Looking Back at an Unimaginable Year

About this episode

<p><span>It’s a cliché now, but by no means an overstatement, that the past twelve months have been unimaginable. This week, we’ll hear four short reflections on the events of 2020. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/dhruv-khullar"><span>Dhruv Khullar</span></a><span> describes the early days of the pandemic, when he was taking care of patients in a </span><span>COVID</span><span>-19 ward. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/anna-wiener"><span>Anna Wiener</span></a><span> visits California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which burned during the catastrophic West Coast fire season that destroyed acreage close to the area of Massachusetts. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/simon-parkin"><span>Simon Parkin</span></a><span> waxes nostalgic—already!—for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a video game that occupied untold hours of families at home together. And </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/kevin-young"><span>Kevin Young</span></a><span>, </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span>’s poetry editor, picks two poems that stand as monuments to what we have lived through: “</span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/george-floyd"><span>George Floyd</span></a><span>,” by Terrance Hayes, and “</span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/the-end-of-poetry"><span>The End of Poetry</span></a><span>,” by Ada Limón, both of which were read by the authors. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>