Sausage of Science

Chris and Courtney sit down with Dr. Thomas Wynn, the Hand Axe Man, AKA: CU Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Colorado. Colorado Springs, where he taught from 1977 until his retirement. Dr. Wynn specializes in the archaeology of the Lower Palaeolithic, led pioneering research in Tanzania, and introduced psychological theory—specifically Piagetian concepts—into Palaeolithic studies, laying the groundwork for evolutionary cognitive archaeology.

Dr. Wynn has published over 100 papers and authored key books such as The Rise of Homo Sapiens (2009) and How to Think Like a Neandertal (2012), which he co-authored with Dr. Frederick Coolidge. In 2011, Wynn co-founded the UCCS Center for Cognitive Archaeology, offering online courses on human cognition's evolutionary development. His recent work includes curating First Sculpture, an exhibition on Acheulean handaxes and early aesthetics, which opened at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas in 2018.

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Find the book discussed in this episode:

Wynn, Thomas, and Frederick L. Coolidge. How to think like a Neanderthal. Oxford University Press, 2011.

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Contact Dr. Wynn via e-mail: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Courtney Manthey, Guest-Co-Host, Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli

Cristina Gildee, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Listeners, please welcome Courtney Manthey to the show ...as a guest! In this episode, Courtney takes a break from running the HBA social media accounts and being on the elected student committee to talk about her research regarding Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. Also, the human biology word of the day is: hirsutism.

Find the publication discussed in today’s episode via this citation:

Manthey, C., Cepon-Robins, T., & Warrener, A. (2024). Hyperandrogenism associated with polycystic ovary syndrome may have a protective effect against fracture risk in female athletes: A pilot study. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 36(8), e24070. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.24070

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Courtney Manthey is a PhD student at the University of Montana, where she studies ancient DNA under the guidance of Dr. Meradeth Snow. She is also a Research Affiliate at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, a Research Collaborator on the Rural Embodiment and Community Health (REACH) project, and Project Manager for the NSF-funded project, “The Effects of Shared Markers of Identity on Inflammation and Stress,” among other initiatives. Courtney’s research interests include reproductive health, maternal-fetal evolutionary genetics, energetics, and women’s diseases. She is the Principal Investigator for the "PCOS in the Pacific" project, which examines the prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome across the Pacific region through ancient DNA and disease prevalence studies, as well as the "PCOS Patient, Partner, Parent Stigma" project. Additionally, Courtney serves on the research and patient advisory boards of the National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association and the PCOS Multidisciplinary Clinic at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She is also a Patient Family Partner at the Preeclampsia Foundation and a Junior Service Fellow at the Human Biology Association. In her free time, Courtney is a childbirth doula, specializing in supporting adolescent mothers through the birthing process.

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Courtney Manthey, Special Guest,

Website: www.HolyLaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected]

Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: cdlynn at ua.edu,

Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:[email protected]

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation

Website: humbio.org/, Instagram: humbioassoc

Chris and Cristina share a bookclub favorite: "The Human Disease

How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs" with author Dr. Sabrina Sholts. Dr. Sholts is a Curator of Biological Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), received her PhD in Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, and was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Human Evolution Research Center (HERC) and at Stockholm University in the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry. Dr. Sholts is also the Director of the Smithsonian Institution Bio-Imaging Research (SIBIR) Center, Lead Curator of the Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World exhibition, and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist. Her research uses museum collections to explore intersections of human, animal, and environmental health.

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Find the book discussed in this episode:

Sholts, Sabrina. The Human Disease: How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs. MIT Press, 2024.

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Contact Dr. Sholts: Website: http://profiles.si.edu/individual/nSholtsS2252014, Twitter: @sabrinasholts E-mail: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @Chris_Ly

Cristina Gildee, Co-host, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @CristinaGildee

Co-host Chris Lynn joins Tom Brutsaert to dive deep into spleen variability and how it relates to intense exercise in high altitude populations. Dr. Tom Brutsaert is a professor at the Syracuse University. He has broad interests in how gene and environment interact to produce variation in human athletic ability and health and disease. He conducts field research on high altitude natives in the Andes, with some focus on gas exchange and the control of breathing. He and his collaborators have been using genome-wide approaches to elucidate the genetic basis of variation in specific altitude adaptive traits in several Andean populations, including the Quechua, in Peru, and the Aymara, in Bolivia. Brutsaert also has a laboratory-based program that focuses on how early life (intrauterine) developmental effects influence later-life adult exercise capacity, physical activity, body composition, the response to training, and the future risk for chronic disease.

