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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week that people who test positive for COVID-19 but remain asymptotic can cut their quarantine time in half, from ten days to five. This shift comes in part due to major disruptions causes by rising Omicron cases, with hospitals and airlines in particular struggling to stay fully staffed.

This moment in the pandemic feels a little like living in a contradiction. Cases are rising, yet guidance on certain restrictions is loosening. Hospitals are filling up, yet many infections are mild.

Prof. Gaurav Suri, computational neuroscientist at San Francisco State, and Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University, discuss how to live with the threat of Omicron right now.

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An NPR investigation digs into the practice of billing parents for their children’s foster care — something that happens in every state in the country.

It’s a bill many cannot afford to pay, which in turn makes it even more difficult for parents to get their lives back on track and reunite with their children. On top of that, research shows government actually loses money when it tries to collect on foster care bills.

NPR investigative correspondent Joseph Shapiro reports, in collaboration with Teresa Wiltz of POLITICO.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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After everything that has happened this year, it can feel difficult to find things to celebrate. So we’re using this episode to spread a little joy, through something everyone can relate to: food.

We asked all of you what holiday dish is never missing from your table, and you answered – from seafood gumbo in Louisiana to Hungarian Beigli to traditional New Mexican cookies called Biscochitos and more. Be careful listening on an empty stomach.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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This week, Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said he cannot support the Build Back Better Act, which contains more than half a trillion dollars in climate investments. The White House has been negotiating with Manchin for months, hoping he would cast a key vote for the plan in the Senate, where their party’s majority is razor thin.

Without Manchin’s support, the Biden administration’s most ambitious action on climate may be dead, and the U.S. could fall short of key goals to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Reporters from NPR’s climate change team — Jeff Brady, Lauren Sommer, and Dan Charles — take stock of where things go from here.

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden also contributed to this episode. Read her piece Manchin says Build Back Better’s climate measures are risky. That’s not true.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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The HBO show Succession is compelling in part because it portrays a world most of us will never see: the backroom deals between cutthroat billionaires and their fraught family relationships. But the show’s dark comedy also gives us insight into the world we all inhabit, and how that world treats women across a spectrum of relationships.

From entrenched sexism to performative feminism, writer Flannery Dean explains the different forms of misogyny on display in Succession.

(Note: Spoilers ahead for those not caught up on the latest season!)

Then, actor J. Smith-Cameron – who plays the character Gerri Kellman – discusses navigating through the toxic machismo of Succession‘s world, and how she made the role her own.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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This holiday season we all deserve a little peace and quiet with the people we love, but the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 threatens to complicate things for everyone.

As tests appear to be in short supply in places like New York City, the White House announced plans to send 500 million at-home tests to Americans who want them and new federal testing sites to meet the demand in the coming weeks.

But despite the rising cases and concern, Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, says this is not March 2020 all over again. And he offers some guidance to help us through the next few weeks.

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Public school enrollment dropped three percent nationwide during the 2020-2021 school year.

NPR’s education team continued to track enrollment this school year and found that while districts have gained students, a significant majority are still not back to where they were prior to the pandemic.

A similar story has unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago and at more public schools across the nation.

NPR education reporter Cory Turner looked into why students are still not coming back to school and what schools are trying to do about it.

Meanwhile, some of the students not enrolled in public school have started being homeschooled during the pandemic. WBHM education reporter Kyra Miles spoke to Black families in Alabama who are choosing that option in increasing numbers.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast has a tradition to look back on some of their favorite things from the last 12 months of television, movies and music. In this episode they’re revisiting the pop culture that thrilled them, moved them and kept them company during another challenging year.

Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on NPR One, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

On Jan. 6, three Fox News hosts desperately urged former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get the president to tell supporters to stop attacking the Capitol building.

The texts, which were made public this week as the House of Representatives voted to hold Meadows in contempt, reveal a starkly different message than the one those same Fox hosts delivered to their audiences about the insurrection.

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik and investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach discuss the gap between Fox’s messaging behind closed doors and in front of the camera.

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The COP26 Summit, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last month brought together people from all over the world. And everyone had stories of how climate change is already affecting their lives. But, did the conference accomplish what it set out to do?

Alok Sharma, president of COP26, gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what the conference felt like from the inside, why he apologized for the process, and what it was like trying to get delegates from nearly 200 countries on the same page.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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