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Our Soon-To-Be Maskless World
ResumeHere is the Radio Boston rundown for May 18. Tiziana Dearing is our host.
- Over 100 firefighters across Massachusetts and Vermont continue to battle the wildfire which has burned its way through Williamstown, Clarksburg and North Adams since last Friday, when it started in a remote, wooded area of Williamstown. Since then, it has spread at an alarming rate, burning over 900 acres of the Clarksburg State Forest - and counting. It's the largest wildfire in Massachusetts in over two decades, since the Tekoa Mountain fire in 1999. As of Monday afternoon, the fire was 75% contained, but the steep wooded terrain is enabling it to continue to spread. David Celino, Chief Fire Warden for the Department of Conservation and Recreation, joins us to give a status update.
- Gov. Baker announced yesterday that the state will lift all remaining COVID-19 restrictions on May 29. Residents can return to all business and venues in the commonwealth with no capacity restrictions - and no masks in most cases, in just 11 days. What do these huge changes mean for businesses, residents and schools? And what questions does it raise for listeners? We address all those questions in this week's Ask The Doctors. We're joined by Dr. Davidson Hamer, a professor of infectious diseases and medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine, and a professor at Boston University School of Public Health; and Dr. Gabriela Andujar Vazquez, an infectious disease physician, Associate Hospital Epidemiologist and Medical Director of the COVID-19 Vaccination Program at Tufts Medical Center.
- Our relationship with technology has changed in some fundamental ways as a result of the pandemic. At the same time, technology itself has altered how we engage with each other. You may very well never have zoomed your parents before 2020, for example. "Zoom" might not have been a verb for you before 2020. Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT, has spent her career exploring our relationship with technology and how technology affects our relationships. Her new memoir, "The Empathy Diaries," plumbs the depths of her own personal and childhood relationships, for how they shape her now. She joins us today to discuss the role technology plays in our relationships.
This program aired on May 18, 2021.