The Daily

Stephen Sondheim died last week at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91. For six decades, Mr. Sondheim, a composer-lyricist whose works include “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods,” transformed musical theater into an art form as rich, complex and contradictory as life itself. “For me, the loss that we see pouring out of Twitter right now and everywhere you look as people write about their memories...

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard a case that was a frontal challenge to Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. The case in front of the justices was about a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. For the state to win, the court, which now has a conservative majority, would have to do real damage to the centra...

Amazon is constantly hiring. Data has shown that the company has had a turnover rate of about 150 percent a year. For the founder, Jeff Bezos, worker retention was not important, and the company built systems that didn’t require skilled workers or extensive training — it could hire and lose people all of the time. Amazon has been able to replenish its work force, but the pandemic has exposed the v...

The story of the Omicron variant began a week ago, when researchers in southern Africa detected a version of the coronavirus that carried 50 mutations.  When scientists look at coronavirus mutations, they worry about three things: Is the new variant more contagious? Is it going to cause people to get sicker? And how will the vaccines work against it?  We explore when we will get the answers to the...

This episode contains strong language.  Heading into deliberations in the trial of the three white men in Georgia accused of chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man, it was not clear which way the jurors were leaning.  In the end, the mostly white jury found all three men guilty of murder. We look at the prosecution’s decision not to make race a central tenet of their case, an...

After a landslide re-election in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s control over India seemed impossible to challenge. But a yearlong farmers’ protest against agricultural overhauls has done just that, forcing the Indian prime minister to back down. How did the protesters succeed? Guest: Emily Schmall , a South Asia correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbo...

In the 1950s and ’60s, the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in the United States, was a vibrant community. But the construction of the Claiborne Expressway in the 1960s gutted the area. The Biden administration has said that the trillion-dollar infrastructure package will address such historical wrongs. How might that be achieved? Guest: Audra D.S...

This episode contains strong language. On Aug. 25, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager, shot three men, two of them fatally, during street protests in Kenosha, Wis., over the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer. Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial, which began on Nov. 1, revolved around a central question: Did his actions constitute self-defense under Wisconsin law? Last week, a jury decided that...

As the novel coronavirus spread and much of the world moved toward isolation, dream researchers began rushing to design studies and set up surveys that might allow them to access some of the most isolated places of all, the dreamscapes unfolding inside individual brains. The first thing almost everyone noticed was that for many people, their dream worlds seemed suddenly larger and more intense. On...

For three decades, President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, a former Soviet nation in Eastern Europe, ruled with an iron fist. But pressure has mounted on him in the past year and a half. After a contested election in 2020, the European Union enacted sanctions and refused to recognize his leadership. In the hopes of bringing the bloc to the negotiating table, Mr. Lukashenko has engineered a migr...

The U.S. economy is doing better than many had anticipated. Some 80 percent of jobs lost during the pandemic have been regained, and people are making, and spending, more. But Americans seem to feel terrible about the financial outlook. Why the gap between reality and perception? Guest: Ben Casselman , a reporter covering economics and business for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily...

This episode contains strong language. In Bucks County, Pa., what started out as a group of frustrated parents pushing for schools to reopen devolved over the course of a year and half into partisan disputes about America’s most divisive cultural issues. But those arguments have caused many to overlook a central role of the Central Bucks School District’s board: providing quality education. In Par...

This episode contains strong language. A new battleground has emerged in American politics: school boards. In these meetings, parents increasingly engage in heated — sometimes violent — fights over hot-button issues such as mask mandates and critical race theory. Suddenly, the question of who sits on a school board has become a question about which version of America will prevail. We visit the sch...

This episode contains strong language. In March 2019, workers inside an Air Force combat operations center in Qatar watched as an American F-15 attack jet dropped a large bomb into a group of women and children in Syria. Assessing the damage, the workers found that there had been around 70 casualties, and a lawyer decided that it was a potential war crime. We look at how the system that was design...

In 1980, when few Americans knew the meaning of toro and omakase , the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, spoke to dozens of his followers in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel. It was said Moon could see the future, visit you in dreams and speak with the spirit world, where Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Washington, caliphs and emperors and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther...

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, described the current status of the pandemic in the United States as a “mixed bag” that is leaning more toward the positive than the negative. But, he said, there is still more work to do. In our conversation, he weighs in on vaccine mandates, booster shots and the end of the pandemic. Guest: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading...

This episode contains strong language. When the coronavirus hit the United States, the nation’s public health officials were in the front line, monitoring cases and calibrating rules to combat the spread. From the start, however, there has been resistance. A Times investigation found that 100 new laws have since been passed that wrest power from public health officials. What is the effect of those...

Over the past year, a record 2,000 migrants from Africa have drowned trying to reach Spain. Many of these migrants make the journey in rickety vessels, not much bigger than canoes, that often don’t stand up to strong currents. What happens, then, when their bodies wash ashore? This is the story of Martín Zamora, a 61-year-old father of seven, who has committed himself to returning the bodies of dr...

In a bipartisan win for President Biden, Democrats and Republicans have passed a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. Now comes the difficult part — trying to win approval for a $2 trillion social spending bill. For more moderate Democrats in swing districts, the vote will be among the toughest of the Biden era — and one that some fear could cost them their seats in next year’s midterms. To gauge...

The U.S. Supreme Court is gearing up to rule on an area of the law that it has been silent on for over a decade: the Second Amendment. The case under consideration will help decide whether the right to bear arms extends beyond the home and into the streets. The implications of the decision could be enormous. A quarter of the U.S. population lives in states whose laws might be affected. Guest: Adam...

Like many other Americans, Jamie Lauren Keiles, the author of this week’s Sunday Read, bought their first motorcycle during the coronavirus pandemic. “I thought I was just purchasing a mode of transportation — a way to get around without riding the train,” they wrote. “But after some time on the street with other riders, I started to suspect I’d signed up for a lot more.” Jamie was aware of biker...

This episode contains strong language and scenes of violence. Last summer, as the country reeled from the murder of George Floyd, another Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by police in Kenosha, Wis. People took to the streets in Kenosha in protest and were soon met by civilians in militia gear — a confrontation that turned violent. On the third night of protests, a white teenager shot and killed tw...

On a major night of elections across the United States on Tuesday, the Republican Glenn Youngkin claimed an unexpected victory over his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, to win the governor’s race in Virginia. As the night went on, it became clear that the contest in Virginia was not a singular event — Republicans were doing well in several unlikely places. What do the results tell us about th...

In a giant conference hall in Glasgow, leaders from around the world have gathered for the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention, or COP26. This is the 26th such session. Many say this may be the last chance to avoid climate disaster. Will anything change this time? Guest: Somini Sengupta , the international climate reporter for The New York Times.  Sign up here to...

Inflation in the United States is rising at its fastest rate so far this century. At 4 percent, according to one index, it is double the Federal Reserve’s target. We look at why prices are on the rise and at the tense political moment they have created. Guest: Jim Tankersley , a White House correspondent for The New York Times.  Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an...