COVIDCalls

Today I welcome Chilean architect and city planner Roberto Moris back to COVIDCalls for an update on COVID in Chile. Roberto Moris is an architect who graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, with a Master in City Design and Social Sciences, London School of Economics, and Ph. D. student in Civil Engineering, University of Granada. He is an expert on integrated planning, carryin...

Today I welcome Marla Petal Principal Advisor for School Safety and Resilience for Save the Children. Dr. Marla Petal is Save the Children’s Principal Advisor for School Safety and Resilience. Her educational background is in social work and urban planning, and her research background is in education policy, full inclusion, public education for risk reduction and resilience, and earthquake epidemi...

Today I welcome Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff, co-authors of The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security . Stephen Collier is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (2011), and, with Andrew Lakoff, The Government of Emergency: Vita...

Today I welcome journalist and cultural critic Virginia Heffernan back to COVIDCalls. Virginia Heffernan is an accomplished journalist and cultural critic—she is a regular contributor to The New York Times, as well as The Wall Street Journal , Mother Jones , and Politico .  She writes a regular column for Wired Magazine and the LA Times—and she is co-host of the Trumpcast on Slate.  She is also th...

Today I welcome physicians Carla Keirns and Emily Hansen to discuss their lives on the front lines of medicine in the pandemic. Dr. Carla Keirns is assistant professor of Medical Ethics and Internal Medicine at the University of Kansas in Kansas City, Kansas. She has published in the history, sociology and ethics of medicine, and has been treating patients the past year through the COVID-19 pandem...

Today I welcome health care historian Guian McKee. Guian McKee serves as associate professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, where he is also co-director of the center’s new Health Care Policy Initiative. He is the author of Hospital City, Health Care Nation: Race, Capital, and the Costs of American Health Care, which will be published in Fe...

Today I welcome comedian and host of the podcast Bananas, Kurt Braunohler My guest once sky wrote “How Do I Land” in the sky over LA. A Comedian, writer and actor he has appeared in the Oscar nominated The Big Sick, the Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen Rom Com Longshot as well as Fox’s Bobs Burgers and NBC’s The Good Place. His strange news podcast BANANAS is available wherever you listen to podcast...

Today I welcome disaster law expert Kathleen Bergin back to COVIDCalls. My guest today is Professor Kathy Bergin.  Kathy is a recognized expert in Disaster Law, she presently teaches at Cornell University Law School—her research extends to humanitarian aid programs and the catastrophic impact of climate change. She has been crucial in promoting Disaster Law as an academic discipline. She is also a...

Today I welcome my friend Russell Pharr to discuss living through pandemic days in Texas. Russ Pharr is a graduate of Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He is Father of 2 fantastic teenagers and currently works with Rivian Automotive, the electric vehicle maker that brought the first All Electric Pick up truck to market. He is a native Texan and grew up in Arlington Texas. He currently lives in Dal...

Today I welcome disaster researchers Wesley Cheek and Ksenia Chmutina to discuss: ‘Building Back Better’ is Neoliberal Post-Disaster Reconstruction. Wesley Cheek is a sociologist of disasters and a geographer focusing on critical urban theory and community involvement in post-disaster reconstruction at Edge Hill University UK.  For the past decade he has undertaken extensive ethnographic fieldwork...

Today I welcome disaster researcher and co-founder of the group Disaster Researchers for Justice Samantha Montano. Samantha Montano is an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Her first book is: DISASTEROLOGY: Dispatches from The Front Lines of The Climate Crisis comes out this August. She is also author of recent essay: Not All Disasters Are Disasters: Pan...

Today I welcome Kimberley Bissell and Jiyoung Lee. Kim Bissell (Ph. D., Syracuse University) is the Southern Progress Endowed Professor in Magazine Journalism and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She is also the Director of the college’s research institute, the Institute for Communication and Information Research. Sh...

Today I welcome disaster sociologist and author of Disasters: Sociological Aspects Kathleen Tierney back to COVIDCalls. Kathleen Tierney is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and research professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 2003 to 2017, she was director of the university’s Natural Hazards Center.  She was lead author (with co-...

Today I welcome Jonathon Catlin and Benjamin Davis to discuss their work Theses for Theory in a Time of Crisis. Jonathon Catlin is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities at Princeton University. His dissertation is a history of the concept of catastrophe in twentieth-century European thought, spanning from the rise of fascism to cl...

Today I welcome Ryan Hagen, co-director of the New York City COVID-19 Oral History, Memory, and Narrative Archive project at Columbia University Dr. Ryan Hagen is a Lecturer in the department of Sociology at Columbia University. He studies risk and the social construction of knowledge, focusing on how people and institutions anticipate future dangers. He is a co-director of the New York City COVID...

Today I welcome nuclear historian Robert Jacobs, author of Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha. Robert Jacobs is a Professor of History at the Hiroshima Peace Institute and the Graduate School of Peace Studies of Hiroshima City University. Jacobs is the author of The Dragon's Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (2010), (also available in a Japanese translation published by Gaifusha in 2013), and...

Today I welcome Long COVID patient and advocate Charlie McCone. Charlie McCone is a 32 year old long COVID patient and advocate based in San Francisco, CA who was struck with a 'mild case' of the virus in March 2020, and has suffered severe debilitating symptoms ongoing two years now. Prior to illness he was in the prime of his life with no health issues to speak of. He was an active tennis player...

Today I talk with anthropologist Thurka Sangaramoorthy. Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a cultural and medical anthropologist and public health researcher with 22 years of experience conducting community-engaged ethnographic research, including rapid assessments, among vulnerable populations in the United States, Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean. Her work is broadly concerned with power and subjectivi...

Today I welcome philosopher and teacher Keith Maggie Brown. Keith “Maggie” Brown is a Denton-based poet-philosopher, spiritual counselor, and mind-walker. Besides their academic co-publications and intermittent podcasting, Maggie creates aphorisms to encourage their friends on the way to self-actualization. They have directed a few conferences at the University of North Texas in Denton since 1998:...

Today I welcome sociologist Rashawn Ray back to COVIDCalls! Rashawn Ray is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institution. He is also an Associate Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Recently, Ray published the book How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race,...

Welcome to the 430th episode of COVID-Calls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a historian of public health at the College of Charleston, in South Carolina, and I’m thrilled to be hosting the program this week. Dr. Freya Jephcott is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential...

Today I welcome STS researcher and film maker Sulfikar Amir back to COVIDCalls! Sulfikar Amir is an associate professor of science, technology, and society (STS) and a faculty member in Sociology Program at the School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has conducted research on technological nationalism, development and globalization, nuclear politics, risk and dis...

Today I welcome philosopher and teacher Keith Maggie Brown. Keith “Maggie” Brown is a Denton-based poet-philosopher, spiritual counselor, and mind-walker. Besides their academic co-publications and intermittent podcasting, Maggie creates aphorisms to encourage their friends on the way to self-actualization. They have directed a few conferences at the University of North Texas in Denton since 1998:...

Welcome to the 427th episode of COVID-Calls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a historian of public health at the College of Charleston, in South Carolina, and I’m thrilled to be hosting the program this week. Dr. Kathleen Bachynski is an assistant professor of public health at Muhlenberg College. Dr....