Adani chats with Dr. Susan Engel, a Senior Lecturer and Senior Faculty Fellow in Psychology at Williams College. Susan?s research spans many areas, including the development of curiosity and invention, children?s ideas, the impact of college, and school reform. In this conversation, we discuss Susan?s seminal research on children's curiosity, how curiosity develops into adulthood, and her latest book, The Intellectual Lives of Children. Susan also shares the story behind how she first started in this field of research, and the projects she?s excited to work on next.

Susan?s website: https://psychology.williams.edu/profile/sengel/
Susan?s book The Hungry Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Mind-Origins-Curiosity-Childhood/dp/0674984110
Susan?s book The Intellectual Lives of Children: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-intellectual-lives-of-children-susan-engel/1136606329
Susan?s upcoming book American Kindergarten: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo258923309.html

Adani?s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com
Adani?s Bluesky: @adani

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Su chats with Dr. Roger Levy. Dr. Levy is a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Computational Psycholinguistics Laboratory. His research focuses on theoretical and applied questions in the processing and acquisition of natural language. His work furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of language processing and acquisition, combining computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, and analysis of large, naturalistic language datasets, to help design models and algorithms that will allow machines to process human language. In today's episode, we discuss his research background together with his recent work "The Science of Language in the Era of Generative AI".

Roger?s review: https://mit-genai.pubpub.org/pub/ak3evnmm/release/1 

Roger?s lab website: http://cpl.mit.edu/  

Roger?s personal website: https://www.mit.edu/~rplevy/ 

Su?s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

In today?s episode, Adani chats with Adam Benforado, a lawyer, writer, and professor at Drexel University?s Kline School of Law. Adam?s research, teaching, and advocacy are focused on children?s rights and criminal justice, and he brings insights from the mind sciences?most notably cognitive psychology?to law and legal theory. In this conversation, Adam tells us about his latest book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All, laying out the multifaceted, complex context around children?s rights and parental authority in the U.S. Adam also shares how he first got to work on the issues he now champions and what his future vision is, for children and society more broadly.

Adam?s website: https://www.adambenforado.com/
Adam?s book, A Minor Revolution: https://www.adambenforado.com/a-minor-revolution
Adam?s twitter: @Benforado
Adam?s new organization, Minor Power: ??https://www.minorpower.org/

Adani?s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com
Adani?s Bluesky: @adani

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod 
Podcast Substack 

Stanford Psychology Podcast - Newsletter for the official Stanford Psychology Podcast!

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Su chats with Dr. Yuan Chang (YC) Leong. YC is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is the director of Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Lab, which is a part of the Department of Psychology, a member of the Institute of Mind and Biology and the Neuroscience Institute, and an affiliate of the Data Science Institute. His research explores the neural and computational mechanisms underlying how goals, beliefs, and emotions influence human cognition, with a focus on why people interpret and respond to identical situations in different ways. In today's episode, we discuss what?s on YC intellectual radar these days, alongside with his recent paper "Dynamic brain connectivity predicts emotional arousal during naturalistic movie-watching," in which they show that we can decode arousal with open movie fMRI datasets.

YC?s paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215238/ 

YC?s lab website: https://mcnlab.uchicago.edu/ 

YC?s personal website: https://ycleong.github.io/ 

Su?s Twitter @sudkrc

Su?s Bluesky @sudkrc.bsky.social 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Bluesky @stanfordpsypod.bsky.social

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Su chats with Dr. Jennifer Hu. Jenn is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, directing the Group for Language and Intelligence. Her research examines the computational principles that underlie human language, and how language and cognition might be achieved by artificial models. In her work to answer these questions, she combines cognitive science and machine learning, with the dual goals of understanding the human mind and safely advancing artificial intelligence. We are discussing Jenn?s paper titled ?Signatures of human-like processing in Transformer forward passes."

Jenn?s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14107 

Jenn?s lab website: https://www.glintlab.org/ 

Jenn?s personal website: https://jennhu.github.io/ 

Su?s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Elizabeth chats with Dr. Dawn Finzi, a Machine Learning engineer on the Perception team at Zoox, and a recent alumni of our very own Stanford?s Department of Psychology, as a part of our new Psychologist in the Wild series. During her PhD, Dawn studied the functional organization of the human visual system, focusing on both the structural underpinnings and the overarching computational goals. In this episode, Dawn shares her scientific journey from PhD to industry, and how her PhD experience translates to her current role at Zoox. 

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Dawn?s website: https://www.dawnfinzi.com/

Elizabeth?s: website: imelizabeth.github.io

Elizabeth?s BlueSky: @imelizabeth.bsky.social

Podcast BlueSky @StanfordPsyPod.bsky.social

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Jane chats with Dr. David Almeida, a  Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE), the largest longitudinal diary study of daily experiences and health in the United States. Dr. Almeida?s work examines how daily experiences of stress are associated with health and well-being. 

