COVIDCalls

Today I speak with Gonzalo Bacigalupe about his project the Quarantine Series. Gonzalo Bacigalupe, EdD, MPH, is professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is principal investigator of the Mediated Technologies for DRD at the National Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN), and adjunct professor at the Catholic University of Chile School of Engineering. His research with colleagues in Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the USA, focuses on the impact of emerging media adoption on families, the role of patient online communities, the use of emerging media to build community resilience for disaster risk reduction, and family health. Bacigalupe has published and presented on research addressing the role of emerging digital technologies and vulnerable populations including transnational families and couples, political and family violence, family health and disparities (celiac disease, chronic pain, and medication strategies and literacy), e-health, and social technologies. He is presently studying the role of digital volunteers and the use of drones to strengthen disaster risk reduction among vulnerable communities in Chile.

Today in this 500th episode I discuss COVIDCalls: how it started, what I've attempted to do with the project, and some of the ways I hope people will use it in the future. Thanks for tuning in!

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Today I will be reading some memorials from victims of COVID.

Today I have Marco Lienhard on for a musical performance and discussion. Marco Lienhard studied the shakuhachi under Master Katsuya Yokoyama, quickly mastering the instrument and becoming a virtuoso solo artist. Marco Lienhard mastered Taiko drumming as a member of Ondekoza for 18 years. While touring as a professional taiko player in Japan, Lienhard also studied the fue and the nohkan (Noh theater flute) with Yukimasa Isso. In 1995, Lienhard founded Taikoza in New York, where he now makes his home. With Taikoza he has toured, the US, Japan, Mexico and Europe. Lienhard has performed more than 3000 concerts in Europe, Oceania, Asia and North and South America with appearances at some He toured Japan with Carnegie Kids program. He regularly teaches and performs in Japan, South America, US and Russia. His best selling albums include award nominated Taikoza Cd, best selling Music of Hayao Miyazaki 1 and 2 Cd.  He recently recorded two albums for Piano and Shakuhachi; the critically acclaimed: Travelers's Song as well as the Classical music collection: Rêverie.  He recorded music for  the new Nintendo wii game Red Steel 2. In 2015., he released two CDs of his music composed and arranged for Taikoza: Voice of the Earth and Tree Spirit.

Today I speak with Hyunah Keum, Seulgi Lee, Hyeonbin Park, & Joelle Champalet about the pandemic in Korea Joëlle Champalet is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, in Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. She is interested in the intertwined relationship between technology and territories, everyday practices and smart cities. During her master's thesis and the pandemic, she focused on the transformation of everyday practices of inhabitants by smart systems in South Korea. Hyunah Keum is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, in Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. She is interested in the materiality, socioeconomic, and environmental impacts of various wastes. She wrote her master's thesis about plastic wastes during COVID-19 in South Korea, to investigate different practices to regulate or promote the use of plastic from the perspective of slow disaster. She wants to expand her research fields into revealing unequal relationships around waste, and its impacts on different beings, not just humans but also non-humans.  Seulgi Lee studied chemistry in her undergraduate and became a master's course student in STP KAIST starting from last year. She is interested in the dynamics between disaster and victims' identity, especially from a feminist perspective. Hyeonbin Park is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST. He got his Master's degree in theoretical cosmology, but social and environmental disasters have attracted him, so he moved down to the Earth to pay more attention to human and nonhuman lives in the world. His research interests cover broadly Disaster studies, and Environmental humanities & social sciences. He would like investigate how disaster shapes the world and to develop a way of living together with various humans and nonhumans.   

Today I speak with Steve Knowles, my father, about the pandemic. Steve Knowles was born in Odessa, Texas, and is a fourth generation Texan with a deep appreciation for the unique heritage of growing up and living in West Texas. His experiences of a boyhood developed in a postwar America framed much of his positive outlook for his entire life. Knowles earned a B.B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a M.B.A. degree from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is a 40-year veteran of human resources management, and retired from the Farm Credit Bank of Texas as their Vice President of Human Resources. He now resides in the Sun City community located in Georgetown, Texas. Steve is married to Harriet, a retired Pediatric Physical Therapist and has five children and seven grandchildren. He is a member in the Presbyterian Church, and an avid Texas Longhorns' fan.

Today I talk about Dance in the Pandemic w/David Brick David Brick David is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Headlong Dance Theater, a platform for performance research and grassroots artist support, founded in Philadelphia in 1993. He also directs the Headlong Performance Institute, a supported residency and training program. David collaborates broadly in making dance, participatory installations and community. The experience of growing up as a hearing person in a Deaf family continually influences his thinking about performing bodies as being both subjects and agents of culture. His writings about art practice as a form of thinking and experience can be found on The Quiet Circus Blog.

Today I talk about COVID and the Research Community w/Kim Fortun, Lori Peek, & Jason Ludwig Kim Fortun is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.  Her research and teaching focus how people in different geographic and organizational contexts understand environmental problems, uneven distributions of environmental health risks, developments in the environmental health sciences, and factors that contribute to disaster vulnerability.  Fortun is the author of Advocacy After Bhopal Environmentalism, Disaster (2001). Jason Ludwig is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies. His research interests converge around race, disaster, and the possibility of a radical politics of science and technology. Lori Peek is professor in the Department of Sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has written and edited several books on marginalized populations in disasters, and she leads the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE initiative.

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Today I will be reading some memorials from victims of COVID.

My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a Historian of Epidemic Disease and Public Health at the College of Charleston. I'm so glad to be hosting a series of episodes for this special program. You can catch most of them with the regular host and founder of COVID-Calls, Scott Knowles. Today I want to do a deep dive into COVID metaphors- COVID history, COVID research networks, and COVID emotions- a big topic with some amazing guests. My guests today- make this episode particularly special, as they are both brilliant historians and also friends. Dr. Agnes Arnold-Forster is a historian of medicine, healthcare, work, and emotions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her first book, The Cancer Problem, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021, and is current sitting on my desk. Agnes is current a co-PI on the project Healthy Scepticism, a Wellcome Trust and King's College funded multidisciplinary project about healthcare dissenters and anti-establishment voices. For several years before this she was part of the Surgery and Emotion project- a second monograph Cold, Hard Steel: The Surgical Stereotype Past & Present comes out this year with Manchester University Press. Dr. Nathan Crowe is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He is an expert on the history of twentieth century biology, biotechnology, biomedicine and Anglo-American scientific culture. His book- also on my desk, Forgotten Clones: the Birth of Cloning and the Biological Revolution, charts the emergence of cloning techniques in cancer research after WWII, and the complicated matrix of cloning science and cloning publics into the 1960s. Nathan is currently working a several projects related to understanding biotechnology.

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Today I will be reading some memorials from victims of COVID.

Today I talk with the core COVIDCalls team! Eleanor Mayes is completing a Master of Design at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in accessibility, sustainability, and fostering equity within design and engineering. She manages the transcription of COVIDCalls, and assists with the roll-out of the COVIDCalls archive and website. Shivani Patel is a 3rd year undergraduate student at Drexel University studying Finance and Economics with a minor in Philadelphia. For the past two years, she has been working at COVID-Calls as a production assistant helping with scheduling guests and keeping the calendar organized. Bucky Stanton is a PhD Candidate in the department of Science & Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His dissertation Arkadian Pasts and Futures investigates natural and cultural resource extraction in the central Peloponnese, exploring the history and politics of archaeology, energy and modernity in Greece

My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a Historian of Epidemic Disease and Public Health at the College of Charleston. I'll be guest hosting a series of episodes for this special program, but you can catch most of them with the regular host and founder of COVID-Calls, Scott Knowles. My guests today: Nadja Durbach is Professor of History at the University of Utah. She received her PhD from the Johns Hopkins University and is the author of three books on the history of the body in Modern Britain: Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853-1907 (2005), Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (2010) and Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State (2020). Claas Kirchhelle is Assistant Professor of History (Wellcome Trust University Award) at University College Dublin. His research focuses on the history of microbes, infectious disease control, and the development and regulation of antibiotics and vaccines. He has authored three books on the history of antibiotics in food production (Pyrrhic Progress, 2020 (Rutgers)), animal welfare science and activism (Bearing Witness, 2021 (Palgrave)), and typhoid control (Typhoid, 2022 (Scala)). He is also co-curator of two multi award-winning exhibitions on the history of penicillin (Back from the Dead) and typhoid (Typhoidland). Daniel Goldberg, is an Associate Professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus. Trained as an attorney, a historian of medicine, and an ethicist, his work is wide-ranging on issues of public health law and ethics, population-level bioethics, the social determinants of health, chronic disease, and pain. Dr. Goldberg has published in virtually every important venue, including the American Journal of Bioethics and the New England Journal of Medicine, and he's been extraordinarily active the past two years in op-eds and interviews about the ongoing pandemic.

My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a Historian of Epidemic Disease and Public Health at the College of Charleston. I'll be guest hosting a series of episodes for this special program, but you can catch most of them with the regular host and founder of COVID-Calls, Scott Knowles. This is Part 2 of a two-part episode exploring the entanglement of the COVID-19 pandemic and the War in Ukraine. Last hour I spoke with Ukrainian health expert Pavlo Kovtoniuk and historian Dora Vargha. On February 24th, 2022, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Putin had “launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” Russian attacks began that Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved in a televised address “a special military operation” in Ukraine. Russian missiles began to attack cities and civilians all across Ukraine. Three weeks later the war in Ukraine rages on. 2 to 3 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and millions more displaced internally within the country, creating a tremendous humanitarian crisis, and what is undoubtedly the largest European military conflict since WWII. Casualty statistics have been difficult to come by- the UN reported yesterday more than 500 civilian Ukrainian deaths, and US military estimates are between 2,000 and 4,000 deaths in the Ukrainian armed forces, and 5,000 to 6,000 deaths of Russian soldiers. Dr. Trish Starks is a historian of Russian and former Soviet medicine and public health, and a professor of history at the University of Arkansas. She has written extensively on Soviet hygienic reforms in the 1920s in her 2008 book The Body Soviet: Hygiene Propaganda, and the Revolutionary State,  smoking in the Soviet Union in the 2018 book Smoking Under the Tsars, and her newly published book Cigarettes and Soviets: Tobacco in the USSR. She is currently working on gendered anxieties of the body and vigor in Russian contexts. My second guest, Dr. Paula Michaels, is an Associate Professor of History at Monash University. She is an expert on the history of medicine and gender Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. Dr. Michaels is a leading expert in the field of trauma studies, publishing numerous articles about childbirth, and maternity care and trauma in Eastern European history. Her 2014 book, Lamaze: An International History, was the winner of the 2015 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians. In 2021 she published Gender and Trauma Since 1900 with Christina Twomey, and is currently working on a  book project, Soviet Medical Internationalism and the Global Cold War

This is Part 1 of a two-part episode exploring the entanglement of the COVID-19 pandemic and the War in Ukraine. On February 24th, 2022, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Putin had “launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” Russian attacks began that Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin approved in a televised address “a special military operation” in Ukraine. Russian missiles began to attack cities and civilians all across Ukraine. Three weeks later the war in Ukraine rages on. 2 to 3 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and millions more displaced internally within the country, creating a tremendous humanitarian crisis, and what is undoubtedly the largest European military conflict since WWII. Casualty statistics have been difficult to come by- the UN reported yesterday more than 500 civilian Ukrainian deaths, and US military estimates are between 2,000 and 4,000 deaths in the Ukrainian armed forces, and 5,000 to 6,000 deaths of Russian soldiers. My guests today are experts here to help us make sense of the War and the Pandemic Pavlo Kovtoniuk (Kov-to-Nyuk) is a co-founder of the Ukrainian Healthcare Center - UHC, a think tank located in Kyiv, Ukraine. His background is in health financing and management. In 2016-2019 he served as a vice-minister of health of Ukraine and led a large-scale health system reform in the country. In 2019-2020 he was a consultant at the WHO office for health systems strengthening in Barcelona. During the COVID-19 Pavlo's team at the UHC monitored the pandemic in Ukraine and supported the government in pandemic response.  Dora Vargha is Professor of History and Medical Humanities based jointly at Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Exeter. She is currently leading two research projects on the history of socialism and global health. Previously, she had been co-editor of the journal Social History of Medicine and has worked as an expert for WHO Western Pacific on informing epidemic preparedness with historical perspectives. 

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Gregg Gonsalves is an expert in policy modeling on infectious disease and substance use, as well as the intersection of public policy and health equity. For more than 30 years, he worked on HIV/AIDS and other global health issues with several organizations, including the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, the Treatment Action Group, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa. He is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow.

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Cassie Alexander is a registered nurse of fourteen years and author. As Cassandra, she's written the Year of the Nurse: A 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir. As Cassie, she's written numerous paranormal romances, with vampires, werewolves, and dragon-shifters.

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Aqsa Shaikh (She /Her) is Associate Professor of Community Medicine at Jamia Hamdard University, Delhi. She is India's First Trans Woman Nodal Officer of Covid Vaccination centre. Sonali Vaid is a physician and public health specialist. She is the founder of Incluve Labs, an organisation working to improve the quality of healthcare and making care more humane. 

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My guest is Christina Simko. Christina Simko is associate professor of sociology at Williams College. Her research focuses on violent pasts and the complexities that they create for identity and narrative. Her first book, The Politics of Consolation: Memory and the Meaning of September 11 (Oxford University Press) received an honorable mention for the Mary Douglas Prize from the American Sociological Association. In addition to her research on 9/11 memory, Simko's published work has examined the legacies of the 1945 atomic bombings, the Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, and ongoing debates about the future of Confederate monuments. Her current book project, tentatively titled Suffering from Reminiscences, examines several memorials and museums to terrorism and their companion museums as windows onto contemporary trauma culture in the United States.

My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters and since March 16, 2020 the host of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. Shannon Mattern is Professor at The New School for Social Research. Her writing and teaching focus on media architectures and infrastructures and spatial epistemologies. She has written books about libraries, maps, and the history of urban intelligence, and she contributes a column about urban data and mediated spaces to Places Journal. You can find her at wordsinspace.net.  Heather Schulte is an interdisciplinary artist in Boulder, CO. Her work combines analog textile materials and techniques with digital material and design processes, analyzing the intersection of personal and public forms of language and communication. She received her BFA from the University of NE-Lincoln in 2003. Jacqueline Wernimont is Distinguished Chair of Digital Humanities and Social Engagement & Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College She is an anti-racist, feminist scholar working toward greater justice in digital cultures and a network weaver across humanities, arts, and sciences.

Alex Goldstein created Faces of COVID. He is currently CEO of the strategic communications firm 90 West, which he founded in 2016 to better serve companies, organizations, and leaders that are making a positive impact on the world -- with a focus on equity, economic mobility, and the climate crisis.  Kristin Urquiza, is the Co-founder, and Chief Activist of Marked by COVID. Kristin is a graduate of Yale University and UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy where she has a Master of Public Affairs.

I'd like to talk about racial justice, disaster recovery, and the pandemic with some of the experts I've been honored to get to know these past 2 years. Let me introduce them: Joy Banner, Ph.D. is the Director of Media and Marketing at Whitney Plantation. She is a native, and resident of Wallace, LA and a descendant of Whitney Plantation. Inspired both by Whitney Plantation's mission and her desire to help her largely descendant community, Joy returned home to advocate for economic and environmental rights. Joy has recently started the first chapter of “Coming To The Table”, an organization aimed at addressing the legacies of slavery by bringing together descendants of the enslaved and their enslavers.  Felicia Henry is a licensed social worker and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware, where she is also a Bill Anderson Fund Fellow.  Monica Sanders is the managing director of the Georgetown University Environmental Justice Program. She is the founder of "The Undivide Project", an organization dedicated to addressing the legal and policy changes needed to address the intersections between digital and climate equity. She also teaches Law, Policy and Practice in Disasters and Complex Emergencies at the Georgetown Law Center. 

Zachary Loeb is a PhD candidate whose work looks at the intersection of the history of technology and disaster studies, his dissertation project focuses on Y2K. Since March 16, 2020, he has posted 4 short poems a day (5 days a week) to the Twitter account @plaguepoems (these poems are then compiled into weekly compendiums that are posted at librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com).

In 2021 I saw that John Gorka, was performing a virtual concert—so I bought tickets, set up a video projector, and watched him in my living room with my wife and my two boys.  It was a moment of light in a dark time.  So, when it came time to put together Restoring Memory: A COVIDCalls exploration of the first 2 COVID years, I took a chance and reached out—and well, he's here! From New Jersey, John Gorka is a world-renowned singer-songwriter who got his start at a neighborhood coffeehouse in eastern Pennsylvania.  Jack Hardy's legendary Fast Folk circle (a breeding ground for many a major singer-songwriter) was a powerful source of education and encouragement early in his career, and he won the New Folk Award in 1984 at Texas' Kerrville Folk Festival. In addition to his 11 critically acclaimed albums, John released a collector's edition box featuring a hi-definition DVD and companion CD called The Gypsy Life. Windham Hill also released a collection of John's greatest hits from the label called Pure John Gorka. In 2010, he also released an album with his friends and Red House label-mates Lucy Kaplansky and Eliza Gilkyson under the name Red Horse. Getting high praise from critics and fans alike, it landed on the Billboard Folk Charts and was one of the most played albums on folk radio. Many well known artists have recorded and/or performed John Gorka songs, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, Mary Black and Maura O'Connell. John has played all over the USA and Europe at hallowed venues like Austin City Limits and Mountain Stage.

