All Episodes

#1217 Hanna Schleihauf: Other People's Beliefs, Belief Revision, and Good Reasoning

Feb 19, 2026

Dr. Hanna Schleihauf is Assistant Professor in the Department for Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University. She studies the roots of human diversity: although each of us shares 99.99% of our genes with every other human on the planet, there is massive variation in our socio-cultural practices driven by our ability to learn from and interact with others. Her research investigates socio-cognitive underpinnings of cultural learning, focusing on how cultural novices, children during early and middle childhood, grow into proficient cultural beings. More»
#1216 Laura Carroll: Childfree Choices, and How Pronatalism Promotes Disinformation and Misogyny

Feb 16, 2026

Laura Carroll is a nonfiction author, expert on the childfree choice and pronatalism, and a passionate reproductive rights and ethics advocate. She is the author of The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World. More»
#1215 Mauricio Suárez - Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science

Feb 13, 2026

Dr. Mauricio Suárez is Full Professor (catedrático) in Logic and Philosophy of Science at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is also a life member at Clare Hall at Cambridge University. His main research interests lie in the philosophy of probability and causality, the history and philosophy of science (mainly physics, chemistry and biology), modeling and idealization, the aesthetics of scientific representation, and general epistemology and methodology of science. He is the author of Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science. More»
#1214 Paul Eastwick: The Science of Love and Connection

Feb 12, 2026

Dr. Paul Eastwick is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Eastwick’s research investigates how people initiate romantic relationships and the psychological mechanisms that help romantic partners to remain committed and attached. One of his research programs examines how the qualities that people say are critically important to them in a romantic partner—their ideal partner preferences—direct romantic partner selection and retention. He is the author of Bonded by Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection. More»
#1213 Nathan Lents - The Sexual Evolution: Sex, Gender, and Mating

Feb 9, 2026

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#1212 Marina Dubova: The Cognitive Foundations of Science

Feb 6, 2026

Dr. Marina Dubova is an Omidyar postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research aims to reveal and inform the cognitive mechanisms of discovery. She develops formal (e.g., computational models) and empirical methods (e.g., cognitive experiments with scientists) to put the foundations of scientific method to rigorous tests. She uses insights from cognitive science to learn how theories and data can be integrated and lead to better understandings of the world. More»
#1211 Coleen Murphy - How We Age: The Science of Longevity

Feb 5, 2026

Dr. Coleen Murphy is James A. Elkins Jr. Professor in the Life Sciences, and Professor of Molecular Biology and Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. She is the author of How We Age: The Science of Longevity. More»
#1210 Cristina Bicchieri: What Are Social Norms, and How do They Change?

Feb 2, 2026

Dr. Cristina Bicchieri is S. J. Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research focus is on judgment and decision making with special interest in decisions about fairness, trust, and cooperation, and how expectations affect behavior. A second research focus examines the nature and evolution of social norms, how to measure norms and what strategies to adopt to foster social change. A third, earlier research focus has been the epistemic foundations of game theory and how changes in information affects rational choices and solutions. More»
#1209 Patrick Foote - Immigrant Tongues: Exploring How Languages Moved, Evolved, and Defined Us

Jan 30, 2026

Patrick Foote is the creator of the YouTube channel Name Explain (@NameExplain), where he uncovers the origins of names and highlights many other aspects of language. He founded the channel in 2015 whilst working in retail, as a creative outlet and as a means to share his love of all things language. Since then, Name Explain has amassed hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views. The channel’s success led Patrick to write his first book, The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between, in 2018. His latest book is Immigrant Tongues: Exploring How Languages Moved, Evolved, and Defined Us. More»
#1208 Eleanor Scerri: Homo sapiens in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Malta

Jan 29, 2026

Dr. Eleanor Scerri is Professor at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, where she is the Head of the independent Max Planck Human Palaeosystems Research Group. She is an archaeological scientist interested in exploring the articulation between material culture, genetics, and biogeography to further theoretical, methodological and scientific advances in the field of human evolution. Her group is exploring the pan-African evolution of our species, Homo sapiens through a number of diverse projects. More»