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Find the paper discussed in this episode:

Brutsaert, T. D., Harman, T. S., Bigham, A. W., Kalker, A., Jorgensen, K. C., Zhu, K. T., Steiner, B. C., Hawkins, E., Day, T. A., Kunwar, A. J., Thakur, N., Dhungel, S., Sherpa, N., & Holmström, P. K. (2024). Larger spleens and greater splenic contraction during exercise may be an adaptive characteristic of Nepali Sherpa at high-altitude. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 36(9), e24090. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.24090

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Contact Dr. Brutsaert: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Co-Host Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Anahi Ruderman, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow. E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @ani_ruderman

Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Courtney Manthey, Guest-Co-Host, Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli

Eric Griffith, Guest Co-Host, HBA Junior Fellow

E-mail: [email protected]

Cara Ocobock, Co-Host, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:[email protected], Twitter:@CaraOcobock

Co-Hosts Chris Lynn and Anahí Ruderman talk abot how religion impacts fertility and maternal and child health with Dr. John Shaver, a biocultural and evolutionary anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at Baylor University. Most of his work to date has focused on understanding cultural variation in solutions to collective action and collective resource problems, and how these solutions may impact health and well-being. This research has involved fieldwork in Fiji, The Gambia, Mauritius, New Zealand, and the United States. His work is interdisciplinary and has been published in anthropology, biology, neuroscience, religion, psychology and general science journals. He is a co-editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior, a journal dedicated to the biological study of religion.

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Find the paper discussed in this episode:

Shaver, J. H., Chvaja, R., Spake, L., Hassan, A., Badjie, J., Prentice, A. M., Cerami, C., Sear, R., Shenk, M. K., & Sosis, R. (2024). Religious Involvement Is Associated With Higher Fertility and Lower Maternal Investment, but More Alloparental Support Among Gambian Mothers. American journal of human biology, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.24144

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Contact Dr. John Shaver: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Co-Host Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Anahi Ruderman, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

Twitter: @ani_ruderman, E-mail: [email protected]

Courtney Manthey, Co-Host, Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli

Cristina Gildee, Co-Host, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer,

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Cara Ocobock, Co-Host, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:[email protected], Twitter:@CaraOcobock

Chris and Cristina talk pandemics and welcome back Dr. Taylor Van Doren, a biocultural pandemic researcher investigating social inequalities, demography, and population health during and after pandemic events. As an NSF OPP Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the Institute of Circumpolar Health Studies, her focus is the demographic, epidemiological, and social consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Alaska with the help of historical vital records, death records, and archival data. Previously, she studied COVID-19 impacts and resilience in rural Southeast Alaska communities, work which she is expanding to include quantitative and qualitative analyses of delayed care and its determinants to understand the indirect population health impacts of COVID-19.

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Find the papers discussed in this episode:

Van Doren, T. P. (2024). Sex‐based tuberculosis mortality in Newfoundland, 1900–1949: Implications for populations in transition. American Journal of Human Biology, 36(5), e24033. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.24033

Van Doren, T. P., & Brown, R. A. (2023). Consequences of delayed care during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Emerging research and new lines of inquiry for human biologists and anthropologists. American Journal of Human Biology, 35(7), e23886. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23886

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Contact Dr. Van Doren: Website: taylorvandoren.com, Twitter:@taylor_vandoren E-mail: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Cristina Gildee, Co-host, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Dr Mansi Srivastava of Harvard University joins Chris and Courtney to talk about her research on regeneration throughout evolution.

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Dr. Srivastava's research focuses on understanding the evolution of animal development and regeneration. Her group utilizes the three-banded panther worm, Hofstenia miamia, which Dr. Srivastava has developed as a new acoel model system. Acoels represent the sister-group to all animals with bilateral symmetry, which allows the study of genetic mechanisms that span 550 million years of animal evolution. Current projects in her lab range from identifying gene regulatory networks for regeneration to determining the embryonic origins of pluripotent stem cells to understanding the origins of bilaterian nervous systems.

Her lab website can be found here:

www.srivastavalab.org/

The following are citations for the articles mentioned on today’s show:

Srivastava M. (2021). Beyond Casual Resemblance: Rigorous Frameworks for Comparing Regeneration Across Species. Annual review of cell and developmental biology, 37, 415–440. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-cellbio-120319-114716

Gehrke, A. R., Neverett, E., Luo, Y. J., Brandt, A., Ricci, L., Hulett, R. E., Gompers, A., Ruby, J. G., Rokhsar, D. S., Reddien, P. W., & Srivastava, M. (2019). Acoel genome reveals the regulatory landscape of whole-body regeneration. Science (New York, N.Y.), 363(6432), eaau6173. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau6173

Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation

Website: humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Courtney Manthey, Guest-Co-Host, Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli

Anahi Ruderman, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

E-mail: [email protected]

Our new Co-producer, Anahí Ruderman, is joined by Christopher to co-host this episode with Dr. Luciano Valenzuela. He is a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET). He specializes in the use of stable isotopes in Anthropology, Ecology, and Forensic Science in his research at the School of Social Sciences of the National University of the Center of Buenos Aires. He holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Utah. His interests are very diverse; not only does he research isotopes and their application in forensic cases, but he also has an extensive curriculum in fascinating subjects such as the feeding behavior of whales! Trigger Warning: this episode contains information regarding the identification of human remains.

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Find the paper discussed in this episode:

Valenzuela, L. O., Otero, F., Loupias, L. L., Béguelin, M., & Mancuso, R. G. (2023). BITACORA: An isotopic database of modern human tissues (keratin, teeth) for Argentina. Science & Justice, 63(6), 680-688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scijus.2023.10.003

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Contact Dr. Valenzuela: Website: https://isotoposestables.weebly.com , E-mail: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Anahi Ruderman, Cohost, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

E-mail: [email protected]

Cristina Gildee, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Chris checks in with Dr. Adam Johnson to discuss javelinas and their impact on humans. Dr. Johnson is an environmental anthropologist whose current work engages human-animal relations. His current project explores human-javelina relations in Texas, including affective relationships between javelinas and property owners, tourist-javelina encounters at Big Bend National Park, and the intimacy and care that pairs with violence in hunting. Previous research includes social boundary policing in a Drag Queen community in rural North Carolina, time budgeting and allocation in captive chimpanzees (at the North Carolina Zoo), female social relationships in rhesus macaques (Ocala National Forest, Florida), and science, racism, and inequality.

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Contact Dr. Johnson: Website: anthropology365.com, E-mail: [email protected]

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, Host

Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS Producer

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

The SoS Team puts one of their own in the hot seat as Courtney and Cristina interview Dr. Christopher Lynn about his book Transcendental Medication: The Evolution of Mind, Culture, and Healing. His book offers a unique perspective on why human brains evolved to have consciousness, yet we spend much of our time trying to reduce our awareness. It outlines how limiting consciousness—rather than expanding it—is more functional and satisfying for most people, most of the time.

He suggests that our brains evolved mechanisms to deal with the stress of awareness in concert with awareness itself—otherwise, it is too costly to handle. Defining dissociation as “partitioning of awareness,” Dr. Lynn touches on disparate cultural and psychological practices such as religion, drug use, 12-step programs, and dancing. The chapters draw on biological and cultural studies of Pentecostal speaking in tongues and stress, the results of our 800,000+ years watching hearth and campfires, and unconscious uses of self-deception as a mating strategy, providing practical insights into our daily lives.

As a professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama, Dr. Lynn's research explores critical intersections between culture and health. His work also includes investigating the relationship between tattooing practices, known as tatau, and immune response among Samoans to understand how cultural practices may influence physiological responses. Dr. Lynn is also the executive producer and co-host of the Inking of Immunity podcast.

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Find the book discussed in this episode:

Transcendental Medication

Lynn, C. D. (2022). Transcendental Medication: The Evolution of Mind, Culture, and Healing. Routledge.

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Contact Dr. Lynn:Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Cristina Gildee, Guest Co-Host, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS Producer

Website: cristinagildee.org, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@CristinaGildee

Courtney Manthey, Guest-Co-Host, Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli