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Ask a Harvard Professor

Harvard Magazine

A podcast presented by Harvard Magazine. Managing editor Jonathan Shaw sits down with some of the world’s most thoughtful scholars to discuss everything from academic ethics – to hip hop music and medical marijuana.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 31 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • S4 · E8
    Dec 20, 2021 · 33 min

    Rudolph Tanzi: What Can People Do To Maintain Brain Health As They Age?

    Harvard Medical School professor of neurology Rudolph Tanzi discusses how lifestyle choices can help maintain brain health during a person’s lifespan. Topics include Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of dementia, the role of genetics and environment in health, and the importance of sleep, exercise, and diet in controlling neuroinflammation.

  • S4 · E7
    Dec 13, 2021 · 28 min

    Makeda Best: What Does Landscape Photography Say About Our Politics?

    Makeda Best, curator of photography at the Harvard Art Museums and a visiting professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, shares her insights on landscape photographers, as well as photographers of war and protest, capture their historical moments, and what their work says about cultural history and politics. Topics discussed include Best’s research on Alexander Gardner, a Civil War photographer who was also active in the worker’s rights movement, her current book project on American landscape p

  • S4 · E6
    Dec 6, 2021 · 33 min

    Claudia Goldin: Why Do Women Still Make Less Than Men?

    Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee professor of economics, shares the reason why working mothers still earn less and advance less often in their careers than men: time. Even with antidiscrimination laws and unbiased managers, certain professions pay employees disproportionately more for long hours and weekends, passing over women who need that time for family care. Goldin also discusses how COVID-19’s flexible work policies may help close the gender earnings gap.

  • S4 · E5
    Nov 29, 2021 · 44 min

    Jerrold Rosenbaum: Are Psychedelics an Effective Treatment for Mood Disorders?

    Jerrold Rosenbaum, director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics, discusses the potential of using psychedelics, such as MDMA and magic mushrooms, to treat treatment-resistant mood disorders like depression and anxiety. Topics include the effect of psychedelics on the brain, how psychedelic therapy is conducted, the legality of medicinal psychedelics, and current research findings.

  • S4 · E4
    Nov 22, 2021 · 27 min

    Nicholas Stephanopoulos: Why Does Gerrymandering Matter So Much?

    Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a political scientist and legal scholar whose research focuses on gerrymandering, explains its effect on American democracy and how it might be stopped. Topics include recent state laws that limit voting, the voting-rights bills being debated in Congress, and the current state of “alignment” between voters’ wishes and government actions.

  • S4 · E3
    Nov 15, 2021 · 30 min

    Emily Broad Leib: What Can be Done About Food Waste?

    Emily Broad Leib, founder and director of Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, discusses how to reduce food waste in the United States and abroad. Topics include the confusion caused by misleading date labels, the impact of COVID-19 on food waste, and the FLPC’s collaborations with governments and non-profit organizations to enact better food laws.

  • S4 · E1
    Nov 1, 2021 · 32 min

    Michael Mina: Why Do We Still Need Rapid Tests?

    Epidemiologist and immunologist Michael Mina discusses the use of rapid tests as public health tools. Topics include using rapid tests to protect gatherings of friends and family; the differences between rapid tests and PCR tests; and why rapid tests are useful even for people who are vaccinated—particularly the elderly.

  • Oct 28, 2021 · 1 min

    Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor, Season Four

    Each week, our editors will interview some of the world’s most prominent scholars, discussing subjects from gerrymandering to food waste to COVID-19.Join us for podcasts with Michael Mina, Sandeep Robert Datta and Venkatesh Murthy, Emily Broad Lieb, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Jerrold Rosenbaum, Claudia Golden, Makeda Best, and Rudy Tanzi.

  • S3 · E7
    Nov 30, 2020 · 36 min

    Carrie Lambert-Beatty: What Happens When an Artwork Deceives its Audience?

    The term “parafiction” refers to an artistic performance or presentation that depicts fiction as fact. This idea has particular relevance for our current post-truth moment, in which Americans find themselves overrun with conspiracy theories, misinformation, and fake news. In this episode, art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty explains how parafiction can actually help us sort out fact from fiction, and how reflecting on the experience of being tricked by a work of art can help train our minds to c

  • S3 · E6
    Nov 23, 2020 · 25 min

    Francesca Dominici: How Does Air Pollution Affect COVID-19?

    How does the air we breathe affect our body’s reaction to COVID-19? Early on in the pandemic Francesca Dominici, Gamble professor of biostatistics, population, and data science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, explored this question with her team. On this episode, she discusses the links between fine particulate matter in the air and COVID-19 outcomes. Dominici also discusses the pressure placed on scientists by government and media during public health crises—when answers are n

  • S3 · E5
    Nov 16, 2020 · 39 min

    Rebecca Henderson: Does Capitalism Need to be Reimagined?

