I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, October 20th.

If there's a silver lining to come out of the pandemic, it's probably this, and it may sound crazy, but the pandemic has actually

created market forces that, for the moment, are pushing up wages for some of the lowest paid,

most underpaid, and most essential workers in our economy. And it turns out, according to Washington

Post columnist Ishan Therr, that it's not just in the United States.

Ishaan will join us in just a second. This slightly improved environment for some of the most

taken advantage of workers in the wealthiest nations is fascinating for any number of reasons.

But one of them, for me, was to learn from Ishan's column that it's happening in Europe, too.

Because the other big thing that's going on in this country right now, as you know,

is President Biden trying to get his next generation social supports bill passed,

what they call the human infrastructure or a build-back better bill.

It really needs a name.

But in aiming for new child care and elder care and paid family leave and college access

programs, we always hear that we'd be catching up with Europe, right?

So it's interesting to me to see that this up-our-stinky wages movement is going on over there, too.

So we'll talk to Washington Post

Global Affairs columnist Ishaun Thore about that and about the preview that he wrote up of the big

upcoming climate summit in Scotland. Ishaun, always great to have you on the show. I always learn

stuff when you're on. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It's such a

pleasure to be with you. The headline on that column is The Great Resignation goes global. Can you

remind us briefly what the term the Great Resignation refers to and what's driving it?

Right. Well, so the Great Resignation is a term that we've heard in over the last

...