circa 1937: Four men sitting on a step reading a newspaper during the Great Depression. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

What happened during the Great Depression is very different from what is happening today, but there are some lessons in that history.

We’re starting to see some devastating economic indicators related to the global pandemic. More than 3 million people filed first-time unemployment claims the third week of March. On Thursday, we’ll find out how many people filed for unemployment in the fourth week, and on Friday, we’ll get the first monthly unemployment report since large parts of the economy started shutting down.

One of the big questions on your mind is probably: Just how bad things are going to get? That’s why we asked a few historians to tell us about the economic crises of the past — and in particular, the Great Depression — and what we should be…