COVIDCalls

EP #451 - 3.5.2022 - COVID in Chile Update

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, carrying capacity models, sustainability, and resilience. He has worked with the UNDP, World Bank, and IADB. He is a professor at the School of Architecture and the Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies. He was Principal Investigator of the National Research Center for Integrated Risk Management, Director of Cities Observatory UC, and Director of Plans and Urban Projects Program UC. His research has focused on developing instruments to assist decision-making through methodologies and management models that integrate people into common objectives.

EP #450 - 3.4.2022 - Research and Policy Action for Children in the Pandemic

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 epidemiology. She has 20 years of experience in advocacy and programming community and school risk reduction and resilience.

During CoVID she channeled her mentor Kevin Ronan to launch the Converge Working Group on the Impacts of Covid on Children, Youth and Schools, and co-developed a priority research agenda to last for a decade.  Professionals and grad student then volunteered to review the research so-far on pandemic impacts on children & youth well-being.

EP #449 - 3.4.2022 - The Government of Emergency

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: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security (2021). 

Andrew Lakoff is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. He is the author of Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry (Cambridge, 2006), Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency (California, 2017), and, with Stephen Collier, The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security (Princeton, 2021). 

EP #448 - 3.3.2022 - Pandemic Culture Update w/Virginia Heffernan

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 the author of Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art (2016) with Simon and Schuster. She hosts the This is Critical podcast.

EP #447 - 3.3.2022 - Physicians and Patients in the Pandemic

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 pandemic, both those with COVID and whose care looks very different because of it.

Dr. Emily Hansen is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center in the Palliative Medicine Division. She received her medical degree from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences. Further training included completing her Family Medicine residency at Research Medical Center and Palliative Medicine fellowship at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Her interests include LGBTQ+ disparities in healthcare, art therapy, educational development, and teaching in the setting of palliative medicine.

EP #446 - 3.3.2022 - Hospital Systems in American History w/Guian McKee

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 February 2023 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is also the author of The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (2008, Chicago), and the editor or co-editor of five volumes in the Miller Center’s “Presidential Recordings of Lyndon Johnson” series.

EP #445 - Comedy in the Pandemic Era Update w/Kurt Braunohler

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 podcasts.

EP #444 - 3.2.2022 - COVID and the Law Update w/Kathleen Bergin

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 successful advocate. Her team in Haiti established binding precedent in a proceeding before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that reinforced post-disaster human rights obligations. Her work on mass evacuation shelters after Hurricane Katrina is used across the humanitarian sector as a blue-print for protecting displaced survivors. She is on the steering committee for Project Blueprint, a policy advocacy organization aimed at promoting a progressive US foreign policy. 

EP #443 - 3.2.2022 - COVID in Texas: A Discussion Between Friends

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 Dallas Texas

EP #442 - 3.2.2022 - Discussing ’Building Back Better’ is Neoliberal Post-Disaster Reconstruction

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 in the town of Minamisanriku, a small fishing village in Miyagi Prefecture still recovering from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. His research sits at the confluence of architectural history, cultural heritage, and disasters. His research has largely focused on Northeastern Japan, Southeastern Louisiana, and the American Gulf South.

Dr Ksenia Chmutina is a Reader in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism at Loughborough University,UK. Ksenia's research focuses on the processes of urban disaster risk creation and systemic implications of sustainability and resilience in the context of neoliberalism. Ksenia uses her work to draw attention to the fact that disasters are not natural. She is a co-host of a podcast ‘Disasters: Deconstructed’.