Preview: Ask a Harvard Professor, Season Four

Gerrymandering, food waste, COVID-19, and more from the next season of Harvard Magazine’s podcast. 

 

 

After tHREE great seasons, we’re delighted to bring you season four of Ask a Harvard Professor, starting this Monday, November 1.
 
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 Leib, Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Jerrold Rosenbaum, Claudia Goldin, Makeda Best, and Rudy Tanzi.
 
 

A transcript from the interview (the following was prepared by a machine algorithm, and may not perfectly reflect the audio file of the interview):

 

Jacob Sweet: Hi, I’m Jacob Sweet and I’m an Associate Editor at Harvard Magazine and a co-host of the fourth season of our podcast, Ask a Harvard Professor, brought to you by the Harvard University Employees Credit Union. Each week, our editors will interview some of the world’s most prominent scholars, discussing subjects from gerrymandering to food waste to COVID-19. From Michael Mina on rapid testing…

Michael Mina: Unfortunately what we are finding, which isn’t very surprising, is that the vaccines, despite our great hopes around them, just aren’t actually performing as well as we had hoped to stop transmission. I want to be very clear that the greatest benefit and the greatest thing we could ask for of a vaccine is that they stop people from going to the hospital. And so they’re doing a really good job at that.

Jacob Sweet: To Emily Broad Leib on confusing date labels on food...

Emily Broad Leib: When you look at the U.S., we waste, it’s estimated, between a third and 40 percent of our food supply. So this isn’t a small problem. We’re wasting a huge amount of food, and that is both a huge waste of the resources that go into producing that food—more than 20 percent of our water, for example, goes to water crops that we then throw away.

Jacob Sweet: Join us next Monday, November 1, for our fourth season, and subscribe today on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform so you’ll never miss one of our weekly episodes. We look forward to sharing these interviews with you.

 

 
 

You might also like

General Counsel Diane Lopez to Retire

Stepping down after 30 years of University service

Navigating Changing Careers

Harvard researchers seek to empower individuals to steer their own careers.

Easing the Energy Transition

How the Bezos Earth Fund hopes to seed economic transformation

Most popular

Transitions Gradual and Cataclysmic

Andrew Knoll on the planet’s past—and fraught future

The Context: Daniel Lieberman on Food Addiction

Framing the news with our best articles on diet and health

How Paper Crumples

The research provides insight into the way materials react to repeated strain.

More to explore

Illustration of a box containing a laid-off fossil fuel worker's office belongings

Preparing for the Energy Transition

Expect massive job losses in industries associated with fossil fuels. The time to get ready is now.

Apollonia Poilâne standing in front of rows of fresh-baked loaves at her family's flagship bakery

Her Bread and Butter

A third-generation French baker on legacy loaves and the "magic" of baking

Illustration that plays on the grade A+ and the term Ai

AI in the Academy

Generative AI can enhance teaching and learning but augurs a shift to oral forms of student assessment.