It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Wednesday, May 6th.

For those of you who gasped last night, or maybe shuddered a little bit last night,

when you saw the news come across that

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the hospital. Let me begin today with two pieces of good news. One is

simply that she seems to be okay, reportedly. They're calling it a benign gallbladder infection,

and ironically, the COVID-era new normal of the Supreme Court

means she will be able to participate in oral arguments today in an important case about

birth control by telephone from her hospital bed. Before COVID, I guess she would just have

had to miss today's session. That's ironic and interesting. They're all doing

it by telephone. That's why she can participate. The other piece of good news, for those of you

rooting for long life for the resilient RBG, who has beat both pancreatic and colorectal cancer,

the second piece of good news is a little more indirect, but get this.

The New York Post had an article yesterday about a surprising number of centenarians

licking coronavirus.

One 104-year-old Brooklyn woman named Ida Acanchia Mesa had already survived the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and cancer and two

broken hips before she beat the coronavirus last month.

How about that?

She survived two pandemics 100 years apart.

Another century-old survivor in the article is a former fire dispatcher from the NYFD from Long Island, who retired at 95 before besting

the bug at more than 100. Another is an Oregon vet who made it through World War II and now COVID-19.

So some bright spots for RBG and really for the world, amid all the grief and amid

...