The Global Health Politics Podcast

Season 3, Episode 1: Sapna Desai on Women's Health and Unnecessary Hysterectomy 29.05.2026 29min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down to talk with Dr. Sapna Desai, a Senior Fellow at the Population Council Institute in New Delhi, India. A public health expert with over 20 years of experience working on women's health in India, she holds a PhD in epidemiology and population from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Master's in Population and International Health from Harvard University. They talk about maternal health, sterilization and population ...

Season 2, Episode 12: Lioba Hirsch on Antiblackness and Global Health 30.04.2026 48min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. Lioba Hirsch, a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. They talk about her new book, Antiblackness and Global Health: A Response to Ebola in the Colonial Wake, as well as racism, decolonization, North-South power dynamics, global health governance, inequalities in relation to COVID-19, and infectious disease response in Africa.

Season 2, Episode 11: Katharina Krause and Brooke Bocast on The Many Ways of Doing Research on Global Health Politics 29.03.2026 56min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with two researchers doing very exciting - but also very different - kinds of research on global health politics. In the first conversation, I talk with Dr. Katharina Krause, an international relations scholar who is a Research Associate at the University of Tubingen about her book project on the relationship between health security and images of infectious diseases like Ebola. In the second conversation, I talk with Dr. Brooke Bocast, an Assistant...

Season 2, Episode 10: District of Columbia Shadow Representative to Congress Oye Owolewa on Political Advocacy in a Time of Occupation 26.02.2026 43min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Adeoye "Oye" Owolewa. A pharmacist recognized for his efforts to protect public health, Dr. Owolewa has served as the Shadow Representative to Congress for the nation's capital since his election in November 2020. He shares his experience as a Nigerian American working in politics, advocating for D.C. statehood at a time when the nation's capital was under federal occupation by National Guard troops, a federalized Metropolitan Pol...

Season 2, Episode 9: New York Times Best- Selling Author John Green on Global Health Injustice and Tuberculosis 28.01.2026 31min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with New York Times best-selling author John Green to talk about his new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. Best known for novels, like Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, which have been turned into Hollywood movies, in his latest book Mr. Green turns his attention to a disease for which we have a cure, but which still kills over a million people a year, most in poor countries. They talk about what moved him to write this book, his wor...

Season 2, Episode 8: Madhu Pai on Global Health Inequality 30.12.2025 53min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with one of the most prominent voices in global health today, Dr. Madhu Pai. Dr. Pai is a medical doctor and Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health at McGill University and the Associate Director of the McGill International TB Centre in Montreal. In this wide-ranging conversation, they talk about tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, the climate crisis, the roots of global health injustice, the recent foreign aid cuts, Global Nort...

Season 2, Episode 7: Thurka Sangaramoorthy on Immigration and Health 30.11.2025 54min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with American University anthropologist Thurka Sangaramoorthy to discuss her work on immigration and health. They talk about her work with Haitian immigrants in South Florida that was the subject of her first book; her work at the CDC and book on rapid ethnographic assessments; her new book - Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America on how immigrants navigate healthcare challenges in rural Maryland; the field of anth...

Season 2, Episode 6: James Pfeiffer on Debt, Austerity, and Decolonization 30.10.2025 45min

Send us Fan Mail In this long-awaited episode, originally recorded in Fall 2022, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. James Pfeiffer, Professor of Global Health and Anthropology at University of Washington. They talk about global health work in Mozambique; World Bank and IMF structural adjustment programs; debt and austerity and their impact on development; and the movement to decolonize global health.

Season 2, Episode 5: Claire Decoteau on the COVID-19 Emergency and the Failure of Pandemic Response 28.09.2025 52min

Send us Fan Mail In this podcast episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Illinois-Chicago Professor of Sociology Claire Decoteau. They discuss her latest book - Emergency: COVID-19 and the Uneven Valuation of Life - which explores how and why the city of Chicago failed to protect its most vulnerable citizens in its pandemic response. In the process, they explore the changing landscape of global health and sociology and the implications for democracy and health.

