Hi Tim. Hi, I'm Mave. How are you? Not too bad. How are you?

Not too bad. How are you? Great. Nice to hear from you.

Yeah, this is Social Distance, the Atlantic's

podcast about the pandemic. I'm Jim Hamblin, a doctor and staff writer at the

Atlantic. And I'm Maeve Higgins, I'm a comedian and a writer too. I wanted to ask you something there, Jim.

Oh, really?

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I had this idea for the podcast that I would ask you lots of questions that you were comfortable with.

I like that idea. I like to try to be helpful.

My question is, okay, so here in Europe, you know, it's all going off, there's extra lockdowns, there's another surge.

Yeah. And can you guess what the fight is here?

I think people are pretty tired of talking about hearing about and

arguing about the pandemic so I might guess that it's something is it another exorcism no there

haven't been that many exorcisms I think like the hour changed here so the

darkness is lifting.

But the big thing at the moment, at least in this country is kids' shoes.

All the stores are closed here and you know kids feet grow incredibly fast.

I'm always saying it yeah and yet parents sometimes buy nice shoes for kids even though they

might only fit for a week I I don't know. I think they fit for two months.

I think that's the kind of thing. Yeah, so the big fight here with the government is, you know, my kid hasn't gotten

new shoes in six months, So look at the state of these

It's like the olden days where they cut the top off a shoe and they're like now I got you sandals

...