The State of the Pandemic

A year that started with the mass introduction of Covid vaccines and the astonishing scenes of rioting at the Capitol is ending with concern about new virus variants and fears about the effects of a w...

23 Dec 202130min

By the end of last year, if you needed a coronavirus test, you could get one. But when vaccines arrived, focus shifted.Many of the vaccinated felt like they didn’t need tests and demand took a nosediv...

22 Dec 202131min

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was always going to be the last Democrat to get on board with President Biden’s $2.2 trillion climate, social spending and tax bill. But the White House was confid...

21 Dec 202125min

This episode contains references to suicide and abuse that may be upsetting to some listeners.A few months ago, we told the story of N, a teenager in Afghanistan whose family was trying to force her t...

20 Dec 202134min

Nearly a decade after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed piers and damaged riverside social housing projects, residents of Lower Manhattan are still vulnerable to floods.Michael Kimme...

19 Dec 202146min

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is incredibly contagious — it is able to infect people with even greater frequency than the Delta variant, and it is skilled at evading the immune system’s defen...

17 Dec 202126min

Anti-abortion activists across the country are optimistic that they might be on the cusp of achieving a long-held goal of the movement: overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that ex...

16 Dec 202123min

The economic situation in Afghanistan is perilous. Banks have run out of cash. In some areas, Afghans are selling their belongings in ad hoc flea markets. Parents wait around hospitals and clinics in ...

15 Dec 202127min