Season 2, Episode 4: The Community Health Impact Coalition's Campaign to Professionalize Community Health Work Globally 29.08.2025 58min

Send us Fan Mail Many health systems around the world rely on community health workers (CHWs) who play vital roles in health promotion, disease prevention, and primary care. While CHWs in some countries are not paid or receive only small stipends and operate without a great deal of support, guidance, or professional standards, one global movement is trying to change that. In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with Dr. Lennie Bazira - a medical doctor and Policy Director for the Community H...

Season 2, Episode 3: Jenny Trinitapoli on HIV/AIDS and Epidemics of Uncertainty 31.07.2025 54min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Chicago sociologist Jenny Trinitapoli. They discuss her new book, An Epidemic of Uncertainty, which explores how young adults negotiate relationships, sex, and childbearing in the context of the AIDS epidemic in Malawi, one of the world's hardest hit nations. Her landmark book draws attention not only to the uncertainty young people face in relation to their HIV status (nearly 60% of the women studied reported that t...

Season 2, Episode 2: Victor Roy Explains How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicine 29.06.2025 52min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Pennsylvania physician and sociologist Victor Roy. They discuss the issues that are at the core of Dr. Roy's new book, Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines, which is available for free online through open access. The discussion covers the financialization of healthcare and medicine and the impact that finance has had on drug pricing and access, including for Hepatitis C treatment...

Season 2, Episode 1: Julia Lynch on Political Science and the Political Economy of Health 30.05.2025 42min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, Joseph Harris sits down with University of Pennsylvania political scientist Julia Lynch to discuss her work on politics, pandemics, public health, inequality, and social policy. Our wide-ranging conversation explores the role of political science in understanding the political economy of health and two of her recent books - Regimes of Inequality: The Political Economy of Health and Wealth and The Unequal Pandemic: COVID-1...

Episode 12: The Dismantling of U.S. Foreign Aid and the Consequences for Global Health 30.04.2025 1h 46min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Joseph Harris explores the actions taken by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. foreign aid and the consequences that these actions will have for global health. He sits down with Dr. Beth Cameron, a former Senior Adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); Nidhi Bouri, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID; Dr. Brooke Nichols, Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University and creator of as U.S. aid freeze impa...

Episode 11: Prerna Singh on the Comparative Politics of Vaccination in China and India 30.03.2025 1h 10min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with Brown University political scientist Prerna Singh to discuss her latest book project, Moral Vaccination: How Ideas and Institutions Controlled Contagion in China and India. Our wide-ranging conversation explores how states generate compliance with public health interventions, grounded in a comparison of India and China's efforts to eradicate smallpox. Her important work suggests the need to incorporate a b...

Episode 10: Emily Mendenhall on COVID-19, Syndemics, and Community 27.02.2025 1h 7min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with Georgetown University anthropologist Emily Mendenhall to discuss her book, Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji. We talk about her past work on non-communicable diseases, particularly diabetes and mental health, and her concept of syndemics, which examines how multiple health and social conditions intersect.

Episode 9: Ann Swidler on HIV/AIDS Altruism in Malawi 30.01.2025 1h 38min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with UC-Berkeley Sociologist Ann Swidler to learn from her more than two decades of experience studying the aid industry, global health, culture, and institutions in Malawi amid the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Episode 8: Kim Yi Dionne on Pandemic Response in Africa 30.12.2024 57min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, I sit down with UC-Riverside Political Scientist Kim Yi Dionne to talk about pandemic response in Africa, the discipline of political science, and her engagement with Malawi.

Episode 7: Adia Benton on Military Power and Public Health 25.11.2024 1h 9min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Global Health Politics Podcast, Joseph Harris sits down with Northwestern University anthropologist Adia Benton. They talk about her book, HIV Exceptionalism, her recent work on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the militarization of public health, and efforts to decolonize global health.

Episode 6: Tim Schwab on the Bill Gates Problem 28.10.2024 26min

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with Tim Schwab, a freelance investigative journalist, whose new book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of a Good Billionaire, critically examines the profound influence of one of global health's biggest players, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.