This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. No one living has ever seen anything

quite like what's happening to our economy now. Tens of millions of Americans have filed for

unemployment in just a matter of

weeks. Millions more can't even get through the systems to file. We don't know how many workers

have been furloughed or had their hours cut. And there's already concerned that the multi-trillion

dollar relief package won't be enough to tide us over to the other side of this pandemic,

whenever that comes.

The pain is just enormous, and the brunt of it is being borne by those who didn't have much

of a cushion to begin with. To make sense of where things are headed, last week I called up John

Cassidy, who covers economics and politics for the New Yorker. John, we're hearing so many

dire statistics about the economy. Before we

dive into them, how would you differentiate between the Great Depression and the way that

began and the way it stuck around for years and what we seem to be entering here during this coronavirus economic crisis.

Yeah, that's a very good question. I mean, they are very different. They're similar in that

their huge, you know, the just huge downturns. But the Great Depression, the stock market crash

was in October 1929, and unemployment didn't peak until 1933 at about 25%.

So it was a gradual process, whereas what we've seen here is just a sudden stop to the economy.

So it's more like a heart attack than the Great Depression.

We've just said, bang, stop, not everything, but a lot of things.

And we've imposed these enormous restrictions on the economy,

but on the other side, these equally enormous rescue programs

...