A City at the Peak of Crisis

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Wickenden, Washington, Lizza, Obama, Wnyc, News, Barack, Politics

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Experts predicted that Wednesday, April 15th would be a peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, its epicenter. On that day, a crew of New Yorker writers talked with people all over the city, in every circumstance and walk of life, to form a portrait of a city in crisis. A group-station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can’t live without it; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying; a graduating class of medical students get up the courage to confront the worst crisis in generations; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families. The hour includes contributions from writers including William Finnegan, Helen Rosner, Jia Tolentino, Kelefa Sanneh, and Adam Gopnik, who says, “One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life, or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life. That's the mystery of the pandemic.”

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Transcript

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1:17.8	I'm Dorothy Wickenden on today's Politics and More podcast, 24 hours in New York City at the height of the coronavirus epidemic. On April 15th, New Yorker writers fanned out across
1:23.7	the city to document a single day in the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis.
1:29.4	You can read much more of their reporting on New Yorker.com and in this week's issue of The New Yorker.
1:38.8	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
1:46.0	I don't even know if this thing is working.
1:48.8	Well, I guess it is. Seems to be shown my voice there.
1:52.8	Yeah, so it's really quiet, and it is 538 a.m.
2:07.4	A.m. A.m. A. A. A. guy rides his bicycle down here and is at a bench and is doing some kind of leg exercises. And he's the only human around on the boardwalk besides me.
2:16.7	Ian Frazier was out before recently, on Brighton Beach.
2:20.8	He watched the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.
	...

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