants had a 5.7 percent improvement on tests of executive function, which includes mental abilities used to focus, plan, recall instructions and multi-task. They also had 2.4 percent increase in verbal fluency, a measure of how quickly a person can retrieve information.

"This change in verbal fluency is what you'd expect to see in someone five years younger," Poulin said.

On average, blood flow to their brain increased 2.8 percent -- a gain tied to a number of improvements in types of thinking that typically decline with age.

RELATED Fruits, tea, red wine may help fend off Alzheimer's disease

"Our study showed that six months' worth of vigorous exercise may pump blood to regions of the brain that specifically improve your verbal skills as well as memory and mental sharpness," Poulin said.

"At a time when these results would be expected to be decreasing due to normal aging, to have these types of increases is exciting," he said.

Jerry Stiller

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jerry Stiller, who played two of American television’s most cantankerous fathers on the sitcoms “Seinfeld” and “The King of Queens,” has died aged 92, his son Ben Stiller said on Twitter on Monday.

“I’m sad to say that my father, Jerry Stiller, passed away from natural causes,” wrote Ben, a Hollywood comedian who appeared with his father in “Zoolander” and other movies.

“He was a great dad and grandfather, and the most dedicated husband to Anne for about 62 years. He will be greatly missed. Love you Dad,” he added.

Jerry Stiller was part of a 1960s comedy team with wife Anne Meara. But he was in his mid-60s when he got what would become his signature acting role - Frank Costanza, father of ne’er-do-well George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander) on “Seinfeld,” a tense, bombastic man always on the verge of apoplexy.

In 1993, Stiller had thought his entertainment career was nearing an end when he got a phone call from Larry David, co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about joining the cast led by comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

The show, one of the most highly regarded in U.S. TV history, was in its fourth season at the time but Stiller said he had never watched a minute of it and had to ask, “Who’s Seinfeld?”

He was performing in a play at the time and had to turn down the TV job. Stiller got another chance at the role a few months later and took it.

Stiller was in only 26 of the 172 “Seinfeld” episodes but each appearance was memorable, whether he was screaming “serenity now!” in a tense situation, trying on a bra for men or explaining the odd rituals of Festivus, the Dec. 23 holiday he established as an alternative to Christmas.

Jerry Seinfeld on Monday paid tribute by posting a photo of himself holding “The Last Two People in the World,” a 1967 comedy album from Stiller and his wife.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus posted a clip of old bloopers from the sitcom, while Alexander called him “the kindest man I ever had the honor to work beside.”

Stiller said he was originally told to play Frank in a meek, understated manner in contrast to the character’s loud, shrill wife. A few days in, however, Stiller responded to one of the wife’s rants with an improvised tirade of his own and the show’s producers and cast liked it.

“And from that day on, it was the best years of my life as an actor because I worked with people who were the most generous actors in the world,” Stiller said in an interview with the Archive of American Television.

“Seinfeld” ended its nine-year run in 1998 and that same year Stiller moved into another sitcom dad role on “The King of Queens.” As Arthur Spooner, he played another blowhard oddball - although not quite as eruptive as Frank Costanza - living in the basement of the home of his daughter (played by Leah Remini) and her husband (Kevin James) through the show’s nine seasons.

***

Jerry Stiller, a classically trained actor who became a comedy star twice — in the 1960s in partnership with his wife, Anne Meara, and in the 1990s with a memorable recurring role on “Seinfeld” — has died. He was 92.

His death was confirmed Monday by his son, actor Ben Stiller, in a tweet, who said his father had died of natural causes.

Stiller’s accomplishments as an actor were considerable. He appeared on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s frantic farce “The Ritz” in 1975 and David Rabe’s dark drama “Hurlyburly” in 1984. Off-Broadway, he was in “The Threepenny Opera”; in Central Park he played Shakespearean clowns for Joseph Papp; on screen he was seen as, among other things, a police detective in “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” (1974) and Divine’s husband in John Waters’ “Hairspray” (1988). But he was best known as a comedian.

The team of Stiller and Meara was for many years a familiar presence in nightclubs, on television variety and talk shows, and in radio and television commercials, most memorably for Blue Nun wine and Amalgamated Bank.