In this episode, Jane and Dr. Almeida discuss the ways in which people experience and react to stress in their daily lives, who is most likely to experience and be reactive to stress, ways to manage stress, and even some unexpected upside of experiencing stress in daily life.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Some papers relevant to today?s discussion: 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

In this episode, Su chats with Diyi Yang, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford Human Computer Interaction Group, Stanford AI Lab, and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She is also leading the Social and Language Technologies Lab, where they study Socially Aware Natural Language Processing. Her research goal is to better understand human communication in social context and build socially aware language technologies via methods of NLP, deep learning, and machine learning as well as theories in social sciences and linguistics, to support human-human and human-computer interaction.

In today's episode, we discuss her interdisciplinary approach to research, along with her recent paper "Social Skill Training with Large Language Models," which introduces a new framework that supports making social skill training more available, accessible, and inviting.

Diyi?s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04204

Diyi?s lab website: https://cs.stanford.edu/~diyiy/group.html 

Diyi?s personal website: https://cs.stanford.edu/~diyiy/index.html 

Su?s Twitter: @sudkrc

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Bluesky: @stanfordpsypod.bsky.social

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

This episode was recorded on February 5, 2025.

This week, Misha chats with Katy Milkman, the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. A Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, her research explores how insights from economics and psychology can be harnessed to change consequential behaviors for good. Her work, published in journals like Nature and PNAS, has been recognized by Thinkers50 as among the world?s most influential in management thinking.

In this episode, they discuss Katy?s influential work designing ?megastudies? to generate new insights about behavior change, as well as lessons from her bestselling book, How to Change. Katy also shares her perspective on translating scientific findings for a broad audience and the vital role of mentorship in academia.

If you found this episode interesting, subscribe to our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second, but it will allow us to reach more people and excite them about psychology.

Links:
Katy's book: How to Change
Katy's Website: Link
Choiceology Podcast: Link
Behavior Change for Good Initiative: Link

Misha?s website: Link

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Bluesky: @stanfordpsypod.bsky.social
Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Misha chats with Julian Jara-Ettinger, Associate Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Yale University. Julian directs the Computational Social Cognition Lab, which aims to reveal the fundamental representations and computations that make complex human social behavior possible. His work combines computational modeling, developmental studies, and cross-cultural research to build a blueprint for more human-like social intelligence.

In this episode, we discuss his recent paper, "Tracking minds in communication," which challenges the classical view of language and social reasoning as separate systems. They explore how our brains constantly run social "micro-processes" in real-time to track other minds, a fundamental ability that guides our communication. They also dive into Julian's academic journey, his vision for the future of computational social cognition, and how he successfully navigates the interdisciplinary landscape of cognitive science.

If you found this episode interesting, subscribe to our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second, but it will allow us to reach more people and excite them about psychology.

Links: 

Julian's paper "Tracking minds in communication": https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(24)00312-7

Julian's Lab Website: https://compdevlab.yale.edu/

Julian's Faculty Page: https://psychology.yale.edu/people/julian-jara-ettinger

Misha's website: https://www.mishaokeeffe.com/

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod Podcast Bluesky: @stanfordpsypod.bsky.social Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) [email protected]

In this re-air episode from summer 2021 (one of our first!), Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Judy?s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, she discusses a new line of research in her lab exploring how people learn about objects by trying to build them from scratch. She and her team recruited people online to play a game where they aimed to reconstruct various block towers and analyzed the types of mistakes they made, as well as how they got better at the game over time. Insights from experiments like these may help reveal the cognitive principles that govern how people "reverse-engineer" how things are made ? from how an unfamiliar dish was prepared to how a song was composed.

You can learn more about this project by visiting this site: https://github.com/cogtoolslab/block_construction and read their paper here: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/pdf/mccarthy_cogsci_2020.pdf

To learn more about Judy Fan's research, check out her lab's website: https://cogtoolslab.github.io/.

You can also follow her on Twitter (@judyefan).

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Mike North, Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, at NYU Stern School of Business and founding director of the AGE Initiative. 

Mike?s research focuses on the challenges and opportunities of today?s multigenerational workforce. His work has shaped public conversations on aging and has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, TIME, and so on.

In our conversation, Mike shares stories from his early days as a researcher, and we dive into two of his recent papers on ageism?one investigating bias against older adults, even among equality advocates, and another unpacking stereotypes about younger generations.

Mike?s Website: https://www.mike-north.com/ 

Mie?s Twitter: @MichaelSNorth

Mike?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-north-7aa39b50/ 

Mike?s Papers: 

(1) https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000262 

(2) https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001064 

Enna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ 

Enna?s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Bella chats with professor Laura Schulz.

