All Episodes

#858 Jessica Nowicki: The Evolution of Prosocial Behavior, Pair Bonding, and Empathy

Nov 9, 2023

Dr. Jessica Nowicki is a Research Scientist at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. She is interested in the mechanistic basis of prosocial behavior in early vertebrates. She uses poison frogs, which display considerable variation in sociality among closely related species, for comparatively identifying neural correlates of pair bonding within the clade. In order to verify the functional involvement of these correlates, she then couples this with functional tests on the strongly pair bonding species, Ranitomeya imitator. More»
#857 Amy Arnsten: The Prefrontal Cortex, and How It Responds to Stress

Nov 6, 2023

Dr. Amy Arnsten is Albert E. Kent Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology, and member of the Kavli Institute of Neuroscience at Yale University. Dr. Arnsten is an international expert on the molecular regulation of higher cortical circuits, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Arnsten's research examines the neural basis of higher cognition. Her work has revealed that the newly evolved cortical circuits that underlie higher cognition are uniquely regulated at the molecular level, conferring vulnerability in mental illness and age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease. Her research has led to new treatments for cognitive disorders in humans, including the successful translation of guanfacine (IntunivTM) for the treatment of ADHD and related prefrontal cortical disorders. More»
#856 Frank Keil: The Development of Causal Thinking, Explanation, and the Institution of Science

Nov 3, 2023

Dr. Frank Keil is Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology & Linguistics and Director of the Cognition and Development lab at Yale University. At the most general level, he is interested in how we come to make sense of the world around us. One set of his studies is examining a level of explanatory insight that functions without knowledge of specific mechanisms and instead involves knowing what sorts of properties are causally potent in a domain and how they are likely to interact. He also asks how emerging knowledge of concrete mechanisms can link up frequency-based information with abstract explanatory principles as well as cause distortions in judgment. He is the author of Developmental Psychology: The Growth of Mind and Behavior, and other books. More»
#855 Luciano Floridi - The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence; Principles, Challenges, Opportunities

Nov 2, 2023

Dr. Luciano Floridi is the Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University. His research concerns primarily Digital Ethics, the Philosophy of Information, and the Philosophy of Technology. He is editor of The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for the Sustainable Development Goals, and author of The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities (OUP), and The Green and the Blue: Naïve Ideas to Improve Politics in the Digital Age (Wiley). More»
#854 Naomi Oreskes - The Big Myth; Learning to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

Oct 30, 2023

Dr. Naomi Oreskes is Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. A world-renowned earth scientist, historian and public speaker, she is the author of the best-selling book, Merchants of Doubt (2010) and a leading voice on the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action. Dr. Oreskes is author or co-author of 9 books, the latest one being The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. More»
#853 Coralie Chevallier: The Psychological Effects of Living in Harsh and Unpredictable Environments

Oct 27, 2023

Dr. Coralie Chevallier is a Researcher in the evolution and social cognition group, at the Cognitive Science Department of the École Normale Superieure – PSL. She is a behavioral scientist studying the evolutionary and cognitive determinants of social cognition. She has mainly focused on the way motivational factors affect people’s social behaviors. More»
#852 Oded Galor - The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality

Oct 26, 2023

Dr. Oded Galor is Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University. Dr. Galor has advanced the field of Unified Growth Theory. He has contributed to the understanding of the relationship between inequality and growth, human evolution, and the process of development, demography, and growth, and the role of deep-rooted factors in comparative economic development. He is the author of The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. More»
#851 Alecia Carter: Thanatology, Animal Personality, Comparative Psychology, and Culture

Oct 23, 2023

Dr. Alecia Carter is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Her current research investigates (1) how primates respond to the deaths of others and what this can tell us about the evolution of cognition and emotion and (2) how individuals access information to make decisions. In particular, she studies how individuals use their social environment to access information, and how their phenotype, their individual characteristics, may limit their use of that information. Her previous research addressed how and why animals' behavior varies from others but is consistent through time. More»
#850 James McCann - Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop

Oct 20, 2023

Dr. James McCann is Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University. Dr. McCann’s research and teaching interests include agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, field research methods in African studies, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, and the history of food/cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world. He is the author of books like Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine; Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop; People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia; and From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: Rural History, 1900-1995. More»
#849 Claudio Tennie: The Differences Between Ape Culture and Human Culture

Oct 19, 2023

Dr. Claudio Tennie is a Tenured Research Group Leader (“Tools and Culture among Early Hominins”) in the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen. In addition, he is an adjunct scientist at the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes. His main research triangulates what (if anything) makes human cognition unique - as well as why (and relatedly, when this happened and how often). In particular, he uses various methods and pathways to study the factors and the prehistorical beginnings that enabled the typical modern human "variant of culture": cumulative culture of know-how. More»