Hey folks, it's Rufus Griscoom. It's good to be back. Did you think we forgot about

you? Not a chance. We love making this show so much that we've taken the production

in-house, and we've been hard at work developing a new format that I think you're going to enjoy.

Alert listeners of our prior seasons know that a few years ago, I co-founded a book club

with four of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Kane, Adam Grant, and Dan Pink.

And do you know what happens when you start a book club? You get stacks and stacks of

the best new books piling up at your headquarters. And there are always a few that we can't

stop talking about. So we ask the authors of those books to distill them down into five

big ideas. And then we're going to call them up and talk about them. We're going into

this show with an unusual ambition. We want to have our minds changed, or at least for

open to it. Maybe you are too. So let's get into it. This is the next big idea.

I've been hearing the same question a lot lately. From friends and family, from supermarket

cashiers and talking heads on the nightly news, you've probably heard it too. I want to talk

about getting back to normal. When are we going to get back to normal? When do you say life

will fully return to what we thought of as normal? We've been asking for months yet the answer

still eludes us. It's a question of pure estimates. There are so many things Christmas

like they will be in a very different circumstance, but we don't know. We don't know. We don't

know if these new vaccines will be silver bullets or BB gun pellets. Are we going to be dancing

on tables this summer or worrying about the latest COVID variant? How about our kids? When will

they hoist their backpacks onto their shoulders and head back to school the way it used to be?

Whenever it is, it can't come soon enough for the three million of them who haven't had any

formal education at all since last March. And we can't forget all the Americans who've lost

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