Colloquy

The US economy is strong. Unemployment is close to a 50-year low, real wages are rising for those at the bottom of the income ladder, and inflation is down though still not entirely in the rearview mirror. You’d never know it from the press coverage, though, which tends to focus on how people feel about the economy, namely that it’s bad and getting worse. 

In this episode of Colloquy, we take a step back from perception to look at where we were, where we are, and how we got here. What did the pandemic shocks teach us about government intervention in the economy? What did they show us about inflation and unemployment? And what have economists learned that can help policymakers cope with the next big crisis?

With us to parse these questions is Karen Dynan, a professor of the practice at the Harvard University Department of Economics and the Harvard Kennedy School. A senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Professor Dynan is the chair of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics. She previously served as assistant secretary for economic policy and chief economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2014 to 2017. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard Griffin GSAS in 1992. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2023 was actually the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. The heat wave caused hundreds of deaths, thousands of hospitalizations, and billions of dollars in damages. It also exacerbated droughts, wildfires, and power outages. 

The culprit behind this unprecedented heat is climate change, driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The most well-known greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, which comes from burning fossil fuels. Often overlooked is methane, which accounts for about 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and has more than doubled since pre-industrial times. 

Robert Stavins, PhD ’88, says that reducing the amount of methane in the atmosphere is a critical and cost-effective way to slow climate change and its impacts. To get there, the AJ Meyer professor of Energy and Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School is leading a new initiative at the University’s Salata Institute which aims to reduce methane emissions from different sectors using innovative approaches and collaborations. If successful, he says the world can “bend the curve” on climate change, giving humanity desperately needed time to address the larger, long-term problem of carbon dioxide.

Every technology is accompanied by a cultural technique says the artist and media scholar Emilio Vavarella, a PhD candidate in film and visual studies and critical media practice at the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “You have the calculator, but you also have the number," he says. "Everything we do from speaking to being able to write an imaginary story—all of these are specific techniques that we have developed. It’s what makes us human.” Vavarella calls these frameworks media models: abstract models that mirror specific technologies. Media models are the paradigms through which humans try to understand the world and themselves. Their development is slow and not necessarily linear or progressive, but it embraces all sectors of human life. In this episode of the Colloquy podcast, Vavarella gives a short history--from pre-historic hydrology to modern computation--of the ways in which technology and culture have interacted to shape the ways human beings think.

The global average temperature for July 2023 was the highest on record—and maybe the highest for the last 120 years according to the United Nations’ weather agency. In the United States, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona reached a record 118 degrees Fahrenheit and hit highs of at least 110 degrees for 31 consecutive days—also a record. And yet the populations of Arizona, Texas, and Florida, the states hardest hit by the warming trends, continue to expand. All of those people need air conditioning and refrigeration to make life bearable--but current cooling technologies just make the planet warmer. That's why Jinyoung Seo, PhD '23, wants to reinvent the air conditioner. In this episode of Colloquy, Seo talks about how he uses solid refrigerants to eliminate cooling systems’ direct greenhouse gas emissions—all while making them smaller and vastly more efficient.

In the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, thousands enlisted in the US military, were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and became embroiled in conflicts that were often fought not on the battlefield but in rural villages and in cities. To prepare for that type of warfare, American troops often trained at bases in the southwestern United States, where the military constructed replicas of Afghan and Iraqi towns. The US military hired people of Arabic descent to portray civilians working in markets, driving their cars--and being insurgents and terrorists.

In this episode of Colloquy, the scholar Adam Longenbach discusses the normalization of military violence in civilian spaces and the role that architecture plays in that process. Longenbach traces the trend back to its beginnings in World War II to show how the built environment, augmented by Hollywood stagecraft, has been used to turn city streets and urban neighborhoods into battle zones. (This talk was originally given during the Harvard Horizons Symposium in 2023.)

Starting July 4, 2021, and lasting past the holiday, members of the LGBTQ community converged on Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a holiday that was supposed to be a celebration of the end of the long COVID-19 lockdown. When the weather turned rainy, they confidently took the party indoors, packing the little seaside town’s restaurants, bars, and clubs. Why not? They were vaccinated and mask mandates had been lifted.

What happened next shocked both the revelers and the country, shutting down what had been hyped as a “hot vax summer,” and signaling that there was a long way to go before the pandemic was over. PhD student Lydia Krasilnikova—who co-led an 80-person, multi-organization collaboration examining the July 2021 superspreader event in Provincetown—talks about what happened and how the outbreak contributed to the US Center for Disease Control’s decision to resume its recommendation of indoor masking later that year.

Growing up in Ferguson, Missouri, Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student Steven Kasparek witnessed violence. He experienced it himself. He was left with some burning questions about which children go on to thrive and which struggle in the wake of exposure to violence. In this episode of Colloquy, Kasparek presents his research on the ways that childhood violence can shape bias—and bias can shape mental health throughout our lives. He also suggests new strategies to help protect violence-exposed youth from developing mental health problems that may ultimately undermine their success and well-being. (Note: This talk was originally given during the Harvard Horizons Symposium in 2023.)

In 2014, Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 276 female students from their dormitory at the Government Girls Secondary School in the Nigerian town of Chibok. The act inspired international outrage and a worldwide campaign to #BringBackOurGirls. Far less attention has been paid, however, to the plight of those who escape Boko Haram’s violence and become displaced within their own country. Now, anthropologist Gbemisola Abiola, PhD '23, is exploring different sites—camps, informal settlements, and host communities—where internally displaced persons (IDP) resettle. In this episode of Colloquy, Abiola discusses protracted displacement, the new structures of social and economic life that emerge from it, and the different survival strategies and tools IDP use to rebuild their lives.

It’s important to understand how massive stars live and die because of their role in the formation of some of the fundamental elements of the universe. That kind of science requires the development of computer simulations that model the universe from the Big Bang to today—an unimaginably complex task that is rife with uncertainties, computationally expensive, and can take years to complete. But data scientist and astrophysicist Floor Broekgaarden, PhD '23, has developed an algorithm that speeds up these simulations by more than a factor of 100, dramatically decreasing their cost as well. In this episode of Colloquy, Broekgaarden explains her work and why she has high hopes for its impact on our understanding of how the universe evolved. (Note: This talk was originally given during the Harvard Horizons Symposium in 2023.)

Ben Bellet, is a Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student in clinical psychology who studies PTSD. A graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, Bellet served as an officer in the army for five years. During his deployments in Afghanistan and Kuwait, he found himself less and less interested in logistics and operations and more interested in the Dostoevskian question of human suffering, particularly among the soldiers he led. 

Today, at Harvard, Bellet researches the ways that those living with PTSD can compulsively seek reminders of trauma. One of the gold standard treatments, exposure therapy, encourages survivors to approach reminders of the traumatic event. But Bellet's studies indicate that some survivors might expose themselves to these reminders in ways that confirm toxic beliefs about themselves. His data suggests that clinicians need to be flexible in their approach to treating the condition, always keeping in mind their patients need to find meaning in their distress.