Hard Reset

During the pandemic, women have been more likely than men to lose work, cut their hours, and take on more parenting and household responsibilities. On today’s show, we spoke with reporter Emma Castleberry about how women have juggled financial challenges, parenting and getting covid.

Also: The coronavirus vaccine and Trump’s sustained false narrative on the election results.

For writer and comedian Jennie Egerdie, 2020 has been a year of personal and global upheaval. We talked about how the pandemic has impacted her work, her creative process and how humor can be rooted in kindness. (You can read one of her pieces that imagines the lives of the characters Frog and Toad during the pandemic here.)

Also on the show, JC and Mollie talked about how they’ll celebrate Thanksgiving during a time when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have advised Americans not to travel.

False claims surrounded the election, but it seems immune to efforts to delegitimize the results. We recap some of those efforts and offer predictions for what a Biden presidency could mean for how the government works, climate change policy and local media.

About 20 states have released inmates early from prisons that have been hot spots for covid-19. But a post-pandemic world has made it harder for formerly incarcerated people to get essential things like identification, homes and jobs.

We spoke with Emma Castleberry, who recently wrote about the new challenges to reentry after prison.

Plus: How tech companies responded to an “October surprise” story based on potentially hacked materials.

A month after it went into effect, many tenants still don’t know about a federal eviction ban that covers 96% of renters. We spoke with reporters Sarah Fowler and Ben Luschen about why advocates worry that a moratorium without rental assistance could leave tenants with thousands of dollars in debt and a remaining specter of eviction when the ban expires at the end of the year.

Editor Mollie Bryant also shared how Big If True identified three top evictors in Oklahoma that received at least $1.5 million in federal loans meant to offset financial losses during the pandemic.

The American west is facing a more severe wildfire season, which comes with stress, loss and a sense of mourning for our planet called climate grief. We spoke with Wired science journalist Matt Simon about this grief many of us are experiencing and the delicate balance of covering “the apocalypse beat” while keeping readers engaged with an often bleak topic.

Later on the show: Antigen tests for covid-19 are being used more and more, especially in places like nursing homes and colleges. But a reporting team from Kaiser Health News found that 21 states don’t report the results from these tests, restricting our understanding of the pandemic and our ability to respond to it. We spoke with one of the journalists behind this report, Rachana Pradhan, about why we need more antigen testing and how the pandemic has underscored longstanding problems with our health care system.

For decades, Utah has dominated the for-profit industry to help troubled kids, with facilities there receiving millions in government funds. We spoke with Salt Lake Tribune reporter Jessica Miller about her investigation into these youth treatment centers, where some former residents said they were abused.

Also: The politicization of a covid-19 vaccine and how violence in Portland and Kenosha, Wisconsin is playing out online.

The pandemic has highlighted and worsened inequality in the United States, where two neighborhoods in the same community can have vastly different infection rates. Also: How prison overcrowding can lead to covid outbreaks.

Today on the show: For years, far-right personalities have claimed that tech companies are biased against conservatives. Recent reports from NBC News and BuzzFeed show that at Facebook, fears of that perception led the company to turn a blind eye to misinformation from certain conservative pages.

Also: Why this year’s election results may be delayed and a look at the president’s recent executive order on evictions.

The federal government’s plan to fight the coronavirus has some holes. For some cities and states, that means filling those holes to protect the public.

This week’s show looks at this issue in two areas that deeply affect our lives – work and school.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration has released guidelines, but no concrete, enforceable rules that force businesses to take actions to protect their workers against covid-19. So last week, Virginia became the first state to create its own safety rules in response to the pandemic. We spoke with Doris Crouse-Mays, president of Virginia AFL-CIO, about why the requirements were needed.

Meanwhile, school districts are deciding whether or not to start fall classes in person or online. We talked to Aaron Phillips, president of the Amarillo Education Association, about the Texas Education Agency’s plan to allow schools to begin the fall semester virtually.