Saying goodbye to Brady and celebrating Lunar New Year

48:01

February 01, 2022

This is the Radio Boston rundown for Feb. 1. Tiziana Dearing is our host.

After 48 hours of rumors and speculation, former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady announced today that he is retiring from the NFL. The 44-year-old quarterback holds nearly every passing record, and in his 20 years with the Patriots, led them to a record 6 Super Bowl titles. We talk about Brady's time here and how to think about his career with listener callers, Boston Globe Patriots reporter Jim McBride, and Howard Bryant, senior writer for ESPN and sports correspondent for NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.

It's the start of the Lunar New Year, in the Year of the Tiger (the water tiger, to be exact). Throughout the commonwealth, our Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean neighbors, among others, are celebrating the first day of the Lunar New Year with food, family and flowers. And that includes in Quincy, which has the highest percentage of Asian American residents of any Massachusetts city or town. We talk with State Representative Tackey Chan of Norfolk County's second district to celebrate and share hopes for 2022.

Two years ago today, Boston became home to the 8th identified case of COVID-19 in the country. At the time, there were nearly 14,000 people infected worldwide. Fast forward 24 months and we're dealing with a much different story: 1.4 million cases in Massachusetts, and roughly 378,000,000 worldwide. Back then, the words omicron and delta meant nothing to us and the idea of shutting down our state, and the world, seemed unimaginable. This week, we hear from Dr. Simon Wildes, an infectious disease expert at South Shore Health, and Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist and co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to put it all in perspective.

This program aired on February 1, 2022.