For The Conversation TODAY I have three experts—return guests to COVIDCalls—to talk about Premonitions and Origins of COVID-19. Monica H. Green is a historian of medicine, currently serving as SOO-PEES Suppes Visiting Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University. She specializes in the premodern period and global infectious diseases. She is writing a book on the Black Death that draws on evidence from genetics, archaeology, and historical sources to document the early origin and broad geographic extent of the 2nd Plague Pandemic. Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics, zoonosis, epidemiological epistemology, medical visual culture, colonial medicine, and pandemics as events posing an existential risk to humanity. Jacob Steere-Williams is a historian of epidemic disease at the Colle of Charleston specializing in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain and the former British colonies. He is a frequent guest host and contributor to COVIDCalls.

Today I welcome Comparative Literature and Film Studies scholar Alain Cohen to talk about the film Contagion. Alain J.-J. Cohen is Professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of California, San Diego where he has spent his career. He is also a practicing psychoanalyst, member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association. He has single-authored about 100 articles about auteur-filmmakers, text semiotics, or art history, in various journals and book chapters, and presented about 300 papers, nationally and internationally. In his research, teaching and talks, his analysis focuses at the granular interweave of technical prowess and psychological motivation.

Today I welcome historian of science and technology Asif Siddiqi. Asif Siddiqi is a professor of history at Fordham University in New York. He writes and teaches on both the history of technology and modern Russian history, as well as the intersection of the two. He has written many books and articles on the history of space exploration, including the Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). More recently, his work has focused on global histories of infrastructure and technology focusing particularly on Africa and South Asia. He is currently working on a book under contract with MIT Press provisionally titled Departure Gates: Postcolonial Histories of Space on Earth. This year he is on leave at Princeton University's Davis Center for Historical Studies.

Today I welcome my stepmother Harriet Knowles and my mother in law Susan Meurling to talk about their lives during the pandemic. Harriet Knowles is a native Texan, having been born and raised out in West Texas in the town of Midland. She had an unique experience in her high school education in that her father was her school principal. Harriet attended Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and continued her education at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas to obtain her Physical Therapy degree. She also earned a Master's in Behavior Science from University of Texas Permian when she worked as a pediatric physical therapist  back in Midland. Harriet was in the workforce in Physical Therapy pediatric-related jobs and worked for the Austin Independent School District as a Physical Therapist for her last 19 years before retirement. Harriet lives in Georgetown in the Sun City community with Steve and enjoys her  time by loving on her grandchildren (7 so far!), traveling, and reading.  She is also taking care of her mother who lives with them there. Susan Meurling is a retired technology educator. She graduated from Tufts University (English major), grad Manhattanville (Ed psych) and Teachers College Columbia (communications, computing, and technology). Taught in Ovid, NY, Scarsdale NY, and Houston (Spring Branch) TX. After tech moved into education, she taught the basics of computer literacy and emerging technologies to kids in elementary and middle school. Supported teachers and administrators in integrating tech into their lives and careers. After retirement, babysat for first grandchild, then helped a Section 8 housing unit set up and use their computer room. Also volunteered at a senior day center in Boston before the pandemic. Since 2013, volunteered on the board and executive committee of a Cambridge non-profit choral organization. Proud parent of two successful professional women, and grateful grandparent of four amazing grandchildren ages 8 to 13.

Today I welcome my brothers and sisters back to COVIDCalls. My sisters and brothers: Lindy Warner, Stephanie Eddleton, Jennifer Lerma, Jeff Knowles, and David Vieira. 

Today I welcome historian of the Red Cross and humanitarian disaster relief Julia Irwin.   Julia Irwin is Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the department of history at the University of South Florida.  Her research focuses on the place of humanitarianism and foreign assistance in 20th century U.S. foreign relations and international history. Her first book, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation's Humanitarian Awakening, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. A history of U.S. relief efforts for foreign civilians in the era of the First World War, her book analyzes both the diplomatic and the cultural significance of humanitarian aid in these years.  Currently, she is writing Catastrophic Diplomacy: A History of U.S. Responses to Global Natural Disaster.

