COVIDCalls

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!

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 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 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 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.

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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’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.

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. 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. 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.