Cherry blossoms in London, lava flowing in Iceland, Nowruz celebrations in Iraq, spring training in Florida, a COVID-19 memorial in Prague, a “rally against hate” in New York, record flooding in Australia, a stuck ship in the Suez Canal, and much more.

The recent shootings in Atlanta highlighted a surge of anti-Asian violence in the United States throughout the pandemic. Disease stigma and racism have together shaped pandemic response and policy for centuries.And so to better understand this history, on the podcast Social Distance, co-hosts James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins speak with Alexandre White, a sociologist and medical historian at Johns Hopkins University.

Joe Biden has a reputation as a softie—grandfatherly if you’re inclined toward him, somewhat windy and elderly if you aren’t. But when he reached for a phrase to define his approach to office during his first press conference, held today, he didn’t pick an Irish poet or an American statesman. Instead, he quoted the hardheaded Teutonic conservative known as the “Iron Chancellor”: “Politics is the art of the possible,” Biden said.

Yesterday, with only a few minutes left in my weekly Zoom appointment with my therapist, I decided to derail the proceedings to ask her what I believed was an essential question. It had nothing to do with my fear of vulnerability or difficulty asking for help; in fact, it had nothing to do with me at all.

It was 1996, Bill Clinton was president, and endangered bald eagles were dying in his home state of Arkansas.Twenty-nine were found dead at a man-made reservoir called DeGray Lake, before deaths spread to two other lakes. But what really puzzled scientists was how the eagles acted before they died. The stately birds were suddenly flying straight into cliff faces. They hit trees. Their wings drooped. Even on solid ground, they stumbled around as if drunk.