Boston Public Radio

The Greater Boston Food Bank president said she’s mostly concerned with keeping workers safe from COVID-19.

Massachusetts should release racial data for COVID-19 response, says civil liberties union.

Voters are waiting in long lines to vote in the presidential primary on Tuesday, as the Governor's push to delay the election in the name of public health was denied.

Will Brady ever get to step out onto field with his new team, if the 2020 NFL season is cancelled due to the coronavirus?

Thompson criticized the interviews, but said he sees the benefit in having Chris Cuomo, who himself has COVID-19, a platform to talk about the disease.

Amid widespread economic downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic, will people embrace broader government protections?

On Tuesday, travel guru Rick Steves joined Boston Public Radio for his monthly check-in, where he reflected on the meaning of Thanksgiving, and its particular significance in the bizarre year of 2020. "Every country has harvest festivals,” he said. “When travel and we clink glasses, we realize how beautiful and interconnected the world is, and realize how joy across the sea is just as real as joy across the table at home – and how hunger and suffering across the sea is just as real as sadness and struggles across our own family tables.” He added, “thankfulness to me is really hollow without being mindful about our relative privilege, and the needs of the less fortunate." During the interview, Steves also touched on his feelings about Joe Biden’s 2020 win, and spoke about what he’s hoping to achieve in 2021 with the slow easing of global travel restrictions. Steves is an author, television and radio host, and the owner of “Rick Steves' Europe” tour group. You can catch Rick Steves’ Europe weeknights at 7:30 on GBH 2, and his radio show Travel With Rick Steves Sundays at 4:00 on GBH.

When COVID-19 hit, New Wave musician and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne was forced to push back the return of his Broadway show, American Utopia. But that didn’t silence the project altogether. In collaboration with artist Maira Kalman, Byrne converted the show into an illustrated book, and on Boston Public Radio Tuesday, he argued for a societal return to hope in the American experiment itself. “(An American utopia) an imaginary ideal, but it’s nice to think that maybe we can get closer to it,” he said. Byrne said he takes inspiration from the writings of Alexis de Toqueville, who wrote “Democracy in America” in the early 1800s. “Obviously as we’ve seen, the experiment continues, it’s still an experiment,” he said. “There’s occasionally some bumps in the road, so far we’re still hanging in there … and can only hope that that kind of malleability that we have, leads us to a better place.” Byrne has kept creating and adapting American Utopia during a pandemic that has affected much of American life as we know it. Touched by a national political discourse that seems more divided than ever, Byrne has also delved into the world of journalism, through a multimedia project called We Are Not Divided. “I’d collect these things for myself, to help convince myself no we’re not necessarily going to hell in a handbasket, there are people doing things that are helpful,” said Byrne. “It really has helped me, when I start to despair, it’s really helped me see no that’s not the only news out there, some of the news is that people are bridging divides, people are doing things that are energy efficient, they’re finding ways to do things that are economically sound and putting us on the right path.”

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke to Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about the issue of proper ventilation inside restaurants, during the pandemic. “Indoor dining is problematic, and it needs spacing and ventilation and constant mask-wearing,” he said. Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.

With news that pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has developed a COVID-19 vaccine that may be nearly 90% effective and is easy to transport, medical ethicist Arthur Caplan told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday things are looking good for widespread vaccine distribution. “We now have at least three, I’m expecting more to come through the pipeline in the coming months,” he said. “We can call this the Goldilocks phenomenon. The AstraZeneca one has the promise of being able to get to places the other ones won’t, including poor parts of the world as well as rural America.” The AstraZeneca news comes on the immediate heels of Pfizer and Moderna announcing their vaccines both show initial efficacy rates above 90% in late-stage trials, but must be stored in very cold temperatures. They use mRNA technology, which uses genetic material instead of the traditional deactivated virus to prompt an immune response. The AstraZeneca vaccine uses the more traditional method. Additionally, Caplan said the AstraZeneca vaccine measures transmission rates after receiving the vaccine, where the other two do not. “The first two vaccines only measured did you get sick, and they actually only measured did you get mild or moderately sick, figuring if that didn’t happen you weren’t going to get seriously ill,” said Caplan. “For the AstraZeneca one they measured did you infect other people as one of the study points.” The AstraZeneca results are also only initial analysis of late-stage clinical trials.

Today on Boston Public Radio: We opened Monday's show by opening lines, to talk with listeners about how you’re navigating your pandemic Thanksgiving. NBC Sports Boston anchor and reporter Trenni Kusnierek discussed the passing of former Celtics player, coach, and play-by-play announcer Tommy Heinsohn, who died this month. She also discussed the spread of COVID-19 in collegiate football, and a recent piece by Kurt Streeter in the New York Times about running while Black. Boston Globe business columnist Shirley Leung discussed her latest writing on blowback to a string of worker layoffs at the Boston Marriott, whose let-off workers aren’t being paid full severance. She also discussed some anti-racist efforts of Boston businesses, and how her kids are handling the boredom of pandemic life. Lauren Kennedy talked about broad inefficiencies with America's childcare system, and what her non-profit Neighborhood Villages is doing to support working mothers and families through the pandemic. Kennedy is the co-founder of Neighborhood Villages, which has created the Boston Children's Relief Initiative Program. Irene Monroe and Emmett Price, host of GBH’s All Rev’d Up podcast, talked about work being done in Dedham to honor the overlooked legacy of Black Civil War veteran (and church founder) William Benjamin Gould. They also talked about the right-wing campaign to smear Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock. We returned to callers to hear about your experiences trying to juggle childcare with everything else going on during the pandemic. Naturalist Sy Montgomery recounted the story of a Northern saw-whet owl who got trapped in the Rockefeller Christmas tree, and a Florida man who went viral after rescuing his puppy from an alligator. She also offered up details about her newly-released book: an illustrated children’s version of her memoir “How to Be a Good Creature.”