I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WB EZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette. I'm Greta Johnson.

The holidays are right around the corner, which has notoriously been a weird time for COVID in the last several years.

That's why we thought now would be the perfect time to check in with Dr. Emily Landon, who we like to call Nerdette's resident epidemiologist.

Her real job is that she's an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago. Emily, hello. Hey, how are you? I'm all right. How are you? I'm good. It

feels weird to be back. I love being on your show because it's so great, but at the same time,

that means that people are confused about COVID again. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

At one point over our numerous check-ins, you talked about how a good gauge of how things are going

is having a sense of how many people in your circle at any given time have COVID. And for me,

personally, it's been really quiet, especially over the summer, but in the last two weeks now,

I know of three people, which is like, oh, it's happening.

COVID cases are picking up, influenza cases are picking up, and RSV is really going strong right now.

So RSV is short for respiratory and syscial virus.

And it's mostly a problem in young kids.

So if you've got a little baby or a little

kid, you know about the RSV problem right now and you know about the dwindling number of

hospital beds that are available for kids that need them. But adults can get that too. And adults can

...