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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

The loneliness pandemic/Betraying “essential workers”

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We have something a bit different today. Two episodes from our extraordinary colleagues at Today, Explained, both of them close to my heart.  The first is an episode that I worked with them on, and appear in: The Loneliness Pandemic. It’s about the social consequences of social distancing, and the toll that isolation and loneliness takes on our health. It's about how the people most vulnerable to isolation are being told to quarantine, and what that will do to their lives. And it's about what the rest of us can do to help. The second is simply one of the best, most important podcast episodes I’ve heard in ages: It’s about how we’re treating the same workers we call “essential” as disposable, endangering them and their families, and calling them heroes even as we refuse to give them raises. And it's about the possibility — and historical precedent — for labor action in this moment, to make sure essential workers are treated as essential. Do not miss it. And if you’re lucky enough to be working from home, think about what you can do to stand in solidarity with those making your safety possible.  You can, and should, subscribe to "Today, Explained," wherever you get your podcasts.  Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas. The Ezra Klein Show is a finalist for a Webby! Make sure to vote at https://bit.ly/TEKS-webby New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Asura Clan Show on the Vox Media podcast network.

0:23.1

I'm taking a break today, for not too much of one, and I wanted to bring you two episodes

0:27.1

of today explained.

0:28.7

I'm telling you why you should listen to today explained, which is our daily news podcast

0:33.1

hosted by Sean Ramstrom.

0:34.1

I want to tell you why I do.

0:36.8

The news is unbelievably overwhelming and just sitting there refreshing doing it on

0:41.6

Twitter, it can drive you a little bit crazy.

0:44.8

And I say that to somebody producing some of that news.

0:47.8

And today explained is I find a calmer, clearer way, particularly when I'm trying to take

0:53.4

a bit of a break from daily updating to follow.

0:56.4

You get this great coronavirus update at the top and then they've just been doing an

0:59.5

extraordinary job slowing the issues down and either looking directly at something that

1:04.6

is core to the crisis or and I think this is such important work.

1:08.0

Finding what I would call coronavirus adjacent stories, the things in our society that

1:12.2

are maybe not the main story here and not being treated as a main story, but this is

1:16.1

shining a light on something we really need to pay attention to.

1:20.2

And so those stories in particular are helping me understand not just this crisis better,

1:24.8

but the world we live in, the world we lived in and the world we will return to hopefully

1:28.8

one day better.

1:30.2

So I wanted to bring you two episodes that I particularly got a lot out of this week.

1:33.6

One of them I'm in, so maybe this is a humble breaking or something, but it's about the loneliness

...

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