Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is deep background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman. For more than a year, we've been hearing about the idea of herd immunity.

In recent weeks, though, it's become very clear that the United States is not in the

foreseeable future going to reach the threshold for herd immunity.

There are a range of reasons and causes for this, and they go from vaccine hesitancy

to the contagiousness of new variants

and beyond to the underlying science.

As a consequence, we're all trying to figure out

what this means for what happens next.

Will COVID become a manageable, self-contained disease, not unlike the common cold?

Will it alternatively develop new variants that require us to go back to the drawing board

and develop new vaccines?

Or will it be something in between?

To help us understand these pressing questions, we're joined by Dr. Mark Lipsich, our go-to COVID expert

here on the program and indeed throughout the country. Mark is a professor of epidemiology at the

Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He's affiliated both with the epidemiology department and with the

Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease. He runs the Center for Communicable

Disease Dynamics at Harvard. Regular listeners of the podcast will know that Mark was one of

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