Today I welcome Daniel Barber, Jeannette KWO Kuo, and Paul Lewis to discuss architecture and design in the COVID era. Daniel A. Barber is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he is also Chair of the interdisciplinary PhD Program in Architecture. His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton UP, 2020). Daniel edits the accumulation series on e-flux architecture and is co-founder of the Current: Collective on Environment and Architectural History. For 2021-2022 he is a Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg. Jeannette Kuo is partner at Karamuk Kuo Architects based in Zurich and Professor of Architecture and Construction at TU Munich. Previously she was Assistant Professor in Practice at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and Visiting Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her work and her research focus on integrated design, looking at architectural space, technology and culture to address a more sustainable future. The work of the office ranges from collective housing to institutional projects for public clients and include the International Sports Sciences Institute in Lausanne, a low-tech sustainable office building; the Archaeological Center at Augusta Raurica; and the extension to the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston. Paul Lewis, FAIA, is a Principal at LTL Architects based in New York City.  He is a Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture, where he has taught since 2000.  Paul is the President of the Architectural League of New York and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.  His New York based firm has completed academic, cultural and institutional projects throughout the United States.  LTL are the 2019 NY State AIA firm of the year and have received a National Design Award, have been inducted into the ID Hall of Fame, and have received multiple AIA design awards.  The firm's recent work includes Poster House, The Helen R. Walton Children's Enrichment Center, and a new residence hall at Carnegie Mellon University.  LTL Architects are the authors of Manual of PhysicalDistancing (2020), Intensities (2013), Opportunistic Architecture (2008) and Situation Normal....Pamphlet Architecture #21 (1998). Their 2016 book entitled Manual of Section has been translated into six languages, and LTL is currently completing a book about plant-based materials used in the sections of house construction.

Today I welcome Pacific Island journalist and scholar Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson to talk about the winter 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption and tsunami and COVID. Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a leading climate change journalist and scholar with a focus on small islands, gender, environmental negotiations and human rights. Lagipoiva Cherelle brings deep experience in Pacific Islands journalism and media startups as the founder and editor of the Pacific Environment Weekly, the first environment news website and syndicate in the Pacific Islands. She also has extensive experience reporting for international newsmedia as a writer for Guardian Australia and a contributor to Al Jazeera, the New Zealand Herald and Agence France Presse.

Today is a discussion of DISINFORMATION IN THE PANDEMIC with returning COVIDCalls guest Kate Starbird. Kate Starbird is an Associate Professor at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington (UW). Kate's research is situated within human-computer interaction and the emerging field of crisis informatics—the study of the how social media and other information-communication technologies are used during crisis events. Currently, her work focuses on the production and spread of online rumors, misinformation, and disinformation in the context of crisis events. Starbird is a co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public.

Today I welcome Maxym Prytula to discuss COVID in Ukraine.  Maxym Prytula is a peridontist and oral surgeon in Ukraine where he is also working towards a PhD in public health administration.  He has been treating COVID patients and soldiers, and we talk to him today.

Today I welcome historian of Latin America and disaster, Mark Healey. Mark Healey is an urban, environmental, and political historian of Latin America, and also a fellow disaster scholar. The author of “The Ruins of the New Argentina” (Duke, 2011), he is currently writing a book about the environmental and political history of water in the drylands of Argentina, as well as a project about the transnational political history of housing and development. He has taught at NYU, the University of Mississippi, UC Berkeley and, since 2011, the University of Connecticut, where he is now Head of Department.

Today I welcome medical anthropologist Christos Lynteris back to COVIDCalls. Christos Lynteris is a medical anthropologist, and senior lecture at the Univ. of St. Andrews in the UK. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics, zoonosis, epidemiological epistemology, medical visual culture, colonial medicine, and epidemics as events posing an existential risk to humanity. Dr Lynteris' new project (2019-2024) The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis will examine the global history of a foundational but historically neglected process in the development of scientific approaches of zoonosis: the global war against the rat (1898-1948). Dr Lynteris' recently completed project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic (2013-2018) collected and analysed photographs and other visual documents of the third plague pandemic (1855-1959). For updates on Christos Lynteris' Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis and Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic projects: @visualplague

Today I welcome Deborah Amos, NPR middle east correspondent and journalism professor at Princeton University. Deborah Amos is an award-winning international correspondent for NPR News, which regularly features her groundbreaking reporting on the Middle East and refugees in the United States on Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered. Amos previously reported for ABC's Nightline and PBS's Frontline. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she is the author of two books, Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2010) and Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World (Simon and Schuster, 1992). Amos has won several major journalism honors, including the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, George Foster Peabody Award, Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, and an Emmy. She was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of Iraq. She is presently a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin.

