The New Yorker Radio Hour: "A City at the Peak of Crisis"
Date: April 24, 2020
Host: David Remnick
Episode Theme:
This special episode documents April 15, 2020— the day the COVID-19 pandemic peaked in New York City. The New Yorker’s writers and photographers captured voices from across the city—health workers, essential employees, artists, everyday people—offering a vivid tapestry of life, struggle, resilience, and loss in the epicenter of the global crisis.
Main Themes and Episode Purpose
- A Chronicle of a City in Crisis: The episode delivers a multi-perspective account of one pivotal day when New York faced its gravest challenge, capturing both extraordinary and ordinary moments.
- Resilience and Vulnerability: Portraits of New Yorkers persevering, adapting, grieving, and offering mutual aid.
- Bearing Witness: The power of storytelling and direct testimony in understanding collective trauma and communal responses.
- Contrasts and Paradoxes: Juxtapositions between the mundane and the tragic, the heroic and the overwhelmed, the hopeful and the fearful.
Key Segments and Insights
1. Dawn at Brighton Beach: The City’s Geography and Its Fate
- Ian Fraser walks Brighton Beach at sunrise, reflecting on the city's nature—how convergence of water and land makes New York a place where "massive things happen."
- As the sun rises on April 15, 2020, the city faces more than 110,000 diagnosed COVID-19 cases, nearly 7,000 deaths.
- “The reason that this is an epicenter is that nature made this as a perfect place for things to come together.” [00:40]
- On Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge as a warning for city vulnerability: “It's like God just saying, pay attention, you know, like, here's a revelation of what the future is going to be like.” [01:16]
2. Essential Workers: Perseverance in the Shadow of Fear
Jermaine Jackson, NYC Transit Group Station Manager [04:24]
- Role: Oversees 13 subway stations, continues operations despite danger.
- Daily Routines: Distributes PPE to workers; avoids contact with her elderly mother at home to protect her.
- “I'm not going to let COVID beat me.” [07:40]
- Her personal ritual: “I boil water, lemon peel, garlic, and salt and stuff like that. And I just inhale...clear out my system.” [09:07]
- Subway realities: Elderly and vulnerable are still riding; compassion for them, seeing her own mother in every older passenger.
- “I watch them as if they're my own parents.” [11:12]
Jack Benton, Tugboat Crew in New York Harbor [12:53]
- Life on a tugboat: Continues as usual due to essential nature of supply chains; teams live on boats, minimizing outside contact.
- Quips on quarantine: “We were social distancing before it was cool and quarantining.” [16:26]
- Humor in adversity: “My wife told me last week, by the time I got home, we were definitely going to be at least one child short. And I told her...don't do that. Tax write off. That's the whole reason we had them.” [17:38]
- Difference between his risks and those faced by healthcare workers:
- “I know I'm perfectly safe right here...these nurses, doctors and stuff, those people know every day they're going into a building that people are positive with this.” [18:55]
3. Hospitals at the Breaking Point
Julie Eason, Director of Respiratory Therapy, SUNY Downstate [19:30]
- Atmosphere: Cafeterias turned into makeshift ICUs; staff in perpetual mourning.
- “You walk through there, it's filled with beds...just in case beds.” [21:08]
- Fatigue: “I would give anything to be quarantined today. You know, I'm tired. We're all tired. None of us are going to be the same.” [23:31]
- Loss: “A lot of the people we lost at Downstate aren't people that I was super close to, but I would see on a regular basis...You just can’t take for granted that they're all going to be there tomorrow.” [24:23]
4. Life and Death in the City: Daily Realities
Governor Cuomo’s Daily Briefings [26:56]
- The state’s ritual: Watching the Governor’s statistics like a “morbid lottery."
- “Lives lost yesterday: 752, which is the painful news of our reality day after day.” [28:10]
Small Businesses Endure: Russ & Daughters [29:36]
- Josh Russ Tupper and Nikki Russ Federman, Co-Owners
- Pandemic disrupts century-old routine; now only orders by phone, no in-store customers.
- Donating food to hospitals; deep contrasts in the cityscape:
- “All you need to do is look to your left and you would see two 18-wheeler tractor trailer, refrigerated trucks that, you know, makeshift morgues on the street.” [33:40]
5. Artists and Performers: Reinvention Amidst Loss
Tutu GZ - Hip Hop Artist [36:44]
- Tour canceled, deposit losses: “We just gave back $20,000 in deposits.” [37:14]
- New routines: “All you can do is just eat, sleep, get high. I don’t even got a schedule, bro.” [38:09]
- Social commentary: Everyone is now an "internet gangster" because they're online.
