A spike in COVID-19 cases combined with the holidays makes for an extraordinary amount of stress. For ways to deal with it, Lisa called Alejandro Chaoul, an expert on the therapeutic effects of meditation and Tibetan yoga. They spoke with Chaoul sitting cross-legged on the floor of his wife’s family’s house in Costa Rica, where the family was quarantining. They discuss mindful ways to fight sleeplessness, loneliness and anxiety.

But first, as promised, a surprise for Christmas: Chronicle Op/Ed editor Raj Mankad talks with Houston singer-songwriter Glenna Bell about her 2008 Christmas song Be my Valentine (on Christmas) and how its hopeful-yet-melancholy vibe feels just right for Raj at the close of 2020.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

Listen to Glenna Bell's music on Spotify.

Here's a list of Alejandro Chaoul's upcoming classes and meditation sessions. And here's where you can stream a free half-hour "Meditation for Crisis and Uncertainty" video with Ale, courtesy Rice University's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.

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This episode was available Friday, 12/11, on the Q&A with Lisa Gray feed. Want to get next Friday's episode delivered pronto to your podcast app? Click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or search your favorite player.

New vaccines are on the horizon — but is it too late to blunt the pandemic’s winter surge? Might Houston fare better than the rest of Texas? And why could a traditional-method vaccine be better for kids?

Lisa checks in with vaccine researcher Peter Hotez. He’s a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and he co-directs the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, where his lab team is developing COVID-19 vaccines.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Have questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

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Forty-two percent of Americans say they're unlikely to get a COVID-19 vaccine. To end the pandemic, how do we persuade them? Tips from Texas A&M researcher Lu Tang.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Have questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

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The Army Corps of Engineers’s latest ideas on how to reduce flooding along Buffalo Bayou has riled many Houston residents who were expecting a more modern solution to flooding than the concrete channelizing of Houston's bayous implemented in past decades. Lisa talks with Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and co-director of the storm-studying SSPEED Center at Rice University.

Read: Digging Buffalo Bayou deeper? Houstonians up in arms over Army Corps' 'old-fashioned' flood fixes.

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More: SSPEED Center — Severe Storm Prediction, Education, & Evacuation from Disasters Center

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UPDATE: Q&A with Lisa Gray is now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all the usual places. If you like the show, please follow and tell a friend.

With President-elect Biden pledging a science-based approach to wrangling the pandemic — and with record infections across the country — Lisa dials up world-class coronavirus expert Ben Neuman in his lab at Texas A&M University - Texarkana, and peppers him with questions: the state of coronavirus research? The safety of warp-speed vaccines and how they work? Would he take the shot? How long will these vaccines protect us? And ... what about that Russian vaccine?

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Welcome to this sneak peek episode of Q&A with Lisa Gray. We'll let you know (middle of next week?) when the show is available on Apple Podcasts and all the usual places.

As the United States nervously waits for this presidential election to be decided and we’re awash in discussions of the fine points of voting security, Lisa was eager to talk with voting security expert Dan Wallach to discuss the actual threats to American democracy.

Wallach is a professor at Rice University's Department of Computer Science where he also manages the university's computer security lab. He is currently on sabbatical with a nonprofit group called VotingWorks, making and promoting better voting systems.

This interview was recorded late in the afternoon of November 5, 2020. 

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Read Lisa's interview with Dan Wallach on HoustonChronicle.com.

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With COVID-19 cases surging in the U.S., and what may be signs of a coming spike in Houston, we offer this extra episode of Coronavirus Chronicle.

In this interview with Lisa Gray, vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez discusses the coming winter surge, and why he’ll be taking the first vaccine he can get. Since March, Hotez has emerged as Houston’s best explainer of the novel coronavirus, and one of the best in the nation.

Connect with Lisa Gray.

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Today's guests, Roman Mars, creator and host of the (very) popular 99% Invisible podcast and 99PI colleague Kurt Kohlstedt, want you to ask that question about the mundane — and therefore invisible — things that surround us. Why are stop signs red? What do those spray painted squiggles on sidewalks mean? What are those round things that keep us in our lanes on the freeways called?* On a virtual book tour, Roman and Kurt talk with Lisa about how the pandemic necessitated quick, smart solutions to new problems — think of those feet-shaped floor stickers at the grocery checkout — and how COVID might reshape our cities. 

Connect with Lisa Gray.

*Botts' dots

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Executive Editor Steve Riley was the first guest Ferrill interviewed for this show and today, six months later, Steve is Ferrill's final guest as Coronavirus Chronicle comes to a close. In March, Steve observed that coronavirus was "like a hurricane that would hit all places everywhere, in every way, all the time." Steve and Ferrill discuss how correct that description turned out to be, how Chronicle journalists adapted to working from home and how (and why) the organization worked to be the place readers could get the information they needed as the pandemic unfolded.

Connect with Ferrill Gibbs and Steve Riley.

Read:

EXPOSED | PART ONE - Nearly 3 dozen local COVID patients said their symptoms preceded the Houston region’s first confirmed case, data shows

EXPOSED | PART TWO: Warned - COVID-19 exposed the failure to learn lessons from prior pandemics

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Senior writer, columnist and Coronavirus Chronicle co-host Lisa Gray sits down with Ferrill for a chat as the podcast nears the end of its six-month run. Among the topics they discuss: the state of journalism, the phycological effect of focusing closely on the coronavirus pandemic month after month and why Lisa would ever "want to do this in the first place?" They also touch on the rejuvenating effects of gardening now that the fall planting season has mercifully arrived in Houston.

Connect with Ferrill Gibbs and Lisa Gray.

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