All Episodes

#697 John Allen Paulos - Who’s Counting?; Uniting Numbers and Narratives with Stories

Oct 28, 2022

Dr. John Allen Paulos is a Professor of Mathematics at Temple University. He has written scholarly papers on probability, logic, and the philosophy of science as well as scores of OpEds, book reviews, and articles in publications such as the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Nation, Discover, the American Scholar, and the London Review of Books. In 2003, he received the American Association for the Advancement of Science award for promoting public understanding of science, and in 2013 the Mathematics Communication Award from the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics. He is the author of several books, the most recent one being “Who’s Counting?: Uniting Numbers and Narratives with Stories from Pop Culture, Puzzles, Politics, and More”. More»
#696 Ryutaro Uchiyama: Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability

Oct 27, 2022

Dr. Ryutaro Uchiyama is a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include cultural evolution, cognitive plasticity, and developmental psychobiology. More»
#695 Susana Monsó: How Animals Experience and Understand Death

Oct 24, 2022

Dr. Susana Monsó is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. She has been a post-doc fellow at the University of Graz and at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna, where she was the recipient of the Lise Meitner FWF Austrian Science Fund. Her work focuses on the socio-cognitive abilities of animals and their ethical implications. She is the author of “La zarigüeya de Schrödinger: Cómo viven y entienden la muerte los animales”. More»
#694 Patrick Savage: Musicology, the Evolution of Music, and Cross-Cultural Studies

Oct 21, 2022

Dr. Patrick Savage is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio SFC, where he directs the CompMusic Lab for comparative and computational musicology. He has academic degrees in music composition (BA), psychology (MSc) and musicology (PhD), and has won national awards singing Japanese folk song. His research on the evolution of music and culture has appeared in outlets including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, The New York Times, and The Economist. More»
#693 Stuart Vyse - The Uses of Delusion: Why It's Not Always Rational to Be Rational

Oct 20, 2022

Dr. Stuart Vyse is a psychologist, teacher, speaker, and author who specializes in belief in superstitions and critical thinking. He is a contributing editor for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. He has written personal and professional essays in a variety of places, including the Observer, Medium, The Atlantic, The Good Men Project, Tablet, and Time. His book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the American Psychological Association's William James Book Award. His latest book is The Uses of Delusion: Why It's Not Always Rational to Be Rational. More»
#692 Annie Duke - Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

Oct 17, 2022

Annie Duke is an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker. During her career, Annie won a World Series of Poker bracelet and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She retired from the game in 2012. Prior to becoming a professional poker player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her previous book, Thinking in Bets, is a national bestseller. Annie’s latest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. More»
#691 Radu Umbreș - Living with Distrust: Morality and Cooperation in a Romanian Village

Oct 14, 2022

Dr. Radu Umbreș is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science at the National School for Political Studies and Public Administration, Romania. Dr. Umbreș does research in Social Anthropology, Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology. He is the author of Living with Distrust: Morality and Cooperation in a Romanian Village. More»
#690 Catherine Molho: Norms, Punishment, Moral Emotions, Disgust, and Interdependence

Oct 13, 2022

Dr. Catherine Molho is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at VU Amsterdam. Dr. Molho is a psychologist studying human cooperation, morality, and the role of emotions in decision-making. She draws upon insights from social and evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology to better understand the factors underlying cooperative and punitive decisions. In her work, she uses decision-making experiments, questionnaires, and intensive experience sampling methods. More»
#689 Michael Tomasello - The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans

Oct 10, 2022

Dr. Michael Tomasello is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and James F. Bonk Distinguished Professor at Duke University. He is considered one of today's most authoritative developmental and comparative psychologists. He’s the author of several books, including The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999), A Natural History of Human Thinking (2014), A Natural History of Human Morality (2016), and Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny (2019). His most recent book is The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans. More»
#688 Christopher Krupenye: Primatology, Theory of Mind, False Beliefs, and Sharing Behavior

Oct 7, 2022

Dr. Christopher Krupenye is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Krupenye is interested in the cognitive abilities of humans and other species, especially those involved in navigating the social world. More»