It Took a Crisis: How a Pandemic Made Social Disruption Go Viral

From the bushfires in Australia to the outbreak of COVID-19 and America's greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, It Took a Crisis outlines how the events of 2020 underscored the need for a serious assessment of the status quo. These intersecting crises have laid bare existing institutional failures that the world has failed to address for decades, arguably centuries.

These issues are not new. Health care has never been a universal right in the United States. Science has always been political. People of color have been unjustly murdered at the hands of law enforcement for centuries. What is new is the public discourse and open dialogue that these crises have inspired.

Through interviews, research, and storytelling, Jordan Johnson takes a multi-disciplinary approach to exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic revealed wide-ranging cracks in our social structures and accelerated a global call to action. This shared experience has unlocked something powerful in us as global citizens, enabling us to reimagine a more equitable world.

Against this backdrop, It Took a Crisis asks if we should ever go back to normal? Perhaps normal never quite served us.