The Monkey Dance

Can we tease apart physiological and psychological stress?
 
Stress in the mind and stress in the body are each comprised of a complex set of phenomena. Is it possible to experience one without the other? And how do they each impact the other functions of the body? Nida Ali joins the podcast to talk about her work trying to understand the relationship between the different types of stress and the immune system. 
 
We talk about the autonomic and endocrine stress responses, their relationship to the subjective experience of stress, and the long term impacts of both. We also chat about gender differences in both the physiological expression and the emotional experience of stress, what happens when you're overheating, and why it is your hands tremble when you're nervous.
 
Guest: Nida Ali
 
Cohost: Arianna Curioni
To hear about Arianna's work, check out Episode 13

Ola Ali joins the podcast to chat about modeling the legal journey of persons who migrate across borders.
With a background in physics and complex systems, Ola's work tries to describe the dynamics of migration, specifically the legal and institutional experience of someone who migrates. We chat about how long it takes to gain legal stability in a new country and the differences in the legal journey based on nationality. We also discuss housing, access to rights and healthcare, and forced mobility.
 
Guest: Ola Ali
https://csh.ac.at/ola-ali/

There is a lot of money behind keeping corruption difficult to track, but there are also plenty of folks working hard to build better tools for tracking it.
The only problem is that exposing it can be extremely dangerous.
In this episode from 2 years ago, we sit with Irene Tello Arista and chat about how to define corruption, the systemic pressures that allow it to take hold, and discuss how grand corruption and petty corruption are different not only in scale but in methods.
We cover a bit of Irene's background in Mexico starting an NGO to uncover corruption networks, human behavior more generally, and how corruption looks different in different places.
 
Full show notes on the website

Cooperation is deeply embedded in the genetics of our species. Looking at the evolution of cooperation can teach us a lot about how to build better societies. Given the state of the world, this episode with Nikhil Chaudhary from February 2024 is more relevant than ever.
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What can evolutionary anthropology teach us about ourselves? We sit down with Nikhil Chaudhary and chat about everything from the formation of the self to societal pressures. We cover cooperation and collaboration, hunter-gatherer societies, how to think about thinking, managing uncertainty, cultural narratives, and everything in between.
 
Show notes on the website!

With AI increasingly being used in wars, the glaring question regulators face as a society is one of allocating responsibility when an autonomous tool of war commits a war crime.
 
Little progress has been made on this front over the past few years despite the increased military applications of AI. That's why I wanted to repost the Episode 6, from our archive, with Pelin Kasar:
 
Who is responsible for the actions of machines? We chat with Pelin Kasar about the current state of philosophical debates around how to approach the ethical considerations of machines that seem to think.
 
More show notes on the Monkey Dance Website

When living under an autocratic regime, should we continue voting or abstain in protest?
 
Zoltan Miklosi joins the podcast to talk about the political obligations of democrats who live under autocratic regimes. We discuss the consequences both of voting in elections despite the overwhelming odds in favor of the autocrat and of refusing to participate in elections in protest of the regime.
 
We discuss specific cases of autocracies which hold elections around the world, about why they would hold elections in the first place, and what each side has to gain and to lose. We also chat about democracy as an ideal more broadly, and whether one has any obligations to the society or governance structure they live under.
 
Guest: Zoltan Miklosi
 
More from Zoltan:
1. Political Obligation in Electoral Authoritarianism: The Case of Hungary
 
2. Social Equality and Democratic Authority

What determines whether a particular event is classified as part of an existing conflict or a random act of violence?
Niraj Kushwaha joins the podcast to talk about modeling instances of armed conflict using fine grained datasets to better understand the emergence of conflicts and how they might be related.
We discuss how conflicts can be categorized into three main types, and the primary variables that allow for their categorization. This takes us to the broader applications of this work, from modeling epidemics to climate change, and how statistical physics can be used to form hypotheses about the likelihood of future events of particular types.
 
Guest: Niraj Kushwaha
 
Niraj's latest paper on Data-driven conflict classification
The database Niraj mentioned: Armed Conflict & Event Data Project

Can any interaction between two people ever really be fair?
 
In this episode from February 2024, we sit down with Angarika Deb to chat about how to understand fairness, and what it means in relation to equality, equity, and justice. We end up covering a wide range of topics that fairness implicates, from gendered divisions of labor and resource distribution, to political movements and social justice.
 
Guest: Angarika Deb
 
Visit the Monkey Dance Website for show notes

Every human has the same fundamental rights. That might sound trivial, but the universal access to human rights is being actively debated in courts around the world as well as in public and political discourse.
 
Lena Riemer joins the podcast to talk about the legal basis for granting every human being the same fundamental rights, how this applies to cases of migration, and her experiences both as a lawyer and as a legal scholar.
 
We chat about how human rights are being eroded and circumvented by policies, how some governments are actively working to obfuscate violations of human rights law, and the dehumanization of individuals who are forced to migrate from their homes due to some combination of conflict and climate change.
 
As a heads up, this conversation gets emotionally trying at times given the subject matter.
 
 
You can also watch the episode on our youtube channel
 
If you want to read more of Lena's work and on the topic in general:
 
1. Lena's blog post on recent jurisprudence on climate change and human mobility and advancements in front of the Inter-American Court of human Rights: Leading the Way: The IACtHR's Advisory Opinion on Human Rights and Climate Change
 
2. Lena's blog post on the US expulsion policy: Beyond Borders, Beyond Rights? The U.S. “Staging Expulsion” Policy and the Future of Externalization - Opinio Juris
 
3. Lena's blog post on Germany's attempts to undermine Asylum protections: Undermining Asylum Protection Through Administrative Shortcuts: Germany’s Proposal to Designate Safe Countries of Origin by Executive Decree. 
 
4. An article from the ACLU on the state of the US border: The Border Patrol Was Monstrous Under Obama. Imagine How Bad It Is Under Trump. | ACLU
 
5. The referenced American Convention on Human Rights

What happens when gangs step in to provide services for communities that governments aren't able or willing to provide?
David Cerero Guerra joins the podcast to talk about his ethnographic work chronicling the equilibrium local gangs have reached with the government of Colombia in the city of Medellin. 
While the primary activity of the gangs is selling illicit drugs which harm the community, they also have managed to ensure the reduction of physical violence and facilitate government services like water and electricity to under served communities. 
We chat about the historical and political contexts which allowed for the emergence of such a unique unspoken agreement, and how the government communicates with the gangs without any official channels. 
Guest: David Cerero Guerra
You can also watch the episode on youtube