The U.S. has been dealing with an opioid epidemic for a generation. It's been bad, hundreds of

thousands of deaths in America, and then it got even worse during COVID. Last year, you might recall,

Sean talked to a Wall Street Journal reporter who had started carrying Narcan in her purse, just in case.

It's very small. You can fit it anywhere. I have two doses of it in my purse. I carry all the time.

I hope I never have to use them. But, you know, it's pretty easy to carry around.

So this is how grim it had gotten. Ordinary people preparing themselves to intervene in case of an OD.

But then, over the past year, something unexpected and very, very good happened.

Overdose deaths started dropping fast.

What on Earth happened is ahead on Today Explained. With an Intel AIPC, AI assistance helps you save time.

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2025 is going to be Intel.co.uk slash AIPC.

2020 is going to be a huge year for the tech industry.

AI is either going to take over or maybe kind of start to go away.

Regulation is going to continue and change the tech industry or maybe a new president is going to change his mind about how all that is supposed to work.

We're going to get new gadgets and new apps and new social platforms competing for our time and attention

and new information about what it means to be a person on the internet and how we should be thinking about that.

We have no idea what's coming next year, but on the Vergecast this month, we've decided to speculate wildly anyway.

We're spending our time trying to figure out what's coming next year, what isn't, and what it all means.

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