The Daily

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...

Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 player in men’s tennis, had a lot at stake going into this year’s Australian Open. A win there would have made him the most decorated male tennis player in history.  But he arrived in the country without having had a Covid-19 vaccination, flying in the face of Australia’s rules, and after a court battle he was ultimately deported. In Australia, the “Djokovic affair”...

Microsoft announced this week that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard, the maker of video games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush, in a deal valued at nearly $70 billion. Microsoft, the owner of Xbox, said the acquisition was a step toward gaining a foothold in the metaverse. But what exactly is the metaverse? And why are some of the biggest companies in the world spending billions of dollars...

It’s a big week in the Senate for voting rights. Democrats have two bills that include measures to bolster and protect elections. But the bills are almost certain to fail. Why has it proved almost impossible to pass legislation so integral to the agenda of President Biden and the Democrats? Guest: Astead W. Herndon , a national political reporter for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Dai...

Four years ago, Azmat Khan, an investigative reporter for The Times Magazine, told us the story of Basim Razzo , whose entire family was killed in a U.S.-led airstrike in Iraq. His story helped reveal how American air wars were resulting in a staggering number of civilian deaths. Analyzing thousands of pages of U.S. military reports and investigating in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Azmat was able...

Elizabeth Weil, the author of today’s Sunday Read, writes that, in her marriage, there was a silent third spouse: California. “The state was dramatic and a handful,” Weil writes. “But she was gorgeous, and she brought into our lives, through the natural world, all the treasure and magic we’d need.” However, for Weil, there is internal conflict living in a state where wildfires have become the norm...

Sidney Poitier, who was Hollywood’s first Black matinee idol and who helped open the door for Black actors in the film industry, died last week. He was 94. For Wesley Morris, a Times culture critic, it is Mr. Poitier — not John Wayne, Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe — who is the greatest American movie star. “His legacy is so much wider and deeper than the art itself,” Wesley said. “This man has mana...

As the highly infectious Omicron variant surged, a high-stakes battle played out between Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and the city’s teachers’ union about how to keep schools open and safe. We chart this battle on the ground in Chicago, speaking with teachers, parents and students about the standoff. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the...

The diplomatic talks in Geneva this week are of a kind not seen in a long time: an effort to defuse the possibility of a major war in Europe. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has amassed military equipment and personnel on the border with Ukraine. President Biden has warned that there will be consequences if Mr. Putin decides to invade, but what can Washington do to impel the Kremlin to back...

 The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has a reputation for causing mild illness, yet it’s fueling a staggering rise in hospitalizations across the country.  In some of the early hot spots for the variant, emergency rooms are filling up, hospitals are being flooded with new patients and there aren’t enough staff to care for all of them.  We explore why the Omicron surge is leading to hospitalizat...

This year’s Golden Globes ceremony was muted. Instead of a celebrity-filled evening, broadcast on NBC, the results were live tweeted from a room in the Beverly Hilton.  It was the culmination of years of controversy for the awards and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization behind them.  Who are the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and how did one of the biggest awards shows g...

In her new book, “The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change,” Pauline Boss considers what it means to reach “emotional closure” in a state of unnamable grief. Hard to define, these grievances have been granted a new name: ambiguous loss. The death of a loved one, missing relatives, giving a child up for adoption, a lost friend — Boss teases out how one can mourn somethin...

After the election on Nov. 3, 2020, President J. Donald Trump and his allies tested the limits of the U.S. election system, launching pressure and legal campaigns in competitive states to have votes overturned — all the while exposing the system’s precariousness. Although the efforts weren’t successful, they appear to have been only the beginning of a wider attack on American elections. In the fin...

This episode contains strong language.  In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming was the only Republican leader calling on President Donald Trump to move on from his efforts to overturn the results. Then, after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, she gave a full-throated condemnation of what had happened and the rhetoric that facilitated it.  A year later, whi...

Who exactly joined the mob that, almost a year ago, on Jan. 6, breached the walls of the U.S. Capitol in a bid to halt the certification of President Biden’s election victory? Members of far-right extremist groups were present but so too were also doctors, lawyers, substitute teachers and church deacons, many of whom had previously been nonpolitical.  The question of why they were at the Capitol t...

About a decade ago, companies began offering pregnant women tests that promised to detect rare genetic disorders in their fetuses. The tests initially looked for Down syndrome and worked well, but later tests for rarer conditions did not. An investigation has found that the grave predictions made by those newer tests are usually incorrect. We look at why the tests are so wrong and what can be done...

The Omicron variant is fueling record-breaking cases across the world and disrupting life. But it may not present as great a danger of hospitalization and severe illness as earlier variants. We explore why this is and what it means for the next stage of the pandemic. Guest: Carl Zimmer , a science writer and author of the “Matter” column for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in you...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. With most natural disasters, the devastation is immediately apparent. But when a winter storm hit Texas, some of the damage was a lot less visible. The stories of Iris Cantu, Suzanne Mitchell and Tumaini Criss showed the depth of the destruction. Their...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. The Good Shepherd Nursing Home in West Virginia lifted its coronavirus lockdown in February. For months, residents had been confined to their rooms, unable to mix. But with everybody vaccinated, it was time to see one another again, albeit with rules o...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. This episode contains strong language. Dogecoin started out as a kind of inside joke in the world of cryptocurrency. However, earlier this year, it quickly became, for some, a very serious path to wealth. Today, we return to the unlikely story of a 33-...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. When Officer Harry Dunn reported for work at the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6, he expected a day of relatively normal protests. At noon, the mood shifted. He received calls over his radio that the demonstrations were becoming violent. When he took...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. This episode contains strong language. Bartenders, sous chefs, wait staff — back in August, managers in the U.S. hospitality industry were struggling to fill a range of roles at their establishments. One owner of a gourmet burger restaurant in Houston...

A year that started with the mass introduction of Covid vaccines and the astonishing scenes of rioting at the Capitol is ending with concern about new virus variants and fears about the effects of a warming climate. As we approach the end of the year, we listen back to more of the events that defined 2021. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how t...

By the end of last year, if you needed a coronavirus test, you could get one. But when vaccines arrived, focus shifted. Many of the vaccinated felt like they didn’t need tests and demand took a nosedive. Testing sites were closed or converted into vaccination sites. And Abbott Laboratories, a major test manufacturer, wound up destroying millions. However, with the surge of the new Omicron variant,...

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was always going to be the last Democrat to get on board with President Biden’s $2.2 trillion climate, social spending and tax bill. But the White House was confident that a compromise could be reached. On Sunday, that confidence was shattered: In an interview on Fox News, Mr. Manchin essentially declared that he could not support the bill as written, and he in...