Today I welcome historian John Vsetecka to discuss Ukrainian history and the war going on in Ukraine today. John Vsetecka is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University where he is writing a dissertation on the 1932-1933 famine (Holodomor) and the 1946-1947 famine in Soviet Ukraine. He is the founder and one of the current editors of H-Ukraine--part of the larger H-Net online platform--that is dedicated to promoting and sharing academic and scholarly content related to the study of Ukraine. During the 2021-2022 academic year, John was on a Fulbright scholarship to Kyiv, Ukraine but was evacuated out of the country in late January due to the threat of war. John is currently in Warsaw, Poland finishing his grant and working with refugees who are crossing into Poland from Ukraine.

Today I welcome Laura Helmuth editor in chief of Scientific American. Laura Helmuth is the Editor in Chief of Scientific American. She has previously been an editor for The Washington Post, National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian, and Science's news section. She serves on the boards of High Country News, Spectrum and SciLine and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine's standing committee on the science of science communication. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

Today, I welcome Jessi Gold, Director of the Wellness Engagement and Outreach Department and the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.  Jessi Gold, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Wellness, Engagement, and Outreach in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. She is a nationally recognized expert on healthcare worker mental health and burnout (particularly during the pandemic), college mental health, using social media and media for mental health advocacy, and the overlap between pop culture and mental health, including celebrity self-disclosure. Dr. Gold is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. and M.S in Anthropology, the Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency training in Adult Psychiatry at Stanford University where she served as chief resident. Dr. Gold also writes for the popular press and has been featured in, among others, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, TIME, InStyle, and Self. She is a member of the Expert Advisory Council for the ViacomCBS Mental Health Storytelling Initiative and Co-author of the Mental Health Media Guide, as well as the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council. Her website is https://www.drjessigold.com/ and she can be found on twitter and instagram under @drjessigold

Today I welcome public health ethicist and historian Michael Yudell. Michael Yudell is vice dean and professor in the ASU college if health solutions.  He is a public health ethicist and award-winning historian whose work focuses on the history and ethics of genomics, the history of the race concept, and the history and ethics of autism research Yudell is the author of Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the 20th Century (Columbia University Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Arthur J. Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. On a lighter note, Yudell performs in the long-running improv comedy show Study Hall.

Today I welcome journalist David Adam to discuss his Nature article “The pandemic's true death toll: millions more than official counts” David Adam is a best-selling author and an award-winning journalist, who covers science, environment, technology, medicine and the impact they have on people, culture and society.

Today I welcome actor and film maker Krista Rowe to talk about her new film Promise House Heather's Story. Originally from Arlington, Texas, Krista Rowe is an independent filmmaker, producer, director, and actress. She produced three seasons of the reality road trip cooking show American Food Battle with Helsinki based Mogul Media, for the AWE network and National Geographic Channel. She also produced Amanda and The Players, a hockey reality series for Mogul Media. She works as a commercial, television and film actress in Canada. Her first documentary film, Promise House - Heather's Story was selected for an award of merit at the Impact Doc Awards and she was named Best Canadian Female Filmmaker at the Toronto International Women's Film Festival. She holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Texas Christian University and a Master's Degree in International Education from New York University. She is the founder of 3LG Productions. Krista lives in Toronto with her husband, three daughters, and Peggy the schnoodle dog.   

Today I welcome historian James McWilliams to talk about American culture in the pandemic. James McWilliams, is currently writing a biography of the southern poet Frank Stanford. He's written about a wide range of interests, including the American South, food and agriculture, animal ethics, memory, and the poetics of place. His work has appeared in literary venues ranging from Runner's World to The Paris Review, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's. He lives in Austin, Texas but spends as much time as he can in New Orleans. He has taught history at Texas State University since the last century. His face has appeared in People Magazine. 

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.

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.

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).