Seth Meyers, Late Night Host, NBC [40:14]
- Home broadcast challenges:
- “The performing part is just weird, you know, not ever having any feedback as far as whether or not a joke is working…It really is like just a leap of faith.” [41:48]
- On crowd-sourcing A/V tech support from Twitter, adapting to absence of crew.
6. Moments of Community and Solidarity
Central Park Observations – Adam Gopnik [48:53]
- Describes runners refusing to wear masks, reflecting human paradoxes in crisis.
- “One never knows…whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some version of normal life or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing…That’s the mystery of the pandemic.” [50:09]
Medical School Graduation on Zoom, Columbia University [51:27]
- New doctors graduate online, voiced hopes and pride:
- “Tough times don’t build character, they reveal character.” [52:35]
- “Congratulations, first generation doctors. Salud. Congrats. We did it. Go get them, lions.” [53:02]
7pm Citywide Applause for Essential Workers [54:54]
- The ritual of cheering, music from fire escapes—“joyful cacophony” bringing brief unity.
- “7 o’clock...seems to bring the whole city together in a kind of primal scream. And after that, it gets quiet again.” [56:29]
7. Crisis on the Margins: Homeless Outreach
Paige Williams with NYPD Mobile Crisis Outreach Team [58:01]
- Officers and a nurse hand out masks and sanitizer, offer shelter to homeless:
- Direct aid, but often only able to provide the basics: “They gave him the masks. They gave him the hand sanitizer. And beyond that, all they could do was watch him go.” [60:43]
Kathy Ann McKenzie, JFK Taxi Dispatcher [62:05]
- From frenetic airport life to near stillness:
- “Terminal 4 is the busiest terminal ever…I say there isn’t any chill pill for Terminal 4—now we’re chilling full time.” [62:10]
- Finds hope in work: “We’re still happy that we’re here. We got a job still…But we hope that all of this is going to come to an end soon and civilization is going to come back.” [63:24]
8. Bearing Witness to Suffering and Grace: Hospital Death and Birth
Dr. Laura Colby, Internist [64:21]
- On patients’ fear of dying alone, and staff using personal phones for family goodbyes.
- “I think it is incumbent on all of us to bear witness to each other’s dying…then the same grace will be extended to us when we are in our last moments.” [66:14]
New Beginnings: Christopher John Cintron Jr. is Born [67:27]
- Lisa Cintron, new mother:
- A child born at the peak—separated from extended family:
- “What do you think that you’ll be telling him...That he was a miracle in all of it.” [69:35]
- “I get to bring this little guy into the world…Miracle.” [69:58]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- On the city’s resilience:
“The resources of the people...it just makes us all New York City patriots.” [03:12] – Ian Fraser - On exhaustion and loss:
“None of us are going to be the same.” [23:31] – Julie Eason - On the uncertainty of life:
“You just can’t take for granted that they’re all going to be there tomorrow.” [24:23] – Julie Eason - On collective mourning:
“It's as if we're all tuning into a morbid lottery. Where we wait for today’s numbers, and we all ask if this is our lucky day, the day we flatten the curve.” [27:41] – David Remnick - On hope in adversity:
“We’re graduating in our pajamas. So glad to be here with all of you. Congratulations, first generation doctors. Salud. Congrats…Go get them, lions.” [53:02] – Columbia graduates
Concluding Reflections
- A Chronicle of Contradictions: The city’s emptiness and silence contrast with life’s endurance—births, hope, and the fight for connection.
- Testimony in Crisis: Through direct voices, the episode documents not only trauma and loss, but the varied, intimate ways New Yorkers met the peak of the pandemic—bearing witness to each other, adapting, grieving, persisting, and reaching out.
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [00:08] – Opening and Brighton Beach reflections
- [04:24] – Jermaine Jackson on essential subway work
- [12:53] – Jack Benton, life aboard a tugboat
- [19:30] – Julie Eason, at the hospital frontlines
- [26:56] – Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefing
- [29:36] – Russ & Daughters pivots and adaptation
- [36:44] – Tutu GZ on cancelled music tours
- [40:14] – Seth Meyers broadcasting from home
- [48:53] – Adam Gopnik in Central Park
- [51:27] – Columbia Medical School graduation
- [54:54] – 7pm citywide applause
- [58:01] – NYPD Mobile Crisis Outreach Team
- [62:05] – JFK Airport dispatcher on emptiness
- [64:21] – Dr. Laura Colby on dying patients
- [67:27] – Childbirth during crisis: Lisa Cintron
The episode brings together the patchwork of stories that, together, define “A City at the Peak of Crisis”—not as a single event, but as thousands of intertwined human struggles and acts of courage.