The Daily - The Lives They Lived

It is a very human thing, at the end of a year, to stop and take stock. Part of that involves acknowledging that some remarkable people who were here in 2020 will be not joining us in 2021. Today, we take a moment to honor the lives of four of those people. And in marveling at the extraordinary and sometimes vividly ordinary facets of their time among us, we hold a mirror up to the complexities of our own lives. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Duration: 48m
Broadcast on: 22 Dec 2020
Audio Format: other

It is a very human thing, at the end of a year, to stop and take stock. Part of that involves acknowledging that some remarkable people who were here in 2020 will be not joining us in 2021.

Today, we take a moment to honor the lives of four of those people. And in marveling at the extraordinary and sometimes vividly ordinary facets of their time among us, we hold a mirror up to the complexities of our own lives.

For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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This podcast is supported by TikTok. Sometimes the most interesting discoveries are the ones you weren't looking for. That happens every day on TikTok. A science experiment can spark a whole new interest. A recipe you stumble upon can become a meal you make for the people you love. And a restaurant you've never heard of might become your new favorite spot. That's the thing about TikTok. Follow your curiosity and see where it leads. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Hello, I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a critic at the New York Times and a staff writer at the Times Magazine. And today we're going to do something a little different on the daily. Every year in December, the magazine puts out an issue called the lives they lived. And it focuses on notable people who have lost their lives throughout the year. Some of the people in the issue tend to be very famous and some of them tend to be people that very few people have heard of. But the point is to focus on the extraordinary and in some cases vividly ordinary life that someone lived. This year, of course, has been quite an extraordinary one for life and the loss of it. Whether it was death as the result of COVID or from some form of racialized violence or death from any other cause, it's been a long year of grieving people. I guess, I mean, if there were a national emotion this year, it probably would be bereavement. And a very human thing to do at the end of the year is to stop and sort of take stock of the kind of year it was.

And some of that involves acknowledging that, for example, some people who were here in 2020 aren't coming with us into 2021. To take a moment to reflect on what it's going to mean to not have them come forward with us into that next year and to look at your life and the complexities of the life you're living through the lives that they lived. So here are four stories of lives lived and lost in 2020. Written and read by writers for the New York Times, including me, starting with Stanley Crouch. He loved jazz so much that he was willing to fight for it with his fists.

Okay, well, what I'm trying to say is that in reference to black art and black music, most black people know more about white people and imitation black people, imitation black artists than they know about black artists, you know.

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