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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...