How do infants treat information they come across?   I sit down with Velisar Manea to chat about how the infant mind develops, the types of biases evolution might have built in, and how they manage to be so adaptive.   We also chat a good bit of theory, particularly about whether we need to attribute mental states to others or whether statistical prediction is enough. We chat about the evolutionary usefulness of biological constraints, the caloric demands of cognition versus the energy demands of AI, and whether something like an LLM can ever actually reach cognition or just mimic it.   Really excited to bring you this chat, but again still having some microphone issues. Still some trial an error!

Nicolas Goupil joins me to chat about his work spanning everything from forming early childhood memories, to visual cognition, to hierarchies in groups. It's a fun, wide ranging conversation and we cover a good bit of ground.   In Copenhagen for a few months, so the next several episode will be on the road. Sorry if the audio quality is not as good as usual!

How do our biases interfere with our willingness to learn? Pelin Kasar and Juliette Vazard both return to the podcast for a chat at the intersection of beliefs, biases, and curiosity. We talk about curiosity -- how to define it, its emotional role, and its relationship with learning -- and about biases -- what a bias is, its implications in society, and its relationship to curiosity. The conversation covers a lot of ground as we work through definitions and reach mutual understandings of each of the terms,   Guest: Pelin Kasar Guest: Juliette Vazard   To hear more from Pelin check out Episode 6 and Episode 28 To hear more from Juliette check out Episode 20 and Episode 24

Resource management is a difficult problem. Deciding who gets access to certain resources, and how much of it they have access to, can often be existential struggle. This is complicated with issues of historical access of particular groups, over exploited ecosystems nearing collapse, and geopolitical shifts that lead to changes in demand. We sit down with Arev Papazian to chat about the difficulties of delegation and determining permissions. We cover some of the ground regarding the challenges of maintaining a healthy ecosystem, one that includes humans, when there are so many stakeholders involved (not all of them altruistic). Guest: Arev Papazian

What makes someone a good source to learn from? Melissa Koenig explains how we learn from others: from the strategies we use to the biases we lean on when making epistemic decisions. We chat about the emergence of racial and gender biases and how we often seek information from sources that we identify with, covering the dynamics of of social identities and justice. And we end with chatting about the role of science in society and the importance of not separating work and activism. Melissa Koenig is a professor at the Institute of Child Developmenthttps://icd.umn.edu/melissa-koenig This is the first time trying out recording on the road, sorry for the clumsiness of the audio and video but learned a few good things for next time!

Joining the podcast is Reto Schneider, veteran science journalist who has dealt with everything from the science of opinion formation to the origins of land ownership and seemingly everything in between. We talk about a variety of things that have become mild obsessions for him over the years including things like his decades long monthly column on obscure science experiments, data scientists trying to predict the future, and the arbitrariness of prison sentences.    For more, check out: Reto's website Reto's Wikipedia page

How do we decide whether someone should be held responsible for something?   We sit down with cognitive scientist Katarina Kovačević to talk about ascribing responsibility, and how our intuitions about responsibility shape behavior. We chat about the differences between knowing and not knowing what we're doing is wrong, versus the grey area of having had access to the knowledge but avoiding it.   We also cover Katarina's work on victim blaming, what all of this means about our relationship with the legal systems we live under, and how to account for situations where a machine (like AI) is involved.   Joining us as a co-host is philosopher Pelin Kasar (our guest from Episode 6).   Guest: Katarina Kovačević Co-host: Pelin Kasar

This episode was recorded at 11:30 on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.   Yesterday (March 10), students blocked access to the state-run Serbian public television headquarters, accusing it of biased coverage. As of this recording, hundreds of students continue to block access to the building.   There is a major protest scheduled for Saturday, March 15.   Since November of 2024, students in universities across Serbia have been organizing mass protests across the country against the corrupt, autocratic government of Aleksandar Vučić. While the media coverage has focused on the protests themselves, the engine of the student-led movement is a unified, multilateral experiment in absolute democracy that has managed to maintain a flat hierarchy and a single set of demands.   Serbian philosopher and anthropologist Aleksandra Knežević joins us to talk about her ongoing work with the movement as both a participant and a researcher. She has been allowed by the students to research the movement, and has been conducting interviews and joining the student meetings as an observer.   Guest: Aleksandra Knežević Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade   Check out Aleksandra's autoethnography of her experience with the movement: An Autoethnographic Account of the Anti-Corruption Student Protests in Serbia 2024/25   Aleksandra also recommends:   1. An academic article by Katarina Beširević on the protests: “Nisi nadležan”: How a Student Movement Dictates Political Change in Serbia (2024/2025)   2. From The Guardian by Adriana Zaharijević: Serbia’s students are showing the world how to restore democratic hope   If the links don't work in your podcast player, you can find links to Aleksandra's paper and the other articles in the show notes:  https://www.monkeydancepod.com/episodes/episode-27  

Making sense of a series of graphic representations is not simple, but our brains manage to do it with little effort. Our conversation with Neil Cohn starts out with a rethinking of language, moving from an understanding built solely on spoken language to the ability to express meaning across a range of modalities. This moves us into Neil's work on how we develop the ability to understand visual narratives and what this means for our understanding of language as a whole. We chat about emojis, comics, children's books, and a bunch of other fun stuff.   Guest: Neil Cohn (personal website) Co-Host: Xueyi Yao

And how can complexity science help us understand them? We sit down with Gabriela Juncosa to discuss how political discourse unfolds in online spaces and whether toxic interactions shut conversations down or keep them going. We chat about the structure of online discussions, how social media algorithms influence engagement, and whether the way we talk online differs from in-person interactions. This takes us to the role of network structures in polarization, the ways AI might intervene in online discourse, and whether we can design digital spaces that foster both engagement and constructive dialogue.   Guest: Gabriela JuncosaCo-host: Phyllis Pearson   Show notes on the Monkey Dance website

We use the terms open mindedness and gaslighting a lot, but do we really understand what they mean? We sit down with Phyllis Pearson to discuss what it means to engage honestly with information and with others. We chat about curiosity and agency, empathy and perspective taking, and the blurry line between being open to the beliefs of others versus maintaining skepticism and asking for justification. This takes us to what honest dialogue looks like, whether gaslighting is always malicious, and what it means to have epistemic agency and to ascribe that agency to others.   Guest: Phyllis Pearson Co-host: Juliette Vazard (our guest on Episode 20)   As always, show notes on the Monkey Dance website.

What is the function of emotional displays? We sit down with Thomas Ganzetti and discuss the role emotions serve in social contexts and how we use the displays of others to gather information about our realities. We chat about the evolutionary trajectory of emotional displays, how they help us navigate our environments, and what we learn about ourselves and those around us as we observe each other (whether we intend to or not).   Guest: Thomas Ganzetti Co-Host: Xueyi Yao (to hear more from Xueyi, check out Episode 18!)   Show notes on the monkey dance website!   Also, we've now been going for a full year! Thank you to everyone who has been listening and reaching out.

How does the brain process music and how has the perception of music changed over time? We sit down with cognitive neuroscientist Anja-Xiaoxing Cui to chat about how we relate to music, music's role in social interactions, and how music might be used as a tool for regulating emotions. We cover theories of the emergence of music in human history, the relationship between music and other art forms, and whether reading sheet music is at all similar to hearing it. My co-host this episode is Arianna Curioni (who was also our guest on Episode 13).   Show notes on the monkey dance website!

What makes systemic inequality such a hard problem to tackle? We sit down with cognitive anthropologist Angarika Deb and cognitive psychologist Ákos Szegőfi and chat about their research on different aspects of the problem. We chat about the cognitive mechanisms involved in perpetuating systemic inequality both on the part of those benefiting from such systems and those who are marginalized by them. We also discuss the importance of narratives and access to information when it comes to both upholding and justifying inequality as well as challenging and dismantling it.   Show notes on the Monkey Dance website

What are emotions and how do they impact cognition? We sit down with philosopher Juliette Vazard to talk about what we can learn from our emotions, the relationship between emotions and beliefs, and how emotions can shape our behavior. We cover everything from learning and curiosity, to the epistemic value of emotional states, to their impact on how we relate to the world. Joining me as a co-host is philosopher Maria Fedorova, our guest on Episode 17.   As always, you can check out the show notes on the website   You an also watch the episode on youtube

Does everybody experience memory in the same way? We sit down with Andreas Arslan to chat about what we spontaneously imagine when we read or actively remember, and how everything from inferring causal relationships to the salience of symbols can impact recall. We also talk about how the structure of experience impacts and possibly even determines what and how we remember.   Show notes on the website Or watch on youtube

How do we use symbols to construct and reconstruct our internal realities? We sit down with two new cohosts of The Monkey Dance, Mariem Diané and Xueyi Yao, to talk about the relationship between language and memory and the importance of symbols in abstract thought. We cover a lot of ground, going from temporal perception and learning to social dynamics and the mitigation of uncertainty from early childhood to adulthood.   Full show notes here: https://www.monkeydancepod.com/episodes/episode-18

Why do we have imagination? We sit down with philosopher Maria Fedorova to chat about what imagination is, ways to describe imagination as a process and a capacity, and whether it differs from perception and hallucination (if at all). We also discuss how imagination helps us navigate our realities, its relationship to our beliefs, and its role in empathy and understanding the perspectives of others.

How can we balance knowledge transfer and democratic empowerment? We sit down with Kristina Vasić and Ákos Szegőfi in a wide ranging discussion about the importance of access to information in a democracy, the need for institutions for knowledge transfer, and how decentralization can help deconstruct entrenched power structures. The conversation spans types of dialogue, the usefulness of rhetoric, whether any argument can be free of bias, and a bunch of other related topics on power, information, and governance.

What is the function of nostalgia? We sit down with Manu Sharma and talk about what makes a memory, what functions thinking about the past serves, and the impact of broader societal narratives on our senses of self. We discuss the construction of personal histories, their relationships to cultural histories, and also how historical narratives can be constructed by political movements to embolden and dehumanize groups of people.