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  • 32 | When curiosity is limited by our biases

    32 | When curiosity is limited by our biases
    2025/06/11

    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
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    1 時間 41 分
  • 31 | Who has the rights to resources?

    31 | Who has the rights to resources?
    2025/05/28

    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

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    1 時間 40 分
  • 30 | How do we decide who to learn from?

    30 | How do we decide who to learn from?
    2025/05/14

    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 Development https://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!
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    1 時間 27 分
  • 29 | Exploring curiosities

    29 | Exploring curiosities
    2025/05/02

    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
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    1 時間 25 分
  • 28 | Whose fault is it?

    28 | Whose fault is it?
    2025/03/28
    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
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    1 時間 43 分
  • 27 | Student protests in Serbia

    27 | Student protests in Serbia
    2025/03/12
    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
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    1 時間 2 分
  • 26 | How does the brain understand comic books?

    26 | How does the brain understand comic books?
    2025/03/07

    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

    Links to everything on the Monkey Dance website:

    https://www.monkeydancepod.com/episodes/episode-26
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    1 時間 51 分
  • 25 | How does toxicity shape conversations?

    25 | How does toxicity shape conversations?
    2025/02/17

    And how can complexity science help us understand them?

    We sit down with network scientist 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.

    Joining us as a cohost is philosopher Phyllis Pearson (our guest from Episode 24).

    Guest: Gabriela Juncosa Co-host: Phyllis Pearson

    Show notes on the Monkey Dance website
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    1 時間 36 分