Tag: sociology

Social Gerontology and Psychology of Caregiving: an Interview with Dr. Joan Monin

Social Gerontology and Psychology of Caregiving: an Interview with Dr. Joan Monin

What does it mean to love and care for someone who has a different way of experiencing the world? How can we understand the way emotions may be expressed to us differently than they were before in a relationship?
In this episode, our host Shivani has a conversation with researcher, professor, and artist Dr. Joan Monin. Dr. Monin shares her interest and work in the boundaries of how close relationships work, how we provide comfort to one another, and how understanding our relationships help us in older-adult caregiving in the context of dementia onset and recovery.

Check out more here:
Dr. Monin’s Social Gerontology and Health Lab: https://medicine.yale.edu/lab/monin/
Dr. Monin’s artwork: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17luwfEFQTh5aftvZcDYhSVAlmcgaJclT?usp=drive_link

Ep. 26 – Ian Urbina on the Outlaw Ocean

Ep. 26 – Ian Urbina on the Outlaw Ocean

Over 40 percent of the Earth’s surface is open ocean that is over 200 miles from the nearest shore. These waters exist outside national jurisdiction and are almost entirely beyond the reach of law. Our guest, investigative journalist Ian Urbina, spent five years risking his life in these anarchic places to chronicle the lives he witnessed there. He met shackled slaves on fishing boats, joined high-speed chases by vigilante conservationists, rode out violent storms, and observed near mutinies. He lived on a Thai vessel where Cambodian boys worked 20-hour days processing fish on a slippery deck, shadowed a Tanzanian stowaway who was cast overboard and left to die by an angry crew, and met men who had been drugged, kidnapped and forced to cast nets for catch that would become pet food and livestock feed. We speak with Ian about the sprawling and dystopian world he chronicles in his acclaimed book, The Outlaw Ocean.

Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis

Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis

In the 1970s, scientists proposed what has become known as the Gaia Hypothesis: the idea that earth is best understood not as a passive substrate or background to life but as a life form in its own right. Our guest, journalist Ferris Jabr, believes the time has come to revive that idea. To understand how sentient creatures have evolved on this planet, he suggests, is not only to grasp that animals—human and otherwise—are offshoots of an evolutionary tree; it’s to see the tree itself as one element of a dynamic, interrelated organism. We speak with Jabr about the art of science reporting, the limits of life, and what the white cliffs of Dover are made of.

Ep. 13 – Nicholas Christakis on the animal origins of goodness

Ep. 13 – Nicholas Christakis on the animal origins of goodness

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For decades, researchers have debated whether or not animals make friends. “Friends” — the taboo “f word” — was generally put in quotes if it was used at all. But if you study the social networks of elephants, whales and other animals, it is clear that they have friends just like we do, according to Dr. Nicholas Christakis. Friendship, like other societal characteristics, evolved independently and convergently across species.

Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science, Dr. Christakis is a leading Yale sociologist and physician known for his research on human social networks and biosocial science. In this episode, he speaks with us about the ancient origins and modern implications of our common animality and his new book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.

Ep. 5 – Lisa Margonelli on the big ideas termites raise about science, technology, and morality

Ep. 5 – Lisa Margonelli on the big ideas termites raise about science, technology, and morality

Termites outweigh humans ten to one. If they went on strike, ecological chaos would ensue. We speak with science writer Lisa Margonelli, author of the new book Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology, about the questions these small creatures raise about technology, power, morality, and the nature of scientific progress.