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Ask a Harvard Professor

Harvard Magazine

32 episodes

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.

Episodes

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

    · 34 min · S4 E8

    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…

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

    · 29 min · S4 E7

    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,…

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

    · 33 min · S4 E6

    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,…

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

    · 45 min · S4 E5

    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…

  5. Nicholas Stephanopoulos: Why Does Gerrymandering Matter So Much?

    · 28 min · S4 E4

    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…

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

    · 31 min · S4 E3

    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…

  7. Sandeep Robert Datta and Venkatesh Murthy: Why is Smell Such a Mystery to Scientists?

    · 36 min · S4 E2

    Neurobiologists Venkatesh Murthy and Sandeep Robert Datta discuss what scientists know about our sense of smell, and what big mysteries remain. Topics include smell loss from COVID-19, experimental approaches to…

  8. Michael Mina: Why Do We Still Need Rapid Tests?

    · 32 min · S4 E1

    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…

  9. Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor, Season Four

    · 1:49 · Trailer

    For more information about Harvard Magazine and this podcast, visit www.harvardmagazine.com/podcast and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For a transcript of this episode, go to…

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

    · 36 min · S3 E7

    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…

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

    · 26 min · S3 E6

    Discussing the link between air pollution and effects of COVID-19, and the importance of data for rapid public-health responses —with Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

  12. Rebecca Henderson: Does Capitalism Need to be Reimagined?

    · 40 min · S3 E5

    How to reform capitalism to confront climate change and extreme inequality, with economist and McArthur University Professor Rebecca Henderson For more information about Harvard Magazine and this podcast, visit…

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

    · 37 min · S3 E4

    Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen breaks down the use of race in college admissions and the future of affirmative action at the Supreme Court. For more information about Harvard Magazine and this…

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

    · 30 min · S3 E3

    In this episode, political philosopher Danielle Allen explains why the COVID crisis, extreme inequality, and undemocratic government are all connected—and how democracy in America can still be reinvigorated. For more…

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

    · 31 min · S3 E2

    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…

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

    · 47 min · S3 E1

    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…

  17. Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor, Season Three

    · 1:54 · Trailer

    For more information about Harvard Magazine and this podcast, visit www.harvardmagazine.com/podcast and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For a transcript of this episode, go to…

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

    · 27 min · S2 E7

    What should be done now about the federal budget and the deficit, with Doug Elmendorf, dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and Karen Dynan, professor of the practice of economics. For more information about Harvard…

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

    · 54 min · S2 E6

    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…

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

    · 30 min · S2 E5

    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…

  21. Nicholas Burns: Why Does Good Diplomacy Matter?

    · 32 min · S2 E4

    What role does diplomacy play in the modern world order, and what are the characteristics of a good diplomat? Which countries are the great powers today, and which will lead in 2050? Does NATO have a role in helping…

  22. Maya Sen: Have U.S. courts become political prizes?

    · 35 min · S2 E3

    If judges truly are impartial arbiters of justice, why do politicians fight over who will be appointed to the bench? Are the courts actually a political prize? And are judges really akin to umpires, just calling “balls…

  23. David Cutler: Can the U.S. Healthcare System Be Fixed?

    · 32 min · S2 E2

    No country in the world spends more on health care than the United States, or has less to show for it when compared to other wealthy nations. The U.S. spends nearly 50 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the…

  24. Joseph S. Nye: How Do Past Presidents Rank in Foreign Policy?

    · 24 min · S2 E1

    Rating the foreign policy of presidents from FDR to the present day with Joseph Nye, formerly a government professor in FAS, later dean of the Kennedy School, now a University Distinguished Service Professor For more…

  25. Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor Season Two

    · 2:02 · Trailer

    For more information about Harvard Magazine and this podcast, visit www.harvardmagazine.com/podcast and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For a transcript of this episode, go to…

  26. Marcyliena Morgan: How has Harvard Cultivated Hiphop?

    · 44 min · S1 E6

    What does hiphop culture—rap music, break dancing, and graffiti—have to do with Harvard? In this episode, Monrad professor of social sciences Marcyliena Morgan explains that hiphop began with the children of people who…

  27. Robin Kelsey: Is a Photograph a Work of Art?

    · 33 min · S1 E5

    What makes a photograph art? A great photograph may be the result of artistry, or it may be the result of dumb luck: a fleeting, perfect composition captured by chance. At a time when there is a camera in every pocket,…

  28. Edward Glaeser: Should We All Be Living in Cities?

    · 31 min · S1 E4

    Cities are an integral part of Earth’s future: by 2050, 68 percent of the world’s population will be living in an urban area. Solutions to social problems, from climate change to poverty, will therefore be tied to the…

  29. David Hemenway: Who Can Solve America’s Gun Problem?

    · 28 min · S1 E3

    Mass murders committed with firearms are becoming more frequent In the United States. And the total number of gun deaths, a majority by suicide, is now on par with those caused by automobile accidents. None of this has…

  30. Staci Gruber: How Does Marijuana Affect the Brain?

    · 31 min · S1 E2

    Weed, ganja, pot, flower, dope, grass, bud: marijuana has many names, but an even greater number of chemical constituents, from THC, the psychoactive component, to cannabidiols such as CBD, often touted for its…

  31. Lawrence Lessig: What Leads to Academic Corruption?

    · 28 min · S1 E1

    There’s a kind of academic corruption that most people have never considered. Not plagiarism. Not cheating on an exam. This is the kind of corruption that occurs when corporations and industry lobbying groups pay…

  32. Introducing: Ask a Harvard Professor

    · 1:29 · Trailer

    For more information about Harvard Magazine and this podcast, visit www.harvardmagazine.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Ask a Harvard Professor is hosted by Jonathan Shaw and produced by Lydia…

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