News just out of the CDC has created fresh opportunities for normal, communal time together, indoors — just like we did pre-Corona. One of the rituals I have missed over the past year has been attending synagogue. But long before the Covid-19 pandemic, participation in organized religion – across all walks of religious life – was on the decline. Americans had become less engaged in religious institutions, whether it was regular attendance or membership and donations to their local congregation.

Did the pandemic arrest these trends? Did virtual platforms provide new opportunities for religious and communal engagement?

Josh Rogin is a long-time foreign affairs journalist, currently a columnist for the Global Opinions Section of the Washington Post. He’s also a Political Analyst for CNN.

That phrase – going to the movies – that shared experience in a movie theater full of strangers already makes me nostalgic, like listening to vinyl records.

Before the pandemic, the movie theater business was an 11-billion dollar industry in the US alone. In 2020, there were approximately 40,000 screens in 5,798 theaters that employed over 115,000 people.

The price of college has been skyrocketing over the past few decades, escalating far higher and faster than the rate of inflation. According to one study, the cost of tuition at many schools is up by well over 1000% in less than a half century. For what? What about the product offering has actually changed? That’s a question that came into sharp focus as millions of students last March flocked to Zoom University…overnight.

As recently as three years ago, one of my favorite business school professors, the late Clay Christensen, predicted half of all colleges in the US would close some time this decade…that their business models would be unsustainable and would be disrupted. And, then, of course, there was the pandemic.

Before joining The Times, Maggie Haberman was a reporter at Politico, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. She’s a lifelong New Yorker. According to a profile piece about Maggie, she’s written or co-written more than a story a day, and stories with her byline have accounted for hundreds of millions of page views last year alone. That’s more than anyone else at The Times.

To learn more about ‘Vaccination Nation’ visit startupnationcentral.org

Jim is the former editor of Popular Mechanics, where he helped reposition that century-old brand to become a major voice on contemporary tech issues. He currently co-hosts the How Do We Fix It? podcast and is working on a book about man-made disasters. Previously, Jim was executive editor at National Geographic Adventure.  He’s the monthly tech columnist for Commentary Magazine and is with the Manhattan Institute, the most important urban policy think tank in the U.S.

John  recently published his third book, the New York Times Best-Seller The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency. John’s a long-time and award-winning television and print journalist. He was previously co-anchor of CBS This Morning. Before that, he was the anchor of “Face The Nation”. John is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic and co-host of Slate’s “Political Gabfest” podcast and host of the Whistlestop podcast. John has also moderated presidential debates. And was a long-time correspondent for Time Magazine, where he covered the White House.

Bret is a Pulitzer Prize winner and an op ed columnist for the Times, where his column appears Thursdays and Saturdays.

Bret is the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder”. He was raised in Mexico City, he has studied at the University of Chicago and  the London School of Economics. In recent years he and his family were splitting their  time living between New York City and Hamburg.

We’ve had a public health shock, followed by an economic shock, followed by a civic and societal shock. An emerging crisis in public security looms over the Coronavirus era… here in New York City, and in cities across the country.

Is the connection between the breakdown in public health and the breakdown in public safety causation or correlation? Was this crime wave inevitable and Covid simply accelerated it? What do we need to do to bring basic safety back to our Cities?

As we post this podcast, the US has vaccinated about 2 percent of its population, Canada is at 0.5 percent, France is at 0.001 percent, and Israel? 20 percent. By the end of this week, Israel will have vaccinated two-thirds of its population over 60 years old and most of the country’s medical staff, at which point they will all be called back for their second vaccination.

According to international studies, Israel’s healthcare system has been ranked among the most efficient in the world. And due to big data and AI, the Israeli health system is certainly one of the most digitally advanced.

To call 2021 a historic year is an understatement. But what’s less obvious is how to put the pandemic of 2020 in a historical context. What lessons can be learned about our response to past public health crises? Can these lessons be applied to the one we’re living through now, and what may lie ahead, post-Corona?

As we transition from this most unusual year, Dan checks in with Niall Ferguson. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and he’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 15 books including The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook.