The HBS hosts consider the last year living through the COVID-19 pandemic. What can we not believe that we did before COVID? What can’t we wait to get back to doing? What do we hope we never go back to doing?

Today’s episode offers a look back on a year of the COVID 19 pandemic. This year has been a wild ride for individuals and communities the world over. Leigh, Ammon, and Shannon talk about the kinds of things that people seem excited to get back to: live music, bars, movies, and large gatherings of friends and family. They also discuss what really shouldn’t be returned to: constant flying, lack of work accessibility and accommodations, and the gutting of social services that monitor illnesses and protect populations. They raise a number of questions that the past year has given rise to in pointed ways: Who counts as an essential worker and why is this a moving target? How do we relate to our friends and family who have engaged in thoughtless and irresponsible behavior during the past year? Can these relationships be salvaged? What considerations need to go into reopening restaurants, schools, bars, and gyms? What can we take away as some of the most valuable lessons of a very unsettling year?

For further reading, check out the links below:

• The pandemic has had many environmental impacts, both positive and negative.
• Who counts as an essential worker? These articles in the New York Times and The Washington Post look at the social and political implications of the designation of essential workers.
• Now that the country has been able to accommodate large swaths of people working remotely, the time has come to make these accommodations permanent for those who are sick, disabled, or caring for young children, and aging and infirm family members.
• Giorgio Agamben discuses homo sacer in, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. 
• For Simone de Beauvoir’s discussion of ethical obligation see, The Ethics of Ambiguity.
• Should schools run in person or online during a pandemic?
• The economy has been dramatically affected by COVID. Will we learn to share resources or focus more on making the rich richer?