The passage of time during this pandemic has often felt immeasurably, unbearably slow. But the transformations we’ve been living through are, by any historic measure, lightning fast. A crisis can force insights on us that might not have seemed so clear otherwise: insights about ourselves, about our families, and about the businesses and governments that hold sway over us. Insights we’re going to need as we face the changes that will inevitably come next. The following five essays reckon with what the pandemic is teaching us—and what’s just over the horizon.
Laurie Penny on the strange, hopeful future of quarantine families
Gideon Lewis-Kraus on how we can make government trustworthy again
Maimuna S. Majumder on dismantling the ivory tower of science, one Covid-19 study at a time
Steven Levy on the future of face-to-face connection on a screen
Chris Colin on what the heck is going on inside kids’ heads
Plus: How we’ll move, listen, learn, and age in the post-coronavirus world—with a pep talk from the US poet laureate
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