Marketplace All-in-One

From the BBC World Service: Global companies are having to backtrack or delay their return to office plans as the omicron variant continues to spread. Google’s EMEA boss explains why digital skills are so important in the pandemic era. As many offices continue to sit empty after two years, one man in Scotland is looking to capture the sounds of traditional workplaces.

A little over a year ago, the first American received a COVID-19 vaccine. Now, we’re averaging more than 250,000 positive COVID cases per day. This year has been … a lot. Consumers and workers are more resilient but are tired or burned out. Counselors and clinicians are overwhelmed with the scale of grief they’ve been tasked with addressing. Today, we’ll talk about the psychological toll the pandemic has taken, how to grieve the lives we once knew and how to live with this continued uncertainty. Plus: The huge price tag of returning those unwanted holiday gifts, a new holistic approach to preventive care coming to California and a look at Japan’s hydrogen-focused plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The CDC has noted more than 85 cruise vessels that have reported cases of COVID onboard in a span of roughly seven days. Despite that, cruise operators are forging ahead with their ships’ itineraries, saying there are measures in place to cut down on risk. Susan Schmidt helps us start to look back at the year in markets. Gym owners are having a tougher time powering through the emergence of the omicron variant.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a crucial time for Broadway in terms of revenue, but COVID-19 outbreaks among casts and crew have led to many performances getting canceled or scrambling to put on a show. OSHA’s temporary COVID-19 safety rules for health care employers have expired as omicron cases are mounting. The BBC reports on Hong Kong police raiding the Stand News media outlet and arresting its staff.

From the BBC World Service: Governments around the world are going to have to find ways to tighten their financial belts following unprecedented pandemic spending. Global public and private debt rose to 256% of GDP, or $226 trillion in 2020 – the largest one-year debt surge after World War Two – according to the International Monetary Fund’s Global Debt Database. Ghana’s government is facing stiff resistance, including a brawl in parliament, to plans for an online transaction tax that could raise over $1 billion next year.

The pandemic has exacerbated the country’s opioid crisis. More than 100,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses last year in the highest one-year death toll on record. Today, we take a look at a recently expanded program in California, one that utilizes medically assisted treatment in emergency rooms and is becoming a model for other programs around the nation. We’ll also hear about the questions Moderna’s shareholders are raising regarding global vaccine equity, take a look at the future of streaming services and examine Brexit’s impact on the United Kingdom’s role as a hub for plundered antiquities.

Hey smarties! We’re on a break for the holidays and revisiting some favorite episodes from 2021. We want to say a big thank-you for being part of the “Make Me Smart” family this year — every voicemail, question and donation made a huge difference. None of us is as smart as all of us, and we couldn’t do this show without you. There’s still time to help Marketplace reach its end-of-year fundraising goal. If you can, please donate here. Thanks, happy holidays and we’ll see you in the new year.

For some, life is starting to resemble something like normal. Kids are going back to school, some offices are welcoming back workers … so why are we still feeling stressed?

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy says there are a couple reasons. For one, the pandemic has gone on for so long, our coping system known as “surge capacity” is depleted.

“We then move into this regression phase where we withdraw, we get sad, agitated, we don’t want to hang out with people, we’re done with Zoom meetings. So it’s not surprising that we don’t have the capacity to feel intense positive emotions right now when we go out to that live concert,” Cuddy said.

And when you throw the coronavirus delta variant into the mix, things get even harder. Cuddy says right now it’s common for people to experience spikes in anxiety, depression and have a desire to escape. She refers to this as “pandemic flux syndrome.” That’s not actually a clinical term. But it is real.

On today’s show, Cuddy explains the role employers can play to help workers through this chapter of the pandemic.

Later in the show, we’ll discuss how Facebook is dealing with the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and MacKenzie Scott reshaping the nonprofit world. Plus, a longtime listener calls in with an update on paying for his twin sons’ college education.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Housing prices have spiked, and as a result, many potential first-time buyers are getting pushed out of the market. Gus Faucher joins us to talk about how higher prices on goods and services could lead to continued inflation. Seasonal hiring has taken a dip, and with omicron still looming, fewer temporary workers could have trouble staying on permanently.

A new working paper is examining demand following the wave of power outages that plagued Texas earlier this year. Blake Shaffer, an economics professor and former energy trader, is one of the authors of that paper, and we spoke to him about the “other side” of the electricity grid discussion. A surge of omicron cases has led Apple to close all of its stores in New York City.

From the BBC World Service: Get ready for some acronym soup in the new year. RCEP is coming into force in January 2022 but how does it stack up against the USMCA, CPTPP and other big trade deals? Global shipping companies made billions in profit due to supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic. And Santa has come to town again for stock market traders.