The Daily

As hospitals in the United States battled another coronavirus wave in the past few months, another crisis was steadily growing more acute: a shortage of nurses. We speak to some of the “forgotten warriors” of the nursing profession, at Pascagoula Hospital in Mississippi, to find out what life is like on the front line of the pandemic. Guest: Andrew Jacobs , a global health reporter for The New Yor...

Since the beginning of the standoff with Moscow over Ukraine, President Biden has been clear that he will not allow American troops to come into direct combat with Russians. Why has the U.S., a country that has intervened all over the world in various contexts, taken that powerful option off the table? Guest: David E. Sanger , a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Time...

Canada has employed strict restrictions in its efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic. But unlike in the United States, such measures have received very little pushback or politicization — until recently. Truckers protesting a vaccine mandate have occupied the nation’s capital, Ottawa, for three weeks, leading Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to declare a state of national emergency. We ask how Ca...

Officials in the United States say that Russia could invade Ukraine as early as this week, which raises the question: Should an attack come, how will the Ukrainian people respond?  The answer may be complicated. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been a real push and pull between Russia and the West inside Ukraine.  We hear about how Ukrainians are viewing the threat.  Guest...

As the N.F.L. season comes to a close, we’re looking at a class-action lawsuit that Brian Flores, a former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, has filed against the league. At the heart of the case is the Rooney Rule, a policy the league implemented two decades ago that has since been adopted across corporate America. We explore the lawsuit and the Rooney Rule, and we hear from Cyrus Mehri, a civil...

There’s a working theory for the origins of Covid-19. It goes like this: Somewhere in an open-air market in Wuhan, China, a new coronavirus, growing inside an animal, first made the jump to a human. But what happens when diseases spread in the other direction? Sonia Shah, a science journalist, explores the dangers of “spillback,” or “reverse zoonosis”: when humans infect non-humans with disease. U...

A mysterious letter detailing a supposed plot by Islamic extremists to take over schools shocked Britain in 2014. But who wrote it? From Serial Productions and The New York Times, “ The Trojan Horse Affair ” is a mystery told in eight parts. Here’s the first. Find the series wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subsc...

Joe Rogan, a comedian and host of the hit podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for promoting Covid-19 misinformation . Spotify, which owns exclusive rights to Mr. Rogan’s show, has been criticized as the platform for the misinformation. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify in protest. Now, a compilation of video clips of Mr. Rogan us...

One by one, blue states across the United States have been rolling back their Covid-19 restrictions, going against C.D.C. guidelines that are still backed by the White House. Why are governors in states like California, Illinois and New York taking those actions? And what do they say about the shifting politics of the pandemic? Guest: Lisa Lerer , a national political correspondent for The New Yor...

Birds Aren’t Real, a conspiracy theory with an apparently absurd premise, has become surprisingly popular in the past few years. But its followers were in on the joke: The movement’s aim was to poke fun at misinformation … by creating misinformation. Has it been successful? Guest: Taylor Lorenz , a former technology reporter for The New York Times. Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? Th...

If Russia invades Ukraine, it would be the largest and potentially deadliest military action in Europe since World War II. So why is there so much division between the U.S. and its European allies over how seriously to take the threat? Guest: Anton Troianovski , the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode...

This episode contains depictions of violence Almost two years ago, a shocking nine-minute video was released showing a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, fatally kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. Mr. Chauvin is now serving a long sentence for murder. A few weeks ago, a trial began in the case of the three other officers who were on the scene that day. They are charged with violating Mr...

If you didn’t think poker and artificial intelligence could be bedfellows, think again. Keith Romer delves into the history of man’s pursuit of the perfect game of poker, and explains how the use of A.I. is altering how it is played: individuals using an algorithmic “solver program” to analyze potential weaknesses about themselves and their opponents, thus gaining an advantage. While it feels futu...

Reporters from The Times are joining athletes from around the world as they descend on Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, where they are encountering the strictest and most wide-ranging health requirements ever attempted at an Olympic Games. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has made it his goal to keep the coronavirus out of the country as much as possible, and these requirements are an extension of...

A recent ISIS attack on a prison in northeastern Syria became the biggest confrontation between the terrorist group and the United States and its allied forces since 2019. The attack raises a question: Could the Islamic State group be on the cusp of a resurgence?  We explore what the attack means, why the prison was so vulnerable in the first place and what has become of the thousands of fighters...

Since the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a clearer picture has emerged of the steps that President Donald J. Trump and his allies took to try to keep him in power and overturn the 2020 election. One of the biggest questions, however, has been how far was Mr. Trump willing to go in using the apparatus of the federal government to stay in power? The Times has uncovered that in the weeks af...

Inflation in the United States has been getting worse. In December, prices were up 7 percent from the previous year — the fastest rise in 40 years.  Americans feel terrible about the economy, imperiling the Democratic Party’s chances of holding on to power in Washington in this year’s midterm elections. While disruption caused by the pandemic is a key cause of higher prices — a situation that pred...

America, it seems, might be at a turning point in how we think about and respond to the pandemic. Yet, the U.S., at this moment, is still in the midst of crisis — thousands of people are in hospital and dying every day. In the second part of our exploration of the state of the pandemic, we speak with Dr. Anthony Fauci about the conditions under which we could learn to live with the virus and what...

Today, Maggie Jones explores the overlooked topic of geriatric sex. Profiling older couples for whom it is still important, she considers the obstacles and joys of having sex over the age of 70, and the way society has begun to talk more openly about it in recent years. As bodies change, Jones writes, good sex in old age often requires reimagining and expanding: a conscious inclusion of more touch...

During the pandemic, the price of beef shot up. Wholesale beef prices increased more than 40 percent — more than 70 percent for certain cuts of steak.  The conventional wisdom was that price increases simply reflected the chaos that the coronavirus had caused in the supply chain. But there’s evidence that they were in fact a reflection of a more fundamental change in the meatpacking business. We s...

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Justice Stephen Breyer, the senior member of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, will retire from the bench.  Democrats, and many on the left, will have breathed a sigh of relief. His decision has given President Biden the chance to nominate a successor while Democrats control the Senate.  We take a look at the legacy of Justice Breyer’s time on the court, why he c...

It appears that the United States may be at a turning point in the pandemic. The contagiousness of the Omicron variant has many people resigned to the fact that they probably will be infected; this variant is, relative to its predecessors and in most cases, milder; and there is universal vaccine access for those old enough to receive a shot.  So, The Times commissioned a poll of 4,400 Americans to...

When allegations first emerged in November about parties held at 10 Downing Street, the residence and offices of the British prime minister, during a strict Covid lockdown, Prime Minister Boris Johnson waved them away.  Yet in the weeks since, the scandal has only grown, with public outrage building as more instances and details of lockdown parties at Downing Street have emerged. Some voters in Br...

This episode contains strong language.  Marieke Vervoort was a champion Paralympic athlete from Belgium. In 2016, Vervoort, who had a progressive disease, announced her retirement from professional sports and spoke of her desire to undergo euthanasia. Today, we hear Vervoort’s story from Lynsey Addario, a photojournalist who documented the end of her life. “In most of my experiences covering Iraq...

What is “disgust”? Molly Young, a journalist with The New York Times, considers the evolutionary and social uses of this “universal aspect of life” to identify the impact of disgust in its physical, psychological and linguistic manifestations. Young explains the different forms of disgust, analyzing how the reactions they elicit play out in the body and mind, and why it is in many ways cultural. S...