Thoughtful and well behaved though we ourselves might be, it appears that some might not be staying home in sufficient numbers.

There seem to be some pretty broad definitions of “essential” in the phrase essential purposes.

John Branch of the New York Times provided the launch pad for a podcast discussion of isolation practices between Frazer Rice and me. His story was called Deniers and Disbelievers: If I get Corona, I get Corona.

Were the crowds on the beaches during Spring break, or in New Orleans for Mardi Gras or posing for pictures in front of the cherry blossoms in Washington doing what they should have been doing in the midst of an epidemic?

Would others describe those activities as essential or did only the participants think them to be so?

From there Frazer and I moved on to what we hope will be learned about facilitating remote work and whether in person skills differ from on camera skills.

Will the experience of sending students home change our thinking about what college means and what it should cost?

Likely, our podcast will merely begin the conversation about what we should and should not be doing.

Here is where you go to get started.