The Armen Show

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.

Are there detailed maps of representations of sights, sounds, and action held in our brain? Postdoctoral scholar Rebecca Schwarlose joins us to discuss this topic and more from her latest book Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain―And How They Guide You. Rebecca Schwarzlose is a neuroscientist at Washington University in Saint Louis. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from MIT and has served as chief editor of the scholarly journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Rebecca’s research investigates how minds and brains conceptualize complex natural phenomena and generate a mental inventory of meaningful objects, actions, and social groups. Her doctoral research focused on the neural representation of crucial object categories such as human faces and bodies and the overarching organization of category information in the brain.  Her current research investigates the neural bases for atypical sensory processing and prediction in childhood and their relations to psychopathology. Brainscapes was supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

Data and information hits at the heart of what is growing over time in the public domain. Dr. Caleb Scharf, Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University , covers this topic from books to bits in his latest book The Ascent Of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm. He joins on episode 306 of The Armen Show Podcast with me, your host Armen Shirvanian. From his bio: “Caleb Scharf works in the fields of exoplanetary science and astrobiology, and writes extensively about science for a popular audience. Exoplanetary science is devoted to the discovery and characterization of planets around other stars, and understanding the formation, histories, and properties of these planets. One ultimate goal of this research is to find planets that could harbor recognizable life, and to detect the presence of that life—an effort that falls under the banner of astrobiology.” You can find The Ascent of Information on Amazon, or check out Dr. Scharf’s website for more.

Author and science writer Annie Murphy Paul joins on episode 305 of the show to discuss her latest book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Her book is about tapping into the intelligence that exists outside of the brain, and using the environment and world around us to propel our thinking. This is a category that has always been important to me because activities and understanding that propels thinking into more creative realms is essential in the making of great material. If we don’t use all tools at our disposal, we are limiting the amount of material we can put out there, which will then inspire other material. “Annie Murphy Paul is an acclaimed science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, and The Best American Science Writing, among many other publications. She is the author of Origins, The Cult of Personality, and now The Extended Mind.” You can check out Annie’s website or her latest book on Amazon.

What impact are the top companies having on the market and workers around the world? Does grabbing control of the market limit the ability of others to rise up just as smoothly? Economics Professor Jan Eeckhout of Pompeu Fabra University in Spain joins us on episode 304 of the show to discuss these topics and more from his book The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work. From his bio: “Jan Eeckhout is ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra,  Barcelona GSE Research Professor, and Professor of Economics at University College London. He has teaching and research interests in Macroeconomics, with a special emphasis on the labor market. He studies unemployment, labor market risk, skill diversity, inequality in cities, and the macroeconomic implications of market power.” “Professor Eeckhout’s work has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Political Economy, and has been supported by several government grants, including funding from the National Science Foundation (US) and the European Research Council (Starting and Advanced Grants), as well as private grants. His work has featured in the media, including outlets such as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Vox, and Bloomberg. He has advised over 30 PhD students who have placed in academic positions from Yale to Chicago and from Beijing to Canberra, as well as in non-academic positions.” You can check out Professor Eeckhout’s material on Twitter, on his faculty page, or on his Google Scholar articles page. You can also check out The Profit Paradox on Amazon.

Welcome to a special edition of the show – Episode #303 featuring a panel of three past guests returning on the topic of Chance Meetings. My three guests here are Professor Bill Sullivan of the Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Azra Raza of Columbia University, and Professor Dan Cable of London Business School. The topic of chance meetings was selected because of the value of those serendipitous moments that connect us with someone who branches our life in a certain direction. Before we met them, we were situated in some form, and after we met those key individuals, we were directed in a path that we lived for years and decades.