Sausage of Science

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

From the New York Times Best Selling Authors of “The Genius of Dogs,” Vannessa Woods and Brian Hare, comes “Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog.”

Chris and his trusty co-host Eric unpack “dognition” with Vanessa, a research scientist who runs a “Puppy Kindergarten” at Duke University. She also happens to be an award-winning journalist and author of Bonobo Handshake. Brian is a professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke, where he founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center.

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Find the books discussed in this episode:

Hare, B., & Woods, V. (2024). Puppy Kindergarten: the new science of raising a great dog. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Hare, B., & Woods, V. (2021). Survival of the friendliest: Understanding our origins and rediscovering our common humanity. Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Learn more about Puppy Kindergarten here.

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Contact Vanessa: [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

Eric Griffith, Guest Co-Host

E-mail: [email protected]

Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS Producer

Website

Special guest hosts Cristina and Miguel Ochoa unpack the nutritional ecology with Dr. Hugo Azcorra-Pérez, a human biologist at Centro de Investigaciones Silvio Zavala, Universidad Modelo, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. He is interested in the biology of populations during the early stages of growth and development and how environmental factors and intergenerational influences shape biological conditions. Born in Yucatán, México, he holds a Master of Sciences in Human Ecology and a Ph.D. in Human Biology (Loughborough University, UK). His research focuses on human growth and its variation according to economic and sociocultural variables. In his Ph.D. work, he assessed how intergenerational factors influence Maya families' development and nutritional status, particularly the phenomenon of nutritional dual-burden (i.e., the coexistence of undernutrition and overweight within the same family or individual). These interests have continued through his current work, which focuses on how the chronic adverse living conditions experienced by Maya populations from Yucatan have impacted their biology and health outcomes.

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Find the paper discussed in this episode:

Azcorra, H., Castillo-Burguete, M. T., Lara-Riegos, J., Salazar-Rendón, J. C., & Mendez-Dominguez, N. (2024). Secular trends in the anthropometric characteristics of children in a rural community in Yucatan, Mexico. American Journal of Human Biology, 36(2), e23995. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23995

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Contact Dr. Azcorra-Pérez: [email protected]

Twitter: @AzcorraHugo and on Facebook: facebook.com/hugo.azcorra/

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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

Miguel Ochoa, Guest Co-Host

E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Miguel_Ochoa88

Chris and Courtney host Claire Gold, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studies the life histories and diet of the women and children from a Medieval Italian population. Claire received her MA in Biological Anthropology from the State University of New York, Binghamton, where she focused on the reproductive correlates of reproductive cancers. Since then, she has raised three children with her husband. In 2019, Claire decided to pursue her PhD at 45 to continue contributing to relevant research on women's and children’s health. She is interested in early life events in modern humans and archaeological populations. Claire is a member of the Society for American Archaeology, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists, the Human Biology Association, the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases, and the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.

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Find the works discussed in this episode:

Gold, C. L., & Bertone‐Johnson, E. (2024). Self‐reported history of breastfeeding in relation to recalled age at menarche in the United States. American Journal of Human Biology, e24067.

Gold, C. L., Kitrinos, C. E., Sievert, L. L., & Kamilar, J. M. (2023). Mean age at menarche and climate variables on a global scale. American Journal of Human Biology, 35(12), e23961.

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Contact Claire: [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

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

Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

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

Chris and Cristina interview Taiye Winful, a PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University, who studies stress and embodiment in African and other Black populations. Taiye completed her bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology from Loyola University Chicago and MA degree in Anthropology from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Taiye’s Master’s thesis was titled “Reconstructing Africa’s Evolutionary Histories: DNA Collection, Coding, Analysis, and Interpretation.” Her thesis focused on generating a comprehensive bio-culturally informed set of African DNA databases that reflected continental and diasporic African genomic diversity. Taiye’s current research interests include genetics, race, health, embodiment, and health disparities. Her dissertation focuses on understanding how life experiences translate into physiological systems via stress in Black populations. She explores the biological mechanisms that connect stress and health, specifically focusing on how social and environmental factors can lead to epigenetic changes in inflammatory-related biomarkers.

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Find the works discussed in this episode:

Winful, Taiye, "Bioethics as a Dynamic Issue: Holistic Approaches to Understanding and Applying Ethics to Study Design" (2024). Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints. 208.

https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/208

Winful, T.; Sorunke, M.; Benn Torres, J. “The Impacts of Stress on Salivary CRP Variability in a Nigerian Population” (in prep).

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Contact Taiye: [email protected]

Twitter: @twinanthro

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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

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

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

How can marmosets inform human birth experiences? Are there really four types of human pelvises? What happens when primates birth litters?

Prof. Julienne Rutherford joins Chris and Eric to answer these questions and more!

Find the articles discussed on this episode via the following citations:

Rutherford, J.N., Ross, C.N., Ziegler, T., Burke, L.A., Steffen, A.D., Sills, A., Layne Colon, D., Demartelly, V.A., Narapareddy, L.R. and Tardif, S.D., 2021. Womb to womb: Maternal litter size and birth weight but not adult characteristics predict early neonatal death of offspring in the common marmoset monkey. Plos one, 16(6), p.e0252093.

VanSickle, C., Liese, K.L. and Rutherford, J.N., 2022. Textbook typologies: challenging the myth of the perfect obstetric pelvis. The Anatomical Record, 305(4), pp.952-967.

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Dr. Julienne Rutherford is Professor and John & Nell Mitchell Endowed Chair for Pediatric Nursing in the University of Arizona College of Nursing. She is a biological anthropologist whose work integrates bioanthropological theory with biomedical science. For 20 years, she has sustained a program of research exploring the intrauterine environment as a biosocial determinant of health. She studies how maternal life history and lived experience shape this earliest developmental setting, and how, in turn, the intrauterine environment influences growth, health, and development across the life course and across generations.

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation

Website: humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair

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

Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

E-mail: eric.griffith at duke.edu

Prof. Lesley Gregoricka joins Chris and Eric to explain her work in the field of bioarchaeology. Topics include everything from strontium isotope analysis to the ethics of legacy collections of human remains. Stick around for a diversion to King Cakes and Mardis Gras.

The article discussed on this episode can be found via this citation:

Gregoricka, L. A. (2023). The ethics of excavating: bioarchaeology and the case for rehabilitating legacy human skeletal collections in the Near East. Levant, 55(3), 294-303.

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Bioarchaeologist Dr. Lesley Gregoricka is a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the University of South Alabama. Her research focuses on prehistoric mortuary practices and the chemistry of ancient human teeth and bones to examine changing patterns of mobility and the evolution of social complexity in Arabia and the broader Middle East.

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation

Website: humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair

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

Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

E-mail: eric.griffith at duke.edu

Chris and Eric catch up with Dr. Melanie Martin, an Associate Professor in the University of Washington Department of Anthropology, whose research examines biocultural influences on health, growth, and development across the life course. In addition to being the Co-PI of the Biodemography Lab at the University of Washington Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, she conducts field research with two international projects on Indigenous community health and well-being: the Chaco Area Reproductive Ecology Program (Co-Director) and the Tsimane Health and Life History Project (Affiliate). In this episode, Dr. Martin breaks down two of her papers, one looking at COVID-19 transmission in mothers and infants and another examining sleep health in undergraduates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Find the papers discussed in this episode:

Martin MA, Keith M, Pace RM, Williams JE, Ley SH, Barbosa-Leiker C, Caffé B, Smith CB, Kunkle A, Lackey KA, Navarrete AD, Pace CDW, Gogel AC, Eisenberg DTA, Fehrenkamp BD, McGuire MA, McGuire MK, Meehan CL and Brindle E (2022) SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody trajectories in mothers and infants over two months following maternal infection. Front. Immunol. 13:1015002. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.1015002

Alicia Rice, Olivia Sather, Kenneth P Wright, Céline Vetter, Melanie A Martin, Horacio O de la Iglesia, COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions increase the alignment in sleep and light exposure between school days and weekends in university students, Sleep, Volume 46, Issue 7, July 2023, zsad059, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsad059

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Contact Melanie: [email protected]

Website: https://www.melaniemartin-anthropologist.com/

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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

Eric Griffith, Guest Co-Host, HBA Junior Fellow

E-mail: [email protected]

Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

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

Listeners, please welcome Prof. Ben Trumble to the show! Prof. Trumble joins us to talk about his fascinating research on how oral health can affect cardiovascular disease risk and cognitive health later in life.

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

Benjamin C Trumble, Matthew Schwartz, Andrew T Ozga, Gary T Schwartz, Christopher M Stojanowski, Carrie L Jenkins, Thomas S Kraft, Angela R Garcia, Daniel K Cummings, Paul L Hooper, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Kenneth Buetow, Bret Beheim, Andrei Irimia, Gregory S Thomas, Randall C Thompson, HORUS Team, Margaret Gatz, Jonathan Stieglitz, Caleb E Finch, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan.

Poor oral health is associated with inflammation, aortic valve calcification, and brain volume among forager-farmers, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 2024;, glae013, https://doi-org.proxy.lib.duke.edu/10.1093/gerona/glae013

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Benjamin Trumble is an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Center for Evolution and Medicine and the Institute of Human Origins.

His work focuses on chronic diseases of aging, working to understand how environmental conditions like parasites, pathogens, food availability, and social interactions impact human health. Taking an evolutionary life history perspective, he uses field and laboratory studies to understand variation in human endocrine systems, and how this influences chronic health conditions like benign prostatic hyperplasia, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s dementia.

Prof. Trumble's website can be found here: https://trumblelab.org/

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Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation

Website: humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc

Courtney Manthey-Pierce, Co-Host,

Website: courtneymanthey-pierce.godaddysites.com/ E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: @HolyLaetoli

Alex Niclou, special returning Co-Host

Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer

E-mail: eric.griffith at duke.edu