Deep Background with Noah Feldman

Dr. Paul Offit, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania and member of the F.D.A.’s vaccine advisory panel, discusses how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work and how they could be distributed.

Update: Since Noah and Dr. Offit spoke, Pfizer released an updated analysis of its vaccine trial data, showing that the vaccine is 95% effective overall and 94% effective for adults over 65: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine

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Tali Farhadian Weinstein, the host of the Pushkin podcast “Hearing” and a candidate to become the next District Attorney of Manhattan, discusses how she thinks local prosecution can be reformed from within.

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This week, President-elect Joe Biden named Vivek Murthy as one of the co-chairs of his COVID-19 Advisory Board. We spoke to Dr. Murthy on September 30th and wanted to re-share that conversation with you today. As the coronavirus surges on and news about a possible vaccine develops, this conversation is more relevant than ever.

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Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University School of Law who specializes in legal issues affecting democracy, discusses the role that the courts could play in this election. 

Note: This conversation was recorded on Wednesday, November 4th, at 12:30 pm EST.

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Noah Feldman is a guest on this episode of Axios Today, giving listeners a taste of what to expect for election night.

For more, subscribe to Axios Today wherever you get your podcasts.

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Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, comes back to Deep Background to discuss where we are now in the fight against COVID-19.

Clarification: There are two studies that suggest a decline in the risk of dying among hospitalized or ICU COVID-19 patients. Here is a link to those studies: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/20/925441975/studies-point-to-big-drop-in-covid-19-death-rates. Marc Lipsitch also mentions unpublished data that he has seen from Florida that suggests no such decline.

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Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ director of Elections and Surveys, discusses the latest polling data and how to make sense of it.

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We've taken our five part "Deep Bench" mini-series about the rise of the Federalist Society and expanded it into an audiobook entitled Takeover: How a Conservative Student Club Captured the Supreme Court. Takeover includes a preface and afterword including new commentary from Noah Feldman and never-heard-before interviews. The Federalist Society has become the most powerful legal organization in the country. How did this happen? What are the challenges it faces now? And why does it matter to everyone to know today? Download Takeover at www.pushkin.fm/takeover.

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Introducing Brave New Planet, a seven-part series that delves deep into powerful technologies changing our world. They have amazing potential upsides, but we can’t ignore the serious risks. Hosted by Dr. Eric Lander, Brave New Planet is a partnership between the Broad Institute, Pushkin Industries, and the Boston Globe.

In this episode, we're talking about how it's becoming more common to make convincing -- but false -- videos through artificial intelligence. These “deepfakes” can be useful in art, education, and therapy. But they can also be used to harm the reputation of an ex-partner or a stranger. Could they be weaponized to provoke international conflicts or swing elections? When seeing is not believing, who can we trust, and can democracy and truth survive?

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Adam Przeworski, a politics professor at New York University and one of the world’s foremost scholars on democratic transitions, explains his worries about a peaceful transfer of power.

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