The Armen Show

Welcome to episode 317 of the show with Dr. Brandy Schillace, where we go into the story of surgeon Dr. Robert White and his transplant efforts. We discuss the story represented in her book Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul. Dr. Brandy Schillace is a historian of medicine and the critically acclaimed author of Death’s Summers Coat, Clockwork Futures, and most recently Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher, described by the New York Times as a “macabre delight.” Her books have been reviewed in Science Magazine, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, New Yorker, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and more. Dr. Schillace is host of the Peculiar Book Club, a livestream community of authors and readers, and has appeared on Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum,  NPR’s Here and Now, and FOX’s American Built. She has bylines at Scientific American, Globe and Mail, HuffPo, SLATE, and Crime Reads. Dr. Schillace is a 2018 winner of the Arthur P. Sloan Science Foundation award, and in addition to her work as an author, is editor-in-chief of BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal. Links: Twitter Peculiar Book Club Mr. Humble & Dr. Butcher TikTok

What can the lessons of the stoics do for us in 2021? What did these philosophers and thinkers know that could guide us in managing our emotions for a better outcome? Has stoicism become popularized in recent years, and what can we take from this change of pace? Professor Nancy Sherman of Georgetown University joins on episode 316 of the show to discuss these topics and more from her latest book Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience. Nancy Sherman is a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. She was also the inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the United States Naval Academy. She is the author of Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers; The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers a New York Times Editors’ pick; Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind; Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue; The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue, and the editor of Critical Essays on the Classics: Aristotle’s Ethics. She has written over 60 articles in the area of ethics, military ethics, the history of moral philosophy, ancient ethics, the emotions, moral psychology, and psychoanalysis. She has delivered over 60 named or keynote lectures and plenary addresses here and abroad. Links: Twitter | Stoic Wisdom | Faculty page

What causes cooperation when there is potential to exploit? Why is cooperation commonplace in nature, when there is clear benefit from selfish behavior. Examining humans and non-human animals, Professor Nichola Raihani of University College London explores this topic in The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, and joins us on episode 315 of the show. Dr. Nichola Raihani is a British psychologist who is a Professor of Evolution and Behaviour at University College London. She earned a Bachelor of Arts (Natural Sciences) at Girton College in the University of Cambridge in 2003. She stayed at Cambridge for her graduate studies, where she studied cooperation in pied babblers in the Kalahari Desert. Her doctoral research was supervised by Tim Clutton-Brock. In 2008 she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Zoology (Zoological Society of London). In 2011, she moved to University College London, where she studies the evolution of punishment and cooperation. Links: Twitter | Faculty Page | Research | The Social Instinct

What can we learn from 17th century economic discourse? A crucial transformation in economic thinking happened at the time, and analysis of the discussion of the time period is informative regarding a shift from a more moral view to one of company growth. Professor Emily Erikson of Yale University discusses these concepts from her latest book Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought on episode 314. Emily Erikson is the Joseph C. Fox Academic Director of the Fox International Fellowship and associate professor of sociology and the school of management (by courtesy). She works on the emergence and development of global networks, organizations, and the institutions of capitalism and democracy. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociology Theory, The Journal of Economic History, and Social Science History, among others. She serves on the council for the economic sociology section of the American Sociological Association, the editorial board for Social Science History, the editorial committee for the Relational Sociology Series. She is a founding member of the advisory board for the Journal of Historical Network Research and sits of the executive council of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate. You can check out her faculty page, or see Trade and Nation on Columbia University Press.

What is meritocracy, and how are the dynamics associated with its proliferation affecting equality and culture? Professor Daniel Markovits of Yale Law School joins on episode 313 of the show, and we discuss these concepts from his book The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite. “Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Private Law. Markovits works in the philosophical foundations of private law, moral and political philosophy, and behavioral economics. He publishes in a range of disciplines, including in Science, The American Economic Review, and The Yale Law Journal. After earning a B.A. in Mathematics, summa cum laude from Yale University, Markovits received a British Marshall Scholarship to study in England, where he was awarded an M.Sc. in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the L.S.E. and a B.Phil. and D.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford. Markovits then returned to Yale to study law and, after clerking for the Honorable Guido Calabresi, joined the faculty at Yale.” You can check out The Meritocracy Trap on Amazon, or Professor Markovits’ faculty page.

Fossils take us through a history of evolution with the pieces that are found. Dr. Paige Madison of the University of Copenhagen studies fossils, human evolution through findings, and joins us on episode 312 of the show, coming from the Natural History Museum in Denmark. From her bio: “Paige is a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum Denmark, University of Copenhagen, examining human evolution in the Anthropocene. She received her PhD in the history of science, focusing on the history of paleoanthropology, from Arizona State University. Her passions include human evolution and science outreach. “ You can check out her website Fossil History or follow her on Twitter.

Professor Damon Centola of the University of Pennsylvania joins on episode 311 to discuss topics from his book Change: How To Make Big Things Happen. We look to spread ideas and behaviors that resonate, and knowing how to do so is a key piece of the process. The more we know about information and behavioral spread, the less we do that is not necessary. From his bio, “Damon Centola is Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group.  Before coming to Penn, he was an Assistant Professor at M.I.T. and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow at Harvard University. His research includes social networks, social epidemiology, and web-based experiments on diffusion and cultural evolution.  His work has been published across several disciplines in journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Sociology, and Journal of Statistical Physics.  Popular accounts of Damon’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, and CNN.” You can check out Change on Amazon, or take a look at Professor Centola’s faculty page.

On episode 310, we switch things up and head to the world of poetry and writing on the switch to living in America by author Roya Hakakian. Her book A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious takes us through what one can expect being in the United States, from the perspective of someone immigrating via Iran. We discuss her current book, as well as the trajectory from her past books. From her bio, Roya “is an author and Persian poet whose opinion columns, essays and book reviews appear in English language publications like the New York Times, the Daily Beast, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and NPR’s All Things Considered. A founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, she has collaborated on over a dozen hours of programming for leading journalism units on network television, including CBS 60 Minutes. Roya is the author of two collections of poetry in Persian, and is listed among the leading new voices in Persian poetry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies around the world, including La Regle Du Jeu, Strange Times My Dear: The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature. She serves on the board of Refugees International.” You can find her book on Amazon, or visit her website.

Welcome to episode 309 of the show, with our guest being Professor Lee Cronin of The University of Glasgow. This was a special episode returning to in-person material, and we discussed a variety of topics including philosophy, physics, reduction, emergence, chemistry, and time. It was very enjoyable and informative to take part in this discussion. Professor Cronin went to “the University of York where he completed both a degree and PhD in Chemistry and then on to do post docs in Edinburgh and Germany before becoming a lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham, and then Glasgow where he has been since 2002 working up the ranks to become the Regius Professor of Chemistry in 2013 aged 39. He has one of the largest multidisciplinary chemistry-based research teams in the world, having raised over $35 M in grants and current income of $15 M. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals and construct chemical computers.” You can check out his lab profile page, Wikipedia, and research.

Investigative journalist Carey Gillam joins the show on episode #308, and we discuss her recent book The Monsanto Papers: Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice. From her bio: “Carey Gillam is an American investigative journalist and author with more than 30 years of experience covering food and agricultural policies and practices, including 17 years as a senior correspondent for Reuters international news service. She has specialty knowledge regarding the rise of biotech crop technology and the associated rise in pervasive pesticide use in our farming and food production system. Gillam has won several industry awards for her work and been recognized as a leading global expert on corruption in the agricultural chemical industry. Her first book Whitewash- The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science was released in October 2017 and won the coveted Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists as well as two other literary awards.” “The Monsanto Papers is the inside story of Lee Johnson’s landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. For Lee, the case was a race against the clock, with doctors predicting he wouldn’t survive long enough to take the witness stand. For the eclectic band of young, ambitious lawyers representing him, it was a matter of professional pride and personal risk, with millions of dollars and hard-earned reputations on the line. For the public at large, the lawsuit presented a question of corporate accountability. With enough money and influence, could a company endanger its customers, hide evidence, manipulate regulators, and get away with it all—for decades?” You can find more about Carey on her website, or check out The Monsanto Papers on Amazon.