CG Podcast

Toby Green joins Frank Armstrong for a wide-ranging discussion based on his new book The Heretic of Cacheu: Struggles Over Life in a Seventeenth-Cenury West African Port. The book exhumes the records of a Portuguese Inquisitorial trial from 1665 into apparently deviant conduct of a half-African, female slave-trader Cacheu – the first African region to be drawn by the Portuguese systematically into...

Our recent photography competition winner Ross Novie joins Frank Armstrong to discuss his winning entry, featuring his masked daughter on a family outing to Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Ross is a TV producer living in Los Angelas who grew increasingly concerned at the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on his children. In response to his two teenagers being kept out of school for almost a y...

In this episode of CG Podcasts, Professor Toby Green (King's College, London) discusses the new book 'In Covid's Wake' with authors Stephen Macedo and Frances E. Lee of the Politics Department of Princeton University. They discuss the economic and political fallout, the connections between the Covid policies and Trump's election in 2024, and the future for academic and public discussions around th...

Peru’s harsh military-enforced lockdown had devastating effects on education, deepening inequalities and leaving long-term scars on students. Professor Norma Correa Aste, argues school closures were inconsistent, as other sectors remained open, forcing many children to fend for themselves or work in markets instead of learning. Remote education was not an adequate substitute, leading to significan...

In this podcast Professor Norma Correa Aste, a Peruvian anthropologist, shows how lockdown measures have a detrimental and lasting impact beyond the pandemic, with the government using remote learning for non-health-related reasons such as strikes, protests, sporting events and conferences citing traffic and security concerns. She says the ongoing reliance on remote learning in Peru reveals a trou...

In this podcast, Professor Norma Correa Aste, a Peruvian anthropologist, examines the widespread harms in her country caused by COVID-19 lockdown measures. She discusses the disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities, particularly in Latin America, where economic hardship and social inequalities worsened. Correa Aste highlights the severe consequences of school closures, including learning...

Prof David Paton criticised the UK COVID inquiry for focusing on the wrong questions and not questioning the harms of lockdowns and school closures. He was sceptical about the WHO's willingness to learn from past mistakes, citing their continued support for authoritarian public health measures. Prof Paton cited his own research on the effects of vaccine mandates in care homes, finding they led to...

Episode 3 explores the contrasting outcomes of COVID-19 lockdowns in Brazil and Peru. Despite Peru's strict and military lockdown measures, the country suffered a high death toll and severe economic and social consequences. In contrast, Brazil's less stringent restrictions resulted in comparable or lower excess deaths. The discussion underscores Peru's challenges, including an overwhelmed health s...

In this episode, we’re joined by Professor David Paton, a health economist at the University of Nottingham, to reflect on the UK government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll examine the costs of lockdown measures, the societal impact, and explore the decision-making process. A central question in assessing the government's actions is whether they fully considered the costs of their decisi...

In this episode, we discuss the profound impact of school closures and online education during the harsh COVID-19 lockdown in Peru. We talk to Professor Norma Correa Aste, a specialist in social policy and child development, based in Lima. As the mother of two girls, Norma became a high profile campaigner for school and university reopening and better pandemic responses for children, young people...

In this insightful podcast episode, Professor Norma Correa explores how Peru's strict and prolonged lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted education and poverty. The lockdowns led to a sharp rise in poverty levels from 20 percent to 30 percent, particularly in urban areas where informal employment was as high as 72 percent. Government interventions, such as cash transfers and c...

Prof David Paton, Professor of Industrial Economics from Nottingham University, discussed his research on COVID-19 suppression measures, including vaccine mandates and lockdowns. He said lockdowns - designed to save lives lacked evidence and may have even increased death rates due to reduced non-covid healthcare. Prof Paton criticised the government's decision-making process, emphasising the impor...

Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer professor discusses censorship with journalist Lucy Johnston, with particular emphasis on a study about the risks and benefits of masks for children, a social media post by Karol about this study was deleted from LinkedIn. Professor Sikora criticises the censorship of non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccine debates online during the pandemic, highlight...

Graham Brady sits down with journalist Lucy Johnston to discuss his book "Kingmaker," detailing his unique perspective on British politics. He highlights the negative impacts of pandemic measures, including £400 billion in public debt, NHS backlogs, and increased mental health issues among children. Brady criticized the arbitrary nature of lockdowns and restrictions, noting their ineffectiveness a...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Geoffrey Shullenberger, an American cultural theorist and editor at Compact magazine, to discuss his latest book (edited with Elena Lange), Covid-19 and the Left: The Tyranny of Fear. We discuss how the political left, in America and Europe, responded to the pandemic both early on and as it unfolded. Despite some significant contributions in critical analysis, the majo...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Rajiv Bhatia, a Stanford primary care physician and former deputy health officer in San Francisco, California. Rajiv discusses his experience challenging the state of emergency in California on ethical and process grounds, including his communication with public health colleagues in the early days of the Covid pandemic. A veteran public health officer, Rajiv also discu...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Eric Winsberg, a professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida and British Academy Global Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy, University of Cambridge. Eric is the author (along with Stephanie Harvard) of a recent book, Models in Science and Decision-Making. We discuss his book and how philosophy can help us better understand how models a...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Christine Van Geyn, a lawyer and the director of litigation at the Canadian Constitutional Foundation. Christine is the author (along with Joanna Baron) of the 2023 book, Pandemic Panic: How Canadian Government Responses to Covid-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever. We discuss the most egregious civil liberties violations in Canada during Covid, the erosion of legal sta...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Jacob Stegenga, a philosopher of science and medicine at the University of Cambridge. Prof. Stegenga is the author of the 2018 book, Medical Nihilism, which critiques the quality and completeness of evidence in medical interventions. We discuss medical nihilism in the context of the Covid pandemic and reflect on lessons for the future.

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Barbara Katz Rothman, a professor of medical sociology and women's studies at City University of New York. Prof. Rothman is the author of the 2021 book, The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic. We discuss her latest book, birth and death during Covid, and different concepts of medical power. Can we really speak about biomedicine today as a glo...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Sosso Feindouno, a researcher based in France with FERDI (Foundation pour les Etude et Recherche sur les Development Internationale). Dr. Feindouno, along with colleagues, published a recent paper in Social Science and Medicine, where they modelled increases in excess mortality in Africa driven by the socio-economic consequences of lockdown in 2020. We discuss the pape...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Bethany McLean, veteran journalist (Enron scandal and 2008 financial crisis) and contributing editor of Vanity Fair Magazine, to discuss her latest book, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed about Who America Protects and Who it Leaves Behind. The book, published in 2023 and co-authored with Joe Nocera, explores what went wrong in America during Covid and who, ulti...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Cristiano Cadagnone, professor of sociology at the University of Milan, to discuss his recent book, The Leviathan with the Feet of Clay. The book, written in Italian and published in February 2024, concentrates on the harms of Covid policies, the rhetoric of fear, and the ideology of scientism. We discuss Prof. Cadagnone's work during the pandemic and academic and medi...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Nat Malkus, senior fellow and deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss his latest research on the effects of school closures on American children and teenagers. Nat's research on chronic absenteeism was recently featured in a New York Times article, A Crisis of School Absences. We discuss the data on school closures,...

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Swedish journalist, Johan Anderberg, to discuss his latest book, The Herd: How Sweden Chose Its Own Path Through the Worst Pandemic in 100 Years. Translated into English in 2022, the book explores the no-lockdown approach taken by Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist during the pandemic, and the influence of his long-term mentor, Johan Giesecke. We discuss wha...