All Episodes

#838 Jana Gallus: The Psychology and Economics of Incentives

Sep 22, 2023

Dr. Jana Gallus is Associate Professor of Strategy and Behavioral Decision Making at UCLA Anderson School of Management. Her research interests lie in behavioral economics, strategy, and innovation, with a focus on recognition incentives and their effects on decision-making. She investigates how incentive schemes can be designed to enhance employee motivation and organizational performance in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. More»
#837 Vanessa Bohns: You Have More Influence Than You Think

Sep 21, 2023

Dr. Vanessa Bohns is a social psychologist and a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University. Her research focuses broadly on social influence and the psychology of compliance and consent. She is the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters. More»
#836 Sabine Nöbel: Social Learning, Mate Copying, and Culture from a Biological Perspective

Sep 18, 2023

Dr. Sabine Nöbel is a Postdoc at the Martin-Luther University Halle Wittenberg in the group “Animal Ecology“. Her background is in the behavioral ecology of Poeciliids and Drosophila studying non-genetic inheritance of mating preferences using mate-copying, by which females build mating preferences by observing and copying conspecific females’ mate-choice. She studies how new, socially learnt mating preferences can invade a population and persist across generations. Since May 2019, Dr. Nöbel is the secretary of ESLR (Association of Early-career Social Learning Researchers) Society, an early-career network for all things around social learning and cultural evolution. More»
#835 William Kelly: The Sociocultural Anthropology of Japan

Sep 15, 2023

Dr. William Kelly is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and the Sumitomo Professor Emeritus of Japanese Studies at Yale University. A noted authority on the social and historical anthropology of Japan, Dr. Kelly focused much of his research for two decades on regional society in Japan, based on extensive fieldwork in the Shōnai area of Yamagata Prefecture. He has also written widely on the broader dynamics of class formation in Japanese society. At the same time, much of his research for the past two decades has explored sport and body culture and their significance in modern Japan. He has also written on the history of Japan anthropology and its importance for Japan studies and for sociocultural anthropology. More»
#834 Kristen Lindquist: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Emotions

Sep 14, 2023

Dr. Kristen Lindquist is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research seeks to understand the psychological and neural basis of emotions, moods, and feelings. Her ongoing work uses tools from social cognition, physiology, neuroscience, and big data methods to examine how emotions emerge from the confluence of the body, brain, and culture. More»
#833 Inês Hipólito: 4E Cognition, and Dynamical Approaches in Psychology/Cognitive Science

Sep 11, 2023

Dr. Inês Hipólito is a faculty member at Macquarie University, where she serves as a Lecturer of Philosophy of AI and a researcher at the Ethics and Agency Research Center. She serves as a Co-Principal Investigator for the project "Designing Urban Density: Neurourbanism as a Novel Approach in Global Health" under the Berlin University Alliance. Furthermore, she holds the position of Ethicist of AI at Verses, a pioneering cognitive computing company specializing in next-generation AI, with Karl Friston serving as Chief Research bridging the gap between academia and industry, contributing to ethical considerations embedded within cutting-edge AI advancements. As a co-founder and vice-president of the International Society of the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind, she is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the field, serving as an elected member of the Women in Philosophy Committee and the Committee in Diversity and Inclusivity at the Australasian Association of Philosophy. More»
#832 Ursula Goodenough - The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved

Sep 8, 2023

Dr. Ursula Goodenough is a Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University in St. Louis where she engaged in research on eukaryotic algae. She has presented the paradigm of Religious Naturalism and the Epic of Evolution in numerous venues around the world. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association. She is the author of The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved. More»
#831 Freddie deBoer: How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement

Sep 7, 2023

Fredrik DeBoer is a writer and academic. He writes a newsletter on culture and politics. He is the author of The Cult of Smart, and, more recently, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. More»
#830 Émile Torres: The Philosophy of Effective Altruism and Longtermism

Sep 4, 2023

Dr. Émile Torres is a researcher at Leibniz Universität Hannover, in Germany. Their work over the past decade has centered around a single theme: eschatology, whether religious, secular, or scientific. Recently, their work has been focused on the nature and causes of human extinction, its ethical implications, and the history of the idea. They are the author of Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks, and their latest book is Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. More»
#829 Susanna Schellenberg - The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence

Sep 1, 2023

Dr. Susanna Schellenberg is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, where she holds a secondary appointment at the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. She specializes in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language and is best known for her work on perceptual experience, evidence, capacities, mental content, and imagination. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Award, a Humboldt Prize, and a Mellon New Directions Fellowship for a project on the Neuroscience of Perception. She is the author of The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence. More»