Years after the act broke up, Stiller captured a new generation of fans as Frank Costanza, the short-tempered and not entirely sane father of Jason Alexander’s George, on the NBC series “Seinfeld,” one of the most successful television comedies of all time.

Stiller was in fewer than 30 of the 180 episodes of “Seinfeld,” whose nine seasons began in 1989, and he did not make his first appearance until the fifth season. (Another actor appeared as Frank in one episode of Season 4, although his scenes were later re-shot with Stiller for the syndicated reruns.) But he was an essential part of the show’s enduring appeal.

FRANK COSTANZA was a classic sitcom eccentric whose many dubious accomplishments included marketing a brassiere for men and creating Festivus, a winter holiday “for the rest of us” celebrated with tests of strength and other bizarre rituals.

His most noteworthy characteristic was his explosive, often irrational anger, and most of the episodes on which he was featured found him, sooner or later, yelling, usually at either his son; his wife, Estelle, played by Estelle Harris; or both.

Just a few months after the final episode of “Seinfeld” (in which Frank had one last moment in the spotlight and, of course, spent most of it yelling), broadcast on May 14, 1998, Stiller was back on television playing another off-kilter father — a marginally more restrained version of Frank Costanza — on another sitcom, “The King of Queens,” which made its debut that fall on CBS.

A regular this time, he played Arthur Spooner, the excitable father of the wife (Leah Remini) of the working- slob central character (Kevin James), for the show’s entire nine-season run.

A guest star on several episodes of “The King of Queens” was Meara, whose character married his in the series finale. Younger viewers might not have known it, but their scenes together represented the reunion of one of the most successful male-female comedy teams of all time.

STILLER AND MEARA met in 1953, when they were both struggling actors, and married shortly afterward. They worked together in 1959 with the Compass Players, an improvisational theater group that later evolved into the Second City. They began performing as a duo in New York nightclubs in 1961 and soon made the first of about three dozen appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Visually, Meara and Stiller were a study in contrasts. She was statuesque and bright-eyed; he was short and stocky, and always looked a little lost. Another contrast formed the basis for much of their comedy: Her heritage was Irish-American and Roman Catholic (although she converted to Judaism in 1961); his was Eastern European and Jewish.

At a time when it was rare for men and women of different religions to date, let alone marry, Stiller and Meara broke new comic ground with their routines about the rocky but loving relationship of Hershey Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Doyle, characters loosely based on themselves.

The first such sketch, as recounted in Stiller’s autobiography, “Married to Laughter: A Love Story Featuring Anne Meara” (2000), set the tone. One exchange began with Mary Elizabeth saying, “They’re having a dance tonight at my sodality.”

Hershey replied, “At your what?”

“My sodality.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s a girls organization in my parish.”

“You mean like Hadassah?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a girls organization in my parish.”

The comedy partnership of Stiller and Meara flourished for more than a decade and found a new outlet when they began doing commercials. But they eventually went their separate ways professionally — although they remained happily married and continued to perform together from time to time. Meara died in 2015.

Stiller worked steadily into the early 1990s but was less active than Meara, who had recurring roles on several television shows. Then came the call from “Seinfeld,” and his career resurgence began.

GERALD ISAAC STILLER was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 8, 1927, the first of four children born to William Stiller, the son of immigrants from Galicia, and Bella (Citron) Stiller, who was born in Poland. His father drove a taxi and later a bus. His mother was a homemaker.

Growing up in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, young Jerry was inspired to perform by seeing Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante in person, and began acting at the Henry Street Playhouse while attending Seward Park High School.

After serving in the Army during and immediately after World War II, he studied theater at Syracuse University under the GI Bill, learning about Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama from the celebrated teacher Sawyer Falk. He began working in summer stock almost immediately after graduating in 1950, and was appearing off-Broadway a few years later.

Stiller remained active throughout his 80s. He was typically manic in a series of commercials for Capital One Bank, seen on television and heard on radio in 2012.

That same year, he played a group-therapy patient in the independent film “Excuse Me for Living.” In 2014 he provided the voice for the title character in an unorthodox animated television special, “How Murray Saved Christmas.”

In 2016 he reprised the role of the agent Maury Ballstein in “Zoolander 2,” the sequel to the hit 2001 comedy about a male model, starring and directed by his son, Ben.

“I’ve never thought of stopping,” Stiller told The Daily News of New York in 2012. “The only time you ever stop working is when they don’t call you.”

Stiller and Meara’s swan song as a team was a series of web-only video clips produced by their son and posted from November 2010 until March 2011. Each clip lasts about two minutes and consists of the two of them discussing a single topic. One topic is obituaries.

In that clip Stiller says he is “shocked” that The New York Times might have already prepared their obituaries and wonders whether the newspaper is “up to date” on his having worked with Veronica Lake in a production of “Peter Pan” (about six decades earlier). And Meara reveals that years ago Stiller had persuaded the Times to publish her father’s obituary by falsely claiming that he had written material for their comedy act.

Stiller’s agitated response: “What you just said is going to get us in trouble with The New York Times! I may never get an obit!”

He needn’t have worried.

Trapped at Home? Board Game On!

I am, in the best circumstances, a poor loser. I’m also a clumsy, fidgety winner.

Yet I have spent the past month playing games. All kinds of games: Twenty Questions, I Spy, matching games, memory games, and as much hide and seek as a three-room apartment allows. Mostly, I have been playing board games with a fixation I haven’t known since I was 9 or 10 and cheating at Candy Land (slipping the Queen Frostine card just below the top of the deck and then saying, brightly, to my sister, “You can go first!”).

If you, like me, grew up with a battered box of Sorry and a Battleship missing at least two of its boats, you should know that board games have improved. With a large number released each year, the variety of games and the mechanics that govern them are almost infinite.

My library books remain unread, a stack of untouched New Yorker issues has become a household obstacle, and I can’t make it through a movie, or even a 23-minute sitcom, without reaching for my phone. So why can I spend a focused hour-and-a-half bartering for camels in an Indian marketplace playing Jaipur or simulating quilt-making in Patchwork?

While I have slashed most discretionary spending, I keep lowballing used children’s games — Outfoxed!, Ticket to Ride: First Journey, Sushi Go! — and a few adult ones on eBay. The other week, I fell into a Google abyss comparing cooperative puzzle games. When I finally clawed my way out, I found that I had ordered Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, from England. The shipping was surprisingly reasonable.

With so much of life transported online, there is huge satisfaction in the tactility of board games, an almost indecent pleasure in rolling dice, dealing cards, hopscotching a game piece to a square. And many of them are beautiful, eye-candy confections of color and shape. But library books, after all, are tactile. Some of them are even illustrated. Why games?

I wrote to Joey Lee, who directs the Games Research Lab at Teachers College at Columbia University, hoping he could figure out this one. Tabletop games, he said, create a “magic circle,” an idea borrowed, more or less, from the cultural historian Johan Huizinga. Lee wrote that the circle, inside which everyone agrees to abide by the same constraints and rules, provides “a structure and environment that sparks laughter, creativity, joy and other pleasure-filled moments that come from solving problems successfully, optimizing one’s strategies, working together or competing against other players.”

That sounded like an ambitious way of describing what happens when my 3-year-old and I fend off trolls in My First Castle Panic, but sure.

Nicholas Fortugno, a games designer and lecturer, explained why playing games with my two young children improves on our flustered attempts at homeschooling. “Games level differences in age,” he said. “If I’m a 10-year-old playing a game with my parents, the authority structure that normally governs how I behave is actually kind of released. For the purposes of the game, we’re equal.”

When I try to teach place value to my 6-year-old, there’s a hierarchy at work. When we play Zeus on the Loose, which has her practice addition and subtraction as we lay claim to Mount Olympus, we play as equals.

Sort of.

I should probably confess that I have been throwing a lot of these games, cheating as avidly as I ever did, but now in favor of my opponents. Losing offers valuable lessons — grace, resilience, accepting the randomness of a flicked spinner. But being confined to our home without birthday parties or play dates feels like lesson enough. So somehow the children always seem to beat me, simultaneously, at Scary Bingo.

I have also been playing board games with my husband, because they are a welcome change from our other games like, Hey, Have You Looked at the 401(k) Lately? and Why Are You Drinking So Much? As long as I had game experts on the line, I asked several to act as games concierges (“I prefer sommelier,” Fortugno told me) and recommend games that wouldn’t push us any closer to divorce, or at least delay it until after lockdown. I also mentioned that I’m the kind of monster who takes games very seriously.

“Board games are one of the few outlets in life where that is kind of a socially acceptable thing,” said a reassuring Erik Arneson, who writes books on tabletop games. “As long as you don’t get angry and flip the table over if you lose.” I told him that I wouldn’t. Our table is very heavy.

He recommended Patchwork, “a lovely little two player game that’s about making quilts.” Coincidentally, my husband had bought a sale copy of Patchwork. (An exception to my “games are beautiful now” claim, its color scheme combines a sickly beige and a clinically depressed green.) Arneson had warned that I would sometimes resent my husband for snatching a piece I needed. And I did. But that particular resentment, unlike my feelings about the distribution of emotional labor, say, was discrete and local.

Still, I suggested a move toward cooperative games. The best cooperative game, several experts agreed, is Pandemic, which seemed just a little on the nose. Instead, we have spent a few companionable evenings playing that Sherlock Holmes game and sampling escape room games. These, too, are a little on the nose, in that family life during a pandemic does have the feel of a locked room, but in the game at least, escape is possible. Two nights ago, we broke out of a sinister museum, and felt — against all real-world evidence — like we had really accomplished something.

We could have played any of these games in the past several years, but we didn’t. I was out at the theater most nights. The children sleep fitfully. No previous pandemic marooned us indoors. “A lot of games,” Fortugno said, “were invented because groups of people had to be around each other and were bored.” That’s most families. But it doesn’t quite explain why games — even Patchwork — feel so specifically soothing right now.

Games can be a healthy escapism, according to Robert Hewitt, who runs Brooklyn Game Lab, an after-school program that has since moved online. “When you sit down to one of these games, you’re existing within the parameters of the game,” he said. “For an hour or two hours, you’re concentrating on managing your sheep and your barns and your goats and you have that total sense of control. So I think that’s pretty calming.” (Really hoping this goat game isn’t a hypothetical.) He sent me a picture of his kitchen table covered in Robinson Crusoe, a solo game involving hundreds of cards and tokens. Consider Hewitt extremely calm.

Naomi Clark, a professor at New York University’s Game Center, described games as safe spaces to practice patterns of thought that now feel risky in the real-world, like long-term planning or resource allocation. She also mentioned some neuroscience research suggesting that games occupy the same neural pathways that might instead flashback to traumatic experiences, like, say, living through a pandemic. “Games actually sort of turn your brain down other pathways to allow your brain to heal,” she said.

In two months or six months or whenever lockdown relaxes, I can’t imagine we’ll play together as much. The children will spend most of the day in school; Broadway has to reopen sometime. We’ll pass some board games onto friends, donate others to the Brooklyn Library’s lending collection. But until then, we’ll open the box, unfold the board, shuffle the cards just so. Deal me in.

Some of Our Favorite Games

For the Whole Family

Animal Upon Animal It’s like Jenga, but better. This dexterity game asks players to stack sturdy wooden pieces (an alligator, hedgehogs, penguins, some weird little guys who might be lizards).

Outfoxed A cooperative game for kids, it asks you to play as chickens investigating a fox who stole a pot pie. (What is in that pot pie, anyway?) The fox hasn’t beaten us yet — even when I don’t let the kids cheat.

Scary Bingo The mechanics of this game are simple and familiar: A caller selects random tokens, players cover the relevant squares. But the design is witty and the monsters exuberantly weird.

And for Two Adults

Exit These escape room games have frustrating aspects — you have to be very precise in how you manipulate the pieces and you destroy some elements during play, so you can’t pass a game on. But the puzzles are delicious and solvable if you peek at the preliminary hints.

Patchwork The aesthetics are appalling and the set-up may seem overly simple. Just how complicated can a game about quilting get? Very. The design encourages you to think several moves ahead.

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective This cooperative game, if you can track down a copy, is meticulously constructed and maniacally engaging. You and yours play Baker Street Irregulars solving a Holmesian mystery.

--- By Alexis Soloski