Peggy 16.

My name is Paul Heyman, special counsel to Roman Raines and the Bloodlines Wise Man.

Step out of the ropes and onto the island in WW2K25, an epic WWE themed world ruled by the one and only Roman reigns.

The return of promos plus intergender matches, my GM goes multiplayer, and more.

WW2K25, available March 14th pre-order now.

Welcome to the Kotke Ride Home for Monday, March 7th, 2022. I'm Jackson Bird today. After two years, why have some of us never gotten COVID? Plus, the surprisingly artistic and wonderful squirrel census. And a volcanic rock in Japan, rumored to contain a thousand-year-old demonic spirit,

has just been found split in two.

NBD.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

As we enter our third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the two-year anniversary today of this podcast in its initial form as a coronavirus daily briefing, the global death toll has now passed 6 million.

Nearly a sixth of those deaths have occurred in the United States,

although the Associated Press notes that worldwide, the overall number is probably much larger.

This is due to poor record keeping and testing, as well as deaths indirectly caused by the pandemic.

Like, for example, someone who may have died of a preventable

cause because they were unable to receive treatment because the hospitals were full. It is an

incredibly sobering number. And even as cases fall for the time in many parts of the world,

they're on the rise in the Western Pacific, particularly in island nations just now getting

their first cases. And as we grapple with these numbers and remind ourselves of just how long

we've been living in this new reality, one question seems to be surfacing with a lot of researchers.

Why is it really that some people still have never caught COVID?

Two full years in, multiple variants, lots of surges, and yet there are plenty of healthcare workers

face-to-face with actively contagious patients, partners and caregivers of infected loved ones,

...