The Monkey Dance

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...

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 o...

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 th...

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 dia...

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).

G...

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 mu...

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 o...

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 ...