Laura is a Professor of Cognitive Sciences in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT. She is also the director and principal investigator of the Early Childhood Cognition Lab. Laura?s research focuses on understanding the infrastructure of human cognition and how it?s constructed during early childhood. For example, Laura and her lab study children?s causal reasoning, social cognition, emotion understanding, and the connection between play and learning. Laura has also received numerous scientific awards, such as the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology and the National Academy of Sciences Troland Award.

In this episode, Laura shares personal stories about her journey in science and fascinating research projects that she and her students conducted with infants and children over the years. We also discussed the open science online platform for developmental research called Lookit, first developed by Kim Scott, who was one of Laura?s PhD students. 

Laura also shared her vision for gearing the field towards a more open, accessible, and collaborative environment where data sharing is made possible among institutions across continents.

If you find this episode interesting, please leave us a good review on your podcast platform! It only takes a few minutes, but it will allow our podcast to reach more people and hopefully get them excited about psychology and brain sciences.

Links:

Laura?s lab: https://eccl.mit.edu/

Lookit: https://lookit.mit.edu/

Bella's website: https://bellafascendini.github.io/

Bella's Twitter: @BellaFascendini

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Misha chats with Robert Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. Robert directs the Social Interaction Lab where he studies the cognitive mechanisms that enable human communication and collaboration. His interdisciplinary work combines interactive experiments with computational models to uncover how people flexibly coordinate with one another.

In this episode, we discuss his recent paper on communication in reference games, exploring how lexical search and social reasoning work together when we try to help others understand what we're talking about. They also dive into Robert's academic journey, his vision for the Social Interaction Lab, and how he successfully navigates the interdisciplinary landscape of cognitive science.

If you found this episode interesting, subscribe to our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second, but it will allow us to reach more people and excite them about psychology.

Links: 

Robert's paper on lexical search and social reasoning: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-03739-001.html
Robert's website: https://rdhawkins.com/
Robert's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rdhawkins.bsky.social 

Misha's website: https://www.mishaokeeffe.com/ 

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Bluesky: @stanfordpsypod.bsky.social
Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Let us know what you think of this episode or the podcast! :) [email protected]

In this episode, Elizabeth chats with Dr. Kendrick Kay, an Associate Professor in Radiology at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He directs the Computational Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, and aims to understand brain function by combining cognitive neuroscience, functional MRI methods, and computational neuroscience. In this episode, Kendrick shares his work on the groundbreaking Natural Scene Dataset and discusses the behind-the-scenes considerations that went into its creation. He also outlines important points for brain scientists to think about when creating and using large-scale fMRI datasets, and shares parts of his journey as a scientist.

Discussed Papers in Podcast: 

Kendrick?s website: http://cvnlab.net

Elizabeth?s: website: imelizabeth.github.io
Elizabeth?s BlueSky: @imelizabeth.bsky.social

Podcast BlueSky @StanfordPsyPod.bsky.social
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Jenna Wells, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Jenna?s research examines how emotion in close relationships contributes to mental and physical health over the life course, with a focus on late life. She is particularly interested in positive interpersonal processes and their associations with long-term health and well-being in individuals and dyads.

In our conversation, Jenna shares her journey from aspiring therapist to emotion researcher, the story behind how she began to study positivity resonance, and what we can all do to navigate conflict with warmth and cultivate more emotional connection in our lives.

Jenna?s Website: https://psychology.cornell.edu/jenna-wells

Jenna?s Twitter: @JennaLWells

Jenna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennalwells 

Jenna?s Paper: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000385 

Enna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ 

Enna?s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Anjie chats with Dr. Dorsa Amir, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. She directs the Mind and Culture Lab, where she studies how culture shapes the developing mind. In this episode, Dorsa shares her papers that probe the many ways cultural environments can influence cognitive processes. She outlines a new framework proposing four possible ?pathways? by which culture might (or might not) shape cognition. She also shares her own path into cultural psychology, blending anthropology and cognitive science to tackle age-old questions about the human mind.

Dorsa?s website: https://www.dorsaamir.com/
Dorsa?s lab website: https://www.mindandculturelab.com/
Dorsa?s twitter: @DorsaAmir
Dorsa?s paper: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/y7mtf_v1
 

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io
Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao
 
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Eric chats with 2024 Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Stanford Professor Jay McClelland, two pioneers who have spent nearly half a century laying the groundwork for modern-day AI, advancing research on neural networks long before it captured the world's imagination.

In fact, their early work faced significant skepticism from the scientific community - an experience they candidly discuss in this episode. This wide-ranging conversation covers everything from the capabilities of recent breakthrough LLMS like DeepSeek to AI agents, the nature of memory and confabulation, the challenges to aligning AI with human values when we humans don?t even agree on our values, and Geoff's fascinating new theory of language, featuring an analogy of words as thousand-dimensional, shape-shifting Lego blocks with hands.

Geoff, who retired in 2023, divided his time between the University of Toronto and Google DeepMind. With numerous accolades including the 2018 Turing Award and 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, he is perhaps best known for co-developing the backpropagation algorithm - now a cornerstone of AI research. Jay, currently at Stanford and Google DeepMind, has revolutionized our understanding of human learning through his work on Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP), applying neural network principles to understand phenomena like language acquisition. His insights into human learning have profoundly influenced how we understand machine learning.

Their friendship dates back to the late 1970s and grew stronger as both collaborated with fellow pioneer David Rumelhart. They share some touching memories about Dave in this episode. Remarkably, despite decades of friendship and building upon each other's work, this appears to be their first recorded conversation together. Eric challenged them to discuss their latest insights and disagreements.

This episode was recorded on January 29, 2025.

JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community! https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Geoff's website

Geoff's Google Scholar

Jay's website

Jay's Google Scholar

Eric's website

Eric's X @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast X @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! [email protected]

This week, Misha chats with Dr. Alex Shaw, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago's Department of Psychology. His research explores how children and adults navigate the complex world of social behavior, with a particular focus on morality, fairness, and social judgments.

In this episode, Dr. Shaw discusses his fascinating research on why attempts to stay neutral in moral and political disagreements can sometimes backfire. His work reveals that when people choose not to take sides on contentious issues, they may actually be viewed as less trustworthy than those who openly disagree. Through a series of experiments, Dr. Shaw and his colleagues found that this distrust stems from observers perceiving neutrality as strategic deception. The conversation also covers broader insights about human social behavior and includes advice for PhD applicants.

Alex's paper
Alex's faculty page
Lab website

Misha's website

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between the Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science. Marginalia Science is a community committed to promoting work of scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Their mission really resonated with our values at the Stanford Psychology Podcast.

In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Enna chats with Professor Erica Bailey at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Erica broadly studies the construct of authenticity, asking questions like, how do we know who we are? When do we feel the most like ourselves? Why do we often fail, despite our best efforts, to share our inner world with others? In this episode, we discuss her recent paper on how self-perceptions influence subjective authenticity. To learn more about Erica, you can read the Marginalia Science Newsletter below.

Episode on Marginalia Science: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7927b876/104-special-episode-marginalia-science

Marginalia Newsletter featuring Erica: https://substack.com/home/post/p-153969383 

Erica?s Paper: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/9tc27 

Erica?s Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ericarbailey 

Erica?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-bailey-ph-d-22038172/ 

Erica?s Twitter: @ericarbailey

Enna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ 

Enna?s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack: https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Podcast Contact: [email protected]

Eric chats with Sandra Matz, Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Sandra is a renowned computational social scientist, using AI and big data to study human behavior and preferences. Sandra was named as one of the Poets & Quants 40 under 40 Business School Professors in 2021.

In this episode, Eric and Sandra discuss Sandra?s new book ?Mindmasters? on how companies and academics are using AI to predict and shape people?s personalities. They discuss how to align AI with human preferences, how social media is harnessing our attention, how to protect our privacy as AI is becoming more and more powerful, and whether to use or avoid AI friends and therapists.

JOIN OUR SUBSTACK! Stay up to date with the pod and become part of the ever-growing community :) https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

If you found this episode interesting at all, consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Sandra?s new book Mindmasters
Sandra?s website
Sandra?s Google Scholar

Eric's website
Eric's X @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast X @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! [email protected]

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Casey Kenyon Brown, Professor at Georgetown University in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging and the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science.

Casey?s research examines how we share, understand, and influence one another?s emotions. She?s interested in how these interpersonal emotional processes are beneficial for healthy aging, and how these processes may go awry and contribute to depression. 

In this episode, Casey shares her journey in psychology, talks about her research on emotion and relationships, and provides advice on how we can build strong connections with people we love. 

Please join our substack (https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/) to stay connected with our community of listeners from all over the world! If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating. It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners to share our love for psychology. 

Casey?s Lab Website: https://careslab.facultysite.georgetown.edu/ 

Casey?s Lab Twitter: @CARESlab_GU

Casey?s paper on empathy and shared depression: https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026221141852 

Enna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ 

Enna?s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Adani chats with Kate Petrova, one of the first hosts of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and a fourth-year Ph.D. student in psychology at Stanford University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Kate shares her journey into research and science communication, and how she grappled with the ups and downs of graduate school! She also discusses the value and challenges of interdisciplinarity, what affective science is and could look like in the future, and what most excites her about that picture!

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Kate?s website: https://www.kpetrova.com/home
Kate?s twitter: @kate_ptrv
Kate?s paper on The Future of Emotion Regulation Research: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00222-0
Kate?s first episode with her advisor, Dr. James Gross: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pSGtdQmywj2ubmFAeaDL5?si=1ZFsw45OQGKvWClAG6VYQg

Adani?s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com
Adani?s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adani.bsky.social

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack Stanford Psychology Podcast

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Anjie chats with Dr. Michael Schwalbe and Dr. Geoff Cohen. Michael is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, from which he also received his PhD in social psychology. Geoff is a Professor of Psychology and the James G. March Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University. His research examines the processes that shape people?s sense of belonging and self-concept, and the role that these processes play in various social problems. In this episode, Michael and Geoff shared their most recent work on biases we have when consuming political news: people were more likely to believe and share news aligned with their political beliefs, compared to news that was true, even when the headlines were outlandishly fake. They also talked about the implications of these biases for democracy, misinformation, and how we might counteract our own tendencies to favor agreeable but untrue information.

Michael & Geoff?s paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-33892-004.html

Stanford Report's coverage on the paper: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/10/new-study-shows-that-partisanship-trumps-truth

Michael?s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelschwalbe/

Geoff?s lab website: http://cohenlab.stanford.edu

Geoff?s personal website: https://www.geoffreylcohen.com/bio

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Adani chats with Dr. Julia Chatain, Senior Scientist at the Singapore-ETH Centre of ETH Zürich. Julia is a computer scientist and learning scientist responsible for building a new research program, ?Future Embodied Learning Technologies? (FELT), focusing on exploring AI-powered embodied learning interventions to support low-progress learners and learners with special needs, both at the cognitive and the affective levels. Before that, she led the EduTech group at ETH Zürich, conducting Research and Development of educational technology through co-design with lecturers and students, with a focus on XR, AI-supported learning, and accessibility.

In this episode, Adani and Julia discuss Julia?s recent work on embodied learning in mathematics, much of which was part of her doctoral research at ETH Zürich conducted with her advisors Prof. Manu Kapur and Prof. Robert Sumner. They also dive into her journey that led her to where she is now, and discuss what she is currently working on at the Singapore-ETH Centre and beyond!

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Julia?s website: https://juliachatain.com/
Julia?s paper on Grounding Graph Theory in Embodied Concreteness with VR: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000583039
Singapore-ETH Centre?s website: https://sec.ethz.ch/
Julia?s Twitter @JuliaChatain

Adani?s website: https://www.adaniabutto.com/
Adani?s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/adani.bsky.social

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :)
[email protected] 

Anjie chats with Dr. Susan Carey. Susan is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and one of the most influential figures in the field of developmental psychology. Her groundbreaking research focuses on conceptual change and how knowledge systems develop throughout childhood. Susan has received numerous prestigious awards, including the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the David Rumelhart Prize for significant contributions to human cognition, and the Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences from the National Academy of Sciences. In this episode, Susan reflects on her journey into cognitive science, discusses the evolution of her research on children's conceptual understanding, and shares valuable advice for aspiring graduate students and young faculty.

Susan?s memoir: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-040622-091723

Susan?s personal website: https://www.harvardlds.org/our-labs/carey-lab/susan-carey/

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Hal Hershfield, Professor of Marketing, Behavioral Decision Making, and Psychology at UCLA Anderson School of Management. In 2017, Hal was recognized as a 40 under 40 best business school professor. This year, he was voted as faculty of the year by MBA students at UCLA. 

Hal studies how thinking about time transforms the emotions and alters the judgments and decisions people make. His research concentrates on the psychology of long-term decision making and how time affects people?s lives ? specifically at a moment when Americans are living longer and saving less.

Hal earned his PhD at Stanford Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Carstensen, who is Enna?s PhD advisor currently. In this episode, Hal shares his journey in psychology, talks about his research on time and decision making as well as his recent book, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, an insightful and entertaining guide to grow into our ideal selves. 

Please join our substack (https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/) to stay connected with our community of listeners from all over the world! If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating. It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners to share our love for psychology. 

Hal?s website: https://www.halhershfield.com/ 

Hal?s book: https://www.halhershfield.com/yourfutureself 

Hal?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hal-hershfield/

Hal?s Twitter: @HalHershfield

Enna?s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ennayuxuanchen/ 

Enna?s Twitter: @EnnaYuxuanChen

Podcast Contact: [email protected] 

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod

Anjie chats with Dr. Kelsey Lucca. Kelsey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She directs the Emerging Minds Lab, where she leads her team to investigate cognitive development during infancy and early childhood, with a focus on the development of curiosity, social cognition, communication, and problem solving. In this episode, Kelsey chats about one of her recent papers ?Developmental differences in children and adults? enforcement of explore versus exploit search strategies in the United States and Turkey?. She also shares her personal journey into developmental science. 

Kelsey?s lab website: https://www.emergingmindslab.org/

Kelsey?s Lab twitter: @EmergingMindsAZ

Kelsey?s paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.13520

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Anjie chats with Bella Fascendini, a long time host of the Stanford Psychology Podcast and an incoming Ph.D. student in psychology at Princeton University. In this special episode from our Meet the Host series, Bella shares her journey into cognitive science and science communication, offering valuable tips for those considering graduate school or pursuing science communication. She also discusses one of her coolest work experiences ?working with Penguin?and how it has shaped her current path. 

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Bella?s website: https://www.bellaxfascendini.com/

Bella?s twitter: @BellaFascendini

Bella?s first episode: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/4cea0f37/27-david-lagnado-how-causal-reasoning-can-help-us-make-better-judgments-and-solve-criminal-cases

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Joseph chats with Prof. Jake Quilty-Dunn, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University. Prof. Quilty-Dunn works primarily in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Much of his research concerns distinctions between kinds of mental representations (such as iconic and discursive formats), mental processes (such as inference and association), and mental systems (such as perception and cognition). He also has broad research interests in philosophy of language, aesthetics and early modern philosophy. 

In this episode Joseph and Dr. Quilty-Dunn chat about the language of thought (LoT) hypothesis. They discuss the history of the idea, how the LoT differs from natural language, how it shows up in perception and cognition, how it compares to rival formats, and the extent to which it is learnable in development. 

References:

Quilty-Dunn, J., Porot, N., & Mandelbaum, E. (2023). The best game in town: The reemergence of the language-of-thought hypothesis across the cognitive sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e261

Joseph and Dr. Lisa Damour discuss the portrayal of teenage emotions in Pixar's "Inside Out 2", with a focus on anxiety. Dr. Damour, who consulted for the film as a clinical psychologist, shares her experience, the teenage emotions explored in the film, how scientific insights are integrated into the story, and the societal issues it addresses.

Dr Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which have been translated into twenty-three languages. She co-hosts the Ask Lisa podcast, works in collaboration with UNICEF, and is recognized as a thought leader by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Damour is a regular contributor to The New York Times and CBS News and the creator of Untangling 10to20, a digital library of premium content to support teens and those who care for them.

Dr. Damour serves as a Senior Advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University and has written numerous academic papers, chapters, and books related to education and child development. She maintains a clinical practice and also speaks to schools, professional organizations, and corporate groups around the world on the topics of child and adolescent development, family mental health, and adult well-being.

Joseph chats with Prof. Nicholas Shea, Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London and associate member of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Prof. Shea is an interdisciplinary philosopher of mind and cognitive science, and has published work on mental representation, inheritance systems, consciousness, AI, and the metaphysics of mind. In this episode Joseph and Prof. Shea chat about two ways of thinking about concepts in human adults, babies, non-human animals, and artificial neural networks.
 
References:
Shea, N. (2023). Concepts as plug & play devices. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1870), 20210353.
Shea, N. (2023). Moving beyond content?specific computation in artificial neural networks. Mind & Language, 38(1), 156-177.
Shea, N. (2018). Representation in cognitive science. Oxford University Press.
Shea, N. (2015). Distinguishing top-down from bottom-up effects. Perception and its modalities, 73-91.

Anjie chats with Dr. Nilam Ram. Nilam is a Professor of Communications & Psychology at Stanford University, and he studies how short-term changes develop across the life span and how longitudinal study designs contribute to the generation of new knowledge. Nilam is developing a variety of study paradigms that use recent developments in data science and the intensive data streams arriving from social media, mobile sensors, and smartphones to study behavioral change at multiple time scales. In this episode, we take a look at one of the paradigms that he has been working on: the Human Screenome Project, an ambitious project that has participants? phone screens captured every five seconds for over a year as a way to record their specific ways of interacting with phones. Nilam shares how his thinking around generalizability has evolved over the course of the project.

Nilam?s paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2023.2229305

Nilam?s lab website: https://thechangelab.stanford.edu

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Anjie chats with Dr. Johannes Eichstaedt,  an Assistant Professor in Psychology, and the Shriram Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. Johannes directs the Computational Psychology and Well-Being lab. His research focuses on using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, ?) to measure the psychological states of large populations and individuals to determine the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that drive physical illness (like heart disease), depression, or support psychological well-being.  In this episode, Anjie and Johannes chat about how social media could be a lens to understand mental illnesses such as depression. Johannes also shares his thoughts on the emerging trends in social media, and how some powerful technocrats in Silicon Valley might have some huge blind spots in understanding human nature. 

 If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substackand consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Links: 

 Johannes?s paper: Eichstaedt, J. C., Smith, R. J., Merchant, R. M., Ungar, L. H., Crutchley, P., Preo?iuc-Pietro, D., ... & Schwartz, H. A. (2018). Facebook language predicts depression in medical records. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(44), 11203-11208.

Johannes?s Twitter: @JEichstaedt

Johannes?s lab website: https://cpwb.stanford.edu/

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/
 

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Anjie chats with Dr. Laura Gwilliams.  Laura is an assistant professor at Stanford University, jointly appointed between Stanford Psychology, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Stanford Data Science. Her work is focused on understanding the neural representations and operations that give rise to speech comprehension in the human brain. In this episode, Laura introduces her recent paper titled? Large-scale single-neuron speech sound encoding across the depth of human cortex?. She shares the insights we can derive from a recently developed technique called Neuropixels, which is essentially a tiny needle that can be placed into the human brain and record from hundreds of neurons at the same time. She also shares her personal journey into this line of work. 

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Laura?s paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06839-2

Laura?s personal website:https://lauragwilliams.github.io/

Laura?s lab website:https://gwilliams.sites.stanford.edu/

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Eric chats with Paul van Lange, Professor of Psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford. He is well known for his vast work on trust, cooperation, and morality, applying these themes to everything from Covid to climate change. He has published multiple handbooks and edited volumes on these topics.

In this chat, Eric and Paul talk about the psychological barriers that stop people from fighting climate change. What do trust and cynicism have to do with it? What are barriers to cooperation more generally? Why do selfish people often believe others are selfish too, but kind people don?t think everyone is kind? Might most strangers actually be nice, despite all the stranger danger we always hear about? Finally, Paul shares if all his work on trust and cooperation has changed how he looks at the world and compares research in psychology in Europe to the US.

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Links:

Paul's paper on climate change
Paul's website
Paul's Twitter @PaulvanLange

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

In this episode, Adani chats with Dr. Halie Olson! Halie is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT?s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Her research explores how early life experiences and environments impact brain development, particularly in the context of language, and what this means for children?s outcomes.

Halie talks about the intriguing backstory and results of her recent pre-print paper titled ?When the Brain Cares: Personal interests amplify engagement of language, self-reference, and reward regions in the brains of children with and without autism.? In particular, she discusses what it means to be really interested in something, and how our brains respond to language about things we?re personally interested in. Halie also shares how she first got involved in research, her favorite parts about science, what she is excited to work on next, and a fun book recommendation!

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe to our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Halie?s paper: https://doi.org/10.1101%2F2023.03.21.533695
Halie's website: halieolson.com

Adani?s website: adaniabutto.com

Podcast Twitter: @StanfordPsyPod
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Anjie chats with Dr. Guilherme Lichand. Guilherme is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and a co-Director at the Stanford Lemann Center. His research interest explores the sources of education inequities in the global south, and in interventions with the potential to overturn them. In this episode, Guilherme talks about his recent paper titled ?The Lasting Impacts of Remote Learning in the Absence of Remedial Policies: Evidence from Brazil?. He shares his insights on how remote learning could have negative, long-term impacts on the learning outcomes, especially in places without high quality access to the facilities required by remote learning. He also shares his thoughts on whether the same patterns could generalize to remote work ? that is, does work from home have negative impacts on our productivity. 

 If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Guilherme?s paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4209299

Guilherme?s personal website:https://lichand.info/

 Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Michele Gelfand, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Michele?s culture lab studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity, drawing on many different disciplines. Michele is world-renowned for her work on how some cultures have stronger enforcement of norms (tight cultures), while others are more tolerant of deviations from the norm (loose cultures). She is the author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers.

In this chat, Eric and Michele discuss the latest insights into loose and tight cultures, what academic disciplines are tight versus loose, and how this framework explains phenomena as disconnected as Covid fears, the appeal of populist leaders, and why Ernie and Bert have so many disagreements. Michele then shares how she stays so passionate and productive, the barriers she has faced trying to be so interdisciplinary, how she deals with setbacks, and why she sometimes dresses up as a pickle.

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Links

Book: https://www.michelegelfand.com/rule-makers-rule-breakers

How tight or loose are you? https://www.michelegelfand.com/tl-quiz

Tight vs loose cultures: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1197754?casa_token=P4iNAMuyYeQAAAAA:gyWMq9sohJJ0LsH-bBRg844OqN8-e9AwiVb649lkXe8cXzCP5jcSmqtAojp-1Lfvg5itKyD2nPP8J4g

Culture, threat, tightness and looseness: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2113891119

Eric's website

Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you think of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Marginalia Episode is a collaboration between Stanford Psychology Podcast and Marginalia Science, a community committed to including, integrating, advocating for, and promoting members who are not typically promoted by the status quo in academia. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this episode, Anjie chats with Dr. Cristina Salvador, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Cristina examines how culture interfaces with biology to influence our thinking, feeling, and behavior. She analyzes the influence of culture at multiple levels, including the brain, everyday language use, implicit measures, and big data. In this episode, we start our conversation on her recent paper titled ?Emotionally expressive interdependence in Latin America: Triangulating through a comparison of three cultural zones.?. To learn more about Cristina, you can read the Marginalia Science Newsletter attached below. 

Episode on Marginalia Science: https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7927b876/104-special-episode-marginalia-science

Marginalia Newsletter featuring Cristina:https://marginaliascience.substack.com/p/newsletter-september-2023

Cristina?s paper; https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-15733-001.pdf

Cristina?s lab website:https://sites.duke.edu/culturelab/ 

Crstina?s twitter: @cris_esalvador

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Rachel chats with Oriel FeldmanHall,  Professor of Cognitive, Linguistics, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Oriel's lab leverages methods from behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience to explore the neural bases of social behavior, and the role of emotion in shaping social interactions. She has won numerous awards, including the Cognitive Neuroscience Society?s Young Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to science, the Association for Psychological Science?s Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions, and the American Psychological Association?s Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. 

In this episode, Oriel provides an introduction to the world of affective science, explaining how her team measures and studies emotion. She describes how the emotions that we expect to feel?and the inaccuracies in our predictions?shape our judgments and behavior, and the complex relationship between emotion and depression. We also discuss the hazards of sharing scientific findings on twitter, and how some of the best research questions originate in coffee shops.
 
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 If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.
 
 Links:
 Link to the paper we discussed
Check out more of Professor Oriel FeldmanHall's work at the FeldmanHall lab website! 
Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod
Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 
Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at [email protected]

This week, Julia chats with Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Institute for Mind, Brain, and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. Since joining the Columbia Faculty in 2001, she has spearheaded pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of attention and curiosity, using computational modeling combined with behavioral and neurophysiological studies in humans and non-human primates. 

In this episode, Professor Gottlieb unlocks the fundamental forces governing curiosity. She begins by explaining the ambiguity inherent in uncertainty and the balance between potential risks and rewards. Then, she reviews a recent study that suggests that we don?t always reason optimally about uncertainty. After discussing potential reasons why we might struggle with decision making surrounding uncertainty, she highlights key personality factors from the study that were associated with more successful decision making. Finally, she closes by sharing her hopes for the future of the field.

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If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Gottlieb?s work at her lab website! 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at [email protected]

Xi Jia chats with Dr. Michal Kosinski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Michal's research interests recently encompass both human and artificial cognition. Currently, his work centers on examining the psychological processes in Large Language Models (LLMs), and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data, and computational techniques to model and predict human behavior.

In this episode, they chat about Michal's recent works: "Theory of Mind Might Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models" and "Human-like intuitive behavior and reasoning biases emerged in large language models but disappeared in ChatGPT". Michal also shared his scientific journey and some personal suggestions for PhD students.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Michal's paper on Theory of Mind in LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.02083
Michal's paper on reasoning bias in LLMs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43588-023-00527-x

Michal's personal website: https://www.michalkosinski.com/

Xi Jia's profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/xijia-zhou

Xi Jia's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LauraXijiaZhou

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

Anjie chats with Dr. Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College where he directs the Language Learning Laboratory. He studies language learning from a variety of aspects, including but not limited to: bootstrapping language acquisition, relationship between language and commonsense, as well as the critical periods in learning new languages. In this episode, they chat about Josh?s recent work on second language acquisition: ?Will children learn English faster if their native language is similar to English??. Josh also shares some insights on the best way to teach language to kids and adults.

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Josh?s paper: https://l3atbc-public.s3.amazonaws.com/pub_pdfs/Yun%20et%20al%202023.pdf

Josh?s personal profile: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/mcas/departments/psychology/people/faculty-directory/joshua-hartshorne.html

Josh?s lab website: http://l3atbc.org/index.html

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

This week, Julia chats with two guests from University College London, Professor Steve Fleming and Dr. Nadine Dijkstra. Professor Fleming is the Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging where he leads the Metacognition Group. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the William James prize from the Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness. Dr. Dijkstra is a Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at University College London. She earned her PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Donders Institute in 2019, after which she moved to London to pursue a postdoc at UCL with Professor Fleming. 

In this episode, Dr. Dijkstra and Professor Fleming take us into the fascinating realm of how we distinguish, or at least attempt to distinguish, reality from imagination. They relate the details of a recent study, which indicates that our perceptions of reality might not be as different from our imaginations as we would like to believe. They suggest that this framework of perceptual reality monitoring could be a lens through which our brains interpret all of our experiences. In fact, this perceptual reality monitoring framework might provide an explanation of how we consciously experience the world