This is Planet Money from NPR.

So let's just start like in the before times.

It whatever, January 1st, 2020, who were you and what was your job?

So my job was a professor of economics at Brown University and I was also a person

who had written two books about pregnancy and parenting.

This is Emily Oster.

Her books, they're called Expecting Better and Crib Sheet, take basically a data-driven

approach to that everyday questions parents face.

So thinking about breastfeeding and circumcision and potty training and kind of what is the

data, say there.

And how old are your kids by the way?

They are five and nine.

Prime kid age.

Prime kid age.

This February, Emily started an email newsletter called Parent Data.

The idea was to do more of the things she did in her books.

You know, in the first issue of the newsletter, she recommended a favorite baby carrier and

parsed a new study on the relationship between antibiotics and allergies.

And then, as they say, the pandemic hit.

People are like, I'm so worried about kids getting this like, how big a deal is it for

kids and babies?

You may be like, oh, here's this study of like 25 people in China.

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