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    • I'd have to go with something more mundane that we take for granted. Indoor plumbing, the refrigerator, modern dentistry, etc. Imagine life without indoor plumbing.

    • Lauri, when I was a grad student at Stanford, we had to transport a ginormous magnet from New Jersey across the US to Palo Alto. It took a truck with 18 axles and I think 16 wheels per axle, 8 on each side. If I remember right, it weighed almost 300,000 pounds. Hard to fathom.

      And then I took a flight on a 747. Fully loaded with fuel it weighs over 750,000 pounds. It has 78,000 titanium fasteners. Mind. Blown. I swore then I would never get over the wonder of flight and I never have.

    • I’m grateful for prosthetics! Oh, and anesthesia. Hope it is ok to list two things; either without the other wouldn’t be all that great.

    • There are so many aspects of technology to be grateful for it's definitely difficult to list one. Great list! Very much life changing those things.

    • Wow, prosthetics. I was preparing to interview Carol Guzy, the amazing photojournalist, and I heard her tell the story of having children from Sierra Leone come to the U.S. as part of a charity that fits children with prosthetics.

      This little girl lost her arm in war but was just so thrilled to make it to America where she could get a new one, she imitated the statue. Photo by Carol Guzy.

    • This reminds me of a joke I once saw a stand-up comedian do.

      The setup is about how grumpy people can be while on a plane. So many people complain about why the WiFi sucks, why the food is not very good, why there was a little delay before taking off, etc. Many airplane travelers just seem unhappy.

      The punchline is that in reality, every person on a plane should have this complete look of mind-blown amazement since they are sitting in a little chair, inside of a metal cylinder, going 500 mph, at 30,000 feet up in the sky.

      How amazing is that?