    Climate change is out of control, leading many people to question whether it isn't just fossil fuels, but our entire economic system, that needs to be replaced. In this episode, Harvard Business School economist Rebecca Henderson talks through her own efforts to reconcile the climate crisis with her faith in the ingenuity of capitalism. "I believe that at the moment, our capitalism is also neither free nor fair," she says. "The free market works when everyone can take part, and prices reflect re

  • S3 · E4
    Nov 9, 2020 · 37 min

    Jeannie Suk Gersen: Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asian Americans?

    Decades of Supreme Court precedent says colleges can use affirmative action in admissions—but the court's new composition could change all that. In this episode, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen breaks down everything you need to know about the lawsuit alleging that Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions. She explains why the stakes of this case may be different from what you think, and why the question of whether Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans

  • S3 · E3
    Nov 2, 2020 · 29 min

    Danielle Allen: What Do COVID-19 and Extreme Inequality Mean for American Democracy?

    America's response to the COVID-19 crisis, says political philosopher Danielle Allen, represents "the biggest possible announcement one could have of the broken state of affairs" in our nation's democracy. Allen has helped lead one of the most authoritative national reports on the combination of testing and contact tracing needed to contain the pandemic, as well as an ambitious proposal for reinventing American democracy through an enlarged House of Representatives, ranked-choice voting, and mor

  • S3 · E2
    Oct 26, 2020 · 30 min

    Caroline Buckee: Can Mobile-phone Data Help Control the Spread of the Coronavirus?

    Can cellphone technologies play a role in controlling the coronavirus pandemic? Knowing how public health policies interact with people’s actual behavior, even at an anonymous population-level view, can help guide the decisions of leaders. Mobile phone location data can reveal large-scale patterns of activity and travel between regions. In this episode, associate professor of epidemiology Caroline Buckee explains how such data—carefully stewarded to ensure individual privacy—can even be used to

  • S3 · E1
    Oct 19, 2020 · 46 min

    Daniel Schrag and David Keith: Can solar geoengineering help fight climate change?

    Climate change may be the hardest problem the human race has ever confronted. In a single century, humans have set in motion events that will unfold on a geological timescale, ultimately redrawing coastlines around the globe as ice sheets melt and sea level rises. Can humanity agree to meet its energy needs with renewables such as wind and solar power? Is there a threshold beyond which the effects of greenhouse gases will become irreversible? Can solar geoengineering help stop this runaway train

  • Oct 16, 2020 · 1 min

    Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor, Season Three

    We’re delighted to bring you Season Three of Ask a Harvard Professor. Each week, our editors, Jonathan Shaw, Marina Bolotnikova, and Jacob Sweet will interview some of the world’s most prominent scholars and discuss discuss everything from climate change to capitalism to COVID-19. Join us for podcasts with Daniel Schrag and David Keith on geoengineering and Jeanie Suk Gersen on the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit against Harvard, among several others. We look forward to sharing these conver

  • S2 · E7
    Apr 13, 2020 · 26 min

    Doug Elmendorf and Karen Dynan: How much can the federal budget and the deficit continue to grow?

    EVEN BEFORE THE CORONAVIRUS SHIFTED THE U.S. ECONOMY INTO LOW GEAR, demanding a massive stimulus in response, federal debt as a percentage of GDP was as high as it had been since the years following World War II. Simultaneously, given the nation’s aging population, spending on benefits for older Americans was and is expected to skyrocket. Should voters be worried? Why would curbing federal deficits now be a mistake? In this episode, recorded before the coronavirus arrived in the United States bu

  • S2 · E6
    Apr 6, 2020 · 53 min

    William C. Kirby: Is China ready for leadership on the global stage?

    CHINA IS THE MOST POPULOUS COUNTRY ON EARTH, and until a few hundred years ago, it was also the most economically powerful. Today, China is ascendant on the world stage. What does its government seek in its relationship with the United States? Do China and the U.S. share common goals with respect to nuclear North Korea? How far will China press to reunite with Taiwan? What are the country’s economic prospects, and is the perception that it is governed by engineers accurate? How is China coping w

  • S2 · E5
    Mar 30, 2020 · 30 min

    Benjamin Sachs and Sharon Block: When did labor law stop working?

    Why would it take an Amazon worker, employed full time, more than a million years to earn what its CEO, Jeff Bezos now possesses? Why do the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than all African-American households combined? And how are these examples of extreme income inequality linked to the political disenfranchisement of the lower- and middle-income classes? The established “solutions” for restoring balance to economic and political power in the United States have been tax increases on the

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes