CG Podcast

How did school closures impact American children and teenagers?

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Nat Malkus, senior fellow and deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, to discuss his latest research on the effects of school closures on American children and teenagers. Nat's research on chronic absenteeism was recently featured in a New York Times article, A Crisis of School Absences. We discuss the data on school closures, what is being done in the education sector to address these adverse consequences, and the lessons we have learnt for a future pandemic.
 
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Learning from the Swedish Covid "experiment"

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Swedish journalist, Johan Anderberg, to discuss his latest book, The Herd: How Sweden Chose Its Own Path Through the Worst Pandemic in 100 Years. Translated into English in 2022, the book explores the no-lockdown approach taken by Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist during the pandemic, and the influence of his long-term mentor, Johan Giesecke. We discuss what motivated Johan to write the book, how pandemic policies evolved in Sweden, and the key lessons the world should learn from the so-called "Swedish Covid experiment."
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The Covid legacy in Australia

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Prof. Shahar Hameiri, a political scientist from the University of Queensland, to discuss his latest book, The Locked-up Country: Learning the lessons from Australia's Covid-19 response. Published in 2023, the book explores the multiple governance failures of Australia's Covid response and locates these within their historical context, with particular reference to the regulatory state. We reflect on the authoritarianism of lockdown, the public desirability of Zero Covid and the legacy of the pandemic on society and politics in Australia and beyond.
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The lockdown experience in Italy

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Piero Stanig, Professor of Political Science at Bocconi University in Italy, to discuss his book, Lockdown Failure (Fallimento Lockdown). They explore the government response in Italy, the legacy of lockdown, and what to expect from the upcoming Italian government Covid Inquiry.
 
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The pandemic experience in Ireland

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Frank Armstrong, Editor of Cassandra Voices, an Irish public intellectual forum and online news source, to discuss the pandemic experience in Ireland and what we can expect from a possible Irish Covid Inquiry.
Frank has published numerous articles about the Covid-19 pandemic, including on topics like Zero Covid, lockdown, vaccine mandates, and media censorship. We discuss his cumulative knowledge of how the policy and scientific community responded to the crisis in Ireland and how the public interpreted events as they unfolded and in their aftermath today.

The state of the Canadian media during and after the Covid-19 pandemic

Kevin Bardosh sits down with Tara Henley, a well-known Canadian writer and podcaster, to discuss the state of the Canadian media during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tara recently published the 2024 Massey Essay, The Trust Spiral: Restoring Faith in the Media, in the Literary Review of Canada. We discuss her thought provoking essay, including why trust in the mainstream media in Canada has declined significantly in the last decade and what can be done about it.
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A crisis to worsen all crises?: living with lockdowns in the Global South.

In this episode Reva Yunus and Aleida Borges talk about the gendered aspects of a very ‘punitive’ pandemic response, especially in the Global South. Dr Aleida Mendes Borges also talks about the book, “Pandemic response and the cost of lockdowns. Global debates from humanities and social sciences”, which she co-edited with Peter Sutoris, Sinéad Murphy and Yossi Nehushtan. 
 
Who were the people who paid the highest cost of lockdown? This is the question that this conversation focuses on, serving as an urgent reminder of why lockdowns should never be repeated. Dr Borges offers insights into how the decontextualised, top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to handling the pandemic led to an ignorance of local resources, experiences and concerns. The socioeconomic impact on women received minimal attention despite their insecure economic status and higher vulnerability to such crises, and despite local and global voices pointing to the ‘shadow’ pandemic targeting women since the beginning of lockdowns. Challenges of cramped spaces, safety, poverty and ‘double shifts’ were ignored even as large sections of women workers were declared ‘essential’ workers who faced higher risks and earned lower wages. At the same time, the state used high levels of violence in many parts of the world reflecting a shift in the relationship between state power and citizens, especially marginalised groups. 
Dr Borges’ research at the Global institute for women’s leadership at King’s College London focuses on social policy, analysing it through a feminist lens. Reva Yunus is a Lecturer at the University of York and researches gender issues, poverty, precarity and schooling.

Did Covid-19 restrictions break British society?

In this CG Conversation, Dr Jennie Bristow talks to Professor David Livermore about the consequences of lockdowns and social distancing restrictions for the fabric of social life. As we move on from the pandemic itself, to what extent have the behaviours and mores of pre-Covid times changed? On one hand, dystopian fears about the end of handshakes, hugs, and parties have not materialised. On the other, something subtle has changed in the culture of work and education, and we’re no longer sure what we can take for granted.
David and Jennie also discuss the relationship between politicians, the media, and the public during the pandemic, in the demand for more and more rules restricting social behaviour. Was the government responding to an irrational crowd mentality, or was the fearful demand for rules generated by the exclusion of the public from a calm, balanced discussion about what could and should be done? What did the injunction to ‘be kind’ by obeying all the restrictions do to our deeper understanding of what kindness means, and why it matters? Where do we go from here, in reckoning with the Covid years without allowing them to define us?

The Covid Consensus

Lucy Johnston interviews Toby Green about his revisionist history of the pandemic
In this podcast Lucy Johnston, Health Editor of the Sunday Express, interviews Professor Toby Green (CG steering group) about the new book he has coauthored with Thomas Fazi, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor -- A Critique from the Left (The Covid Consensus | Hurst Publishers). Their discussion ranges widely, from the causes of the lockdown response and the functioning of the scientific establishment, to the impacts on the Global South and how Green came to write the book. In the final part they discuss the imperative of debate and discussion of what has happened as a key part of the healing process of the traumas of this pandemic.

Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns

One of the editors of the new book published by Routledge -- Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns: Global Debates from the Humanities and Social Sciences -- Peter Sutoris (assistant Professor, University of York) discusses the book with CG steering group member Professor Toby Green. They range over the response of academics from the humanities and the social sciences, the importance of these disciplines to pandemic response, and the role of fields such as Philosophy and Anthropology to a more balanced response to new diseases.