Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Hi!

Like everyone else, there are a handful of random things I’m weirdly passionate about — the “die on this hill” category of hot takes. One of them is that Monopoly is not a good board game — you can click that link to see why I’m 100% right about that and why there is no argument to the contrary. 😉 Here’s another such take:

Teachers shouldn’t assign Lord of the Flies as required reading.

(Quick tangent: The title of today’s Weekender is clickbait, sorry/not-sorry about that. The alternative title I came up with was Rings 1, Flies 0, but I thought it was too vague and esoteric. Plus, I made a Lord of the Rings comment yesterday.)

In July 2023, I shared the story of six boys from Tonga who were shipwrecked for 15 months on an otherwise uninhabited island. I titled it “If Gilligan’s Island Were Real” because there were only six of them (similar to the seven on the S.S. Minnow) and because the six boys got along and worked together to create a mini-society on their island. I didn’t title it “If Lord of the Flies Were Real” because in that novel, there are 20-30 stranded boys and — more importantly — they didn’t get along at all, to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I came across a 12-minute read in the Guardian about the Tongan boys, titled “The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months,” intending to including it in my normal roundup of longreads. But I’ve been saving it because I wanted to make today’s point: in reality, the chaos and violence of Lord of the Flies doesn’t necessarily happen when the you-know-what hits the fan.

In Lord of the Flies, the boys are stranded after a plane crash and they try to build order — but their society breaks down into fear, factionalism, and violence. Leadership collapses, the signal fire is neglected, and by the end the island is in chaos and several boys are dead. The Guardian piece — which unlike Lord of the Flies, isn’t fiction — shows how in real life, a group of similarly-situated boys don’t splinter. Instead, they organized themselves, shared work, kept a fire going continuously, settled disputes with time-outs, prayed and sang together, and took care of one another through injury and hunger.

The novel suggests that, without civilization, boys revert to cruelty and savagery. The real-life story paints the opposite situation: the boys showed cooperation, discipline, and mutual care under extreme stress. I’m not suggesting either extreme defines human nature; people can fall anywhere along that spectrum, and not permanently.

But we are, often, what we’re taught to be. Having kids read Lord of the Flies can reinforce if not instill a belief that we (and young boys in particular) — if left to our own devices — would turn on each other and in extreme cases, treat our neighbors inhumanely and worse. Teaching them about the boys from Tonga does the opposite — it could inspire kids toward friendship, structure, and survival through cooperation. If we’re choosing what stories to place in front of kids, that seems like the better lesson.

So: We shouldn’t have kids read Lord of the Flies. We can teach them better ways forward, and should.

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Monday: How a Lost Donkey Became Wild Again: This is a cute one.

Tuesday: Why The Irish Did Not See Casablanca: Because it was too friendly to the bad guys!

Wednesday: Why You Shouldn’t Carpool with Winnie the Pooh: Bees!!

Thursday: Today is Matzah Ball Soup Day: Well, yesterday was. Today is anything but matzah day, thank you very much.

Now I Know is supported by readers like you. Yes, you! Many of my readers donate a few dollars a month to help Now I Know grow and thrive. And in exchange, they get an ad-free version!

And thanks! — Dan

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “Why Your Next Flight Is Likelier to Hit Turbulence” (The New Yorker, 36 minutes March 2026). Don’t read if you’re flying soon.

2) “The Last Great Weed Smuggler” (Rolling Stone, 25 minutes, March 2026). This is almost certainly behind a paywall; sorry about that, but it’s so fascinating I wanted to share anyway. The subhead: “Before the cartels took over, Harvey Prager built a life on millions of dollars of drug money. One prosecutor called Prager ‘the last of the great amateurs.’ This is his story.”

3) “Polygraphs Aren’t Very Accurate. Are There Better Options?” (Undark, 15 minutes, March 2026). This is probably a good example of Betteridge's law of headlines, but it’s fun to think about whether lie detection is something we can actually develop. (And honestly — pun intended — it may be for the better if we can’t!)

Have a great weekend!

Dan