Gina Turrigiano – Recall This Book

167* Unpacking Addiction with Gina Turrigiano (EF, JP)

In Recall This Book’s second episode (January 2019) John and Elizabeth spoke with their brilliant Brandeis colleague, the MacArthur-winning neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano, about a number of different facets of addiction. The conversation seems as timely as ever.

What makes an addiction to a morning constitutional different from–or similar to–an addiction to Fentanyl? What are the biological and social factors to consider? Should the addict be thought of in binary terms, or addiction as a state that people move into and out of? They contemplate these questions through biological, anthropological, and literary lenses, drawing on Marc Lewis, Angela Garcia, and Thomas de Quincey. Late in the episode, there’s also a Sprockets joke. Then, in Recallable Books, Gina recommends David Linden’s The Compass of Pleasure, Elizabeth recommends When I Wear My Alligator Boots by Shaylih Muehlmann, and John recommends Sam Quinones’s Dreamland.

Discussed in this episode:

Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease

Angela Garcia, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande

Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar

David Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good

Shaylih Muehlmann, When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands

Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic

Listen here, or read transcript here.

66 On Multi-Species Community: A Critical Conversation with Patricia Alvarez Astacio (Gina T, John P)

Octopus month has morphed seamlessly into Multispecies month here at RtB, bringing with it not only last week’s piece on chimpanzees, but also this sparkling conversation about all sorts of multi-species communities. Recorded live in front of an audience of writing students and introduced by Brandeis physicist Matthew Headrick, it features Patricia Alvarez Astacio, an anthropologist and filmmaker. She has made a film about her work in the Peruvian highlands, where people live with, respect, shear and sometimes eat alpacas. Gina Turrigiano, RtB guest-host of long standing, wears her biological hat in this conversation, bringing to bear insights about avian intelligence and the other sorts of animal community that silently surround our species (think microbiome…). John tries to steer the conversation towards SF as usual.

47 Glimpsing COVID: Gael McGill on Data Visualization (GT, JP)

What’s a picture worth? How about the picture that allows scientists to grasp what’s actually going on in a cell–or on the spiky outside of an invading virus? Gael McGill, Director of Molecular Visualization at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Harvard Medical School is founder and CEO of Digizyme and has spent his career exploring and developing different modes for visualizing evidence.

For this scientific conversation, John is joined once again by Brandeis neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano (think ep 4 Madeline Miller; think ep 2 Addiction!). And because Gael’s work proves that a picture can be worth far more than a thousand words, our RTB post is more picturesque than usual. Start by checking out Digizyme‘s image of the spike protein attaching the SARS-CoV2 virus to a hapless cell and fusing their membranes: