The Monkey Dance

What determines whether a particular event is classified as part of an existing conflict or a random act of violence?

Niraj Kushwaha joins the podcast to talk about modeling instances of armed conflict using fine grained datasets to better understand the emergence of conflicts and how they might be related.

We discuss how conflicts can be categorized into three main types, and the primary variables that allow for their categorizati...

Can any interaction between two people ever really be fair?

 

In this episode from February 2024, we sit down with Angarika Deb to chat about how to understand fairness, and what it means in relation to equality, equity, and justice. We end up covering a wide range of topics that fairness implicates, from gendered divisions of labor and resource distribution, to political movements and social justice.

 

Guest: Angarika Deb

 

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Every human has the same fundamental rights. That might sound trivial, but the universal access to human rights is being actively debated in courts around the world as well as in public and political discourse.   Lena Riemer joins the podcast to talk about the legal basis for granting every human being the same fundamental rights, how this applies to cases of migration, and her experiences both as a lawyer and as a legal scholar.  ...

What happens when gangs step in to provide services for communities that governments aren't able or willing to provide?

David Cerero Guerra joins the podcast to talk about his ethnographic work chronicling the equilibrium local gangs have reached with the government of Colombia in the city of Medellin. 

While the primary activity of the gangs is selling illicit drugs which harm the community, they also have managed to ensure the re...

We refer to morality a lot when judging behavior, but what exactly are we referring to?

 

Emese Havadtői joins us to talk about the structure and emergence of moral frameworks. We chat about whether morality can be understood in terms of behavior, without a universalist understanding of morality, and how evolution plays a role in our drive to behave morally. The debate also brushes up against what it means to be "good" and whether ...

What is the brain's relationship to information?

 

Francesco Poli joins to talk about the brain, the mind, and the individual differences that amount to human curiosity.

We talk about adaptivity, how our experiences shape our relationship to information, and what this means for our behavior. We also cover the value of information, dealing with uncertainty as a concept, and the importance of a good learning environment.

 

Guest: Fra...

How do we choose which norms to follow? And how do we change them for a more equitable society?

 

Camilo Martinez joins to talk about how we learn, communicate, and enforce social norms. We also chat about the historical trajectory of norms, how norms have evolved as society has, and when we can overthrow prejudiced norms which seek to marginalize groups.

 

Guest: Camilo Martinez

Cohost: Pelin Kasar

To catch more of Pelin, check ou...

How can we make sense of the variety of beliefs that are prevalent in society?

 

Peter Steiglechner joins the podcast to talk about the role of identity and group belonging in understanding why people believe what they believe. We chat about modeling belief networks and understanding the role of bias in our engagement with information. We also cover how disagreements emerge and when consensus is possible, and more generally about e...

Why do we engage with information online?

 

Hannah Metzler joins the podcast to talk about the role of emotions and personal identity when investigating the spread of misinformation. We chat about a lot of the myths surrounding misinformation, the circumstances that make certain beliefs appealing to people, and why engaging with negative content is so much more tempting than positive content.

 

Guest: Hannah Metzler

 

Monkey Dance ...

Why do some resistance groups resort to armed struggle? And when do those groups decide it's time to put down arms?

Barbora Valik joins to talk about the factors that can lead to the violent mobilization of resistance movements, particularly as a strategy to call attention to their cause, and what needs to change for the violence to end.

We speak specifically about self-determination movements of indigenous peoples in Mexico, Colom...

From the Archive: Episode 2

Inequality seems to be a fundamental aspect of the society we've created. Is an unequal power dynamic endemic to any interaction between a set of individuals?

In this episode from 2 years ago, Guilherme and I talk about how to define the concept of power, the function of unequal power dynamics, and how it manages to generate stable systems that perpetuate inequities that last for generations.

 

On a smal...

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 constrai...

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 wo...

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 pe...

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 t...

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 a...

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 vi...

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 m...