The Brain Surgeon's Take

Myron was ranked the No. 1 high school football prospect in the country. With 83 scholarship offers from Division I institutions, Myron matriculated to FSU. At FSU, he earned his degree in just two and a half years and was awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship upon graduation, enabling him to study at Oxford University in England. Rolle skipped his senior year of football to pursue a master's degree at Oxford and simultaneously train for the NFL Draft. In 2010, Dr. Rolle was selected in NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans and finished his career three years later with the Pittsburgh Steelers. After life in the NFL, Myron enrolled at the FSU College of Medicine followed by neurosurgery residency at Harvard where he has excelled on all fronts.

The Myron L. Rolle Foundation, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2009, dedicated to the support of global health, wellness, educational, and other charitable initiatives benefitting children and families in need. Dr. Rolle also serves on the Knight Commission on Athletics and the Clinton Global Initiative and is a co-creator of the Emerging Scholars Project for underrepresented college students applying for a Rhodes Scholarship. Myron's charitable work, bravery on the front lines, academic excellence and grit have been featured in top global and national outlets such as CNN, ABC News, ESPN, CNBC and many more.

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Anna Lembke is a clinician scholar, having published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. She sits on the board of several state and national addiction-focused organizations, has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, keeps an active speaking calendar, and maintains a thriving clinical practice.

In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic. Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, an instant New York Times Bestseller, explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.

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Hanna Faulhaber is an internationally recognized Olympic Freestyle Skier. A 17-year-old from Basalt High School in Colorado, Faulhaber got 3rd place at the 2022 X-Games in Aspen. Before this year’s X-Games, Faulhaber also got 3rd place on the Dew Tour 2021, as well as 2 world cup podiums. She competed in the 2021 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships where she placed fourth in the women’s ski halfpipe. Faulhaber recently competed in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China where she achieved the highest score for Team USA.

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THE WORLD STANDS UNITED BEHIND UKRAINE

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Ben Milligan became a US Navy SEAL in 2001 and served until 2009. He is the recipient of the prestigious Bronze Star and other awards. A native of Indianapolis, he received a BA in History at Purdue University and an MA in International Relations at the University of San Diego. He currently lives in the Chicago area with his three sons.

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Michelle Pearlman, M.D. is a board-certified gastroenterologist and obesity medicine specialist. She has a particular focus on nutrition, weight loss, and malnutrition. She uses the “food is medicine” approach with all of her patients. Michelle Pearlman is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases at the University of Miami. 
 
Dr. Pearlman is on a mission to educate the community on the fundamentals of wellness and nutrition and works closely with numerous subspecialties including bariatrics, hepatology, endocrinology, sleep medicine, sports medicine, oncology and dietetics to provide comprehensive care to patients with nutritional issues whether it be malnutrition or obesity.

Dr. Pearlman has helped organize numerous nutrition-related seminars at the medical center, undergraduate campus and throughout the University of Miami community to improve access to care and improve nutrition education to students, staff, and the community at large and has been featured in numerous TV, newspaper and radio appearances including WIOD radio news, The Miami Herald, Good Housekeeping, Florida Trends Magazine, NBC and The CW Inside South Florida.

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Dr. Amishi Jha, PhD is Director of Contemplative Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami. Prior to her current post, she was an Assistant Professor at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S in Biological Psychology from the University of Michigan, her Ph.D in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) from the University of California–Davis, and her post-doctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University in functional neuroimaging.

With grants from the Department of Defense and several private foundations, she leads research on the neural bases of attention and the effects of mindfulness-based training programs on cognition, emotion, resilience, and performance in education, corporate, elite sports, first-responder, and military contexts.

In addition to her own published body of research, her work has been featured in many outlets including TED.com, NPR, and Mindful Magazine. In addition, she has been invited to present her work to NATO, the UK Parliament, the Pentagon, and at the World Economic Forum. In her book, Peak Mind, she shares her discoveries on how attention can be trained for optimal performance and well-being.

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Dr. Duncan French has over 20 years’ experience working with elite professional and Olympic athletes. Prior to joining the UFC, French was the Director of Performance Science at the University of Notre Dame. From 2005 – 2015, French was a Technical Lead for Strength and Conditioning at the English Institute of Sport. He has worked three Olympic cycles as the national lead for strength and conditioning to Great Britain Basketball and more recently Great Britain Taekwondo Olympic programs.

French earned his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2004 and has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. He is a fully accredited strength and conditioning coach with the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA), Australian Strength and Conditioning Association (ASCA), and the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). French is a former Chairman of the UKSCA and received an Honorary Fellowship in 2014 for his services to the strength and conditioning industry.

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Arianna got interested in documentary filmmaking because she asks too many questions. This turned out to be an excellent discipline to direct this sort of energy. Arianna most recently directed two films for a new CNN Films shorts series; The Bunker Boom, about a subterranean prepper community in South Dakota, and Super Reviewers, an unusual journey into a surprising sub-culture on the internet. Prior to this, Arianna’s television directing credits include the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything, Emmy-nominated Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak, and Edward R. Murrow award-winning Unadopted on PBS. 

Arianna has directed and shot Emmy-nominated and Edward R. Murrow award-winning work for The New York Times, Nat Geo, Al Jazeera, and Viceland on issues ranging from child marriage, gang violence, to political conflicts around the world. Her work has taken her to more than fifty countries; directing crews in the sewers beneath London, to a locked down “clean room” at the NASA space center in Houston. She has embedded with female Kurdish soldiers fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq and documented the effects of Rhino breeding in South Africa for National Geographic.

Films she has directed have screened at SXSW, DOCFest, Tribeca, DOC NYC, and PBS, and have been supported by the Sundance Labs, ITVS, IFP, and won a Peabody Award. Arianna was a Director of Photography for many years before pivoting to directing full time.

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Dr. Joseph Uscinski is an American political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracy theories. In 2015, Uscinski organized and convened the first international conference on conspiracy theory research, featuring more than fifty scholars from ten countries. Uscinski was frequently consulted by journalists during the 2016 U.S. election for his commentary on the rise of campaign-fueled conspiracy theories and for his criticism of their use by politicians. He argued that both Trump and Clinton were using conspiracy theories to mobilize sectors of the electorate that did not trust mainstream candidates.

Uscinski's most notable book, American Conspiracy Theories, studies the waxing and waning of conspiracy theorizing over time in the United States. The main hypothesis of the book was that conspiracy theories are for losers. By that, they argue that those who are out of power tend to use conspiracy theories to consolidate resources, focus attention on an enemy, and aim at redemption. The book has been widely reviewed and discussed. Recent survey evidence taken before and after the 2016 election provides positive evidence for the conspiracy theories are for losers theory. More controversially, Uscinski argues that Republicans and Democrats are equally taken to conspiracy theorizing, and that Americans may not be engaging in conspiracy theorizing more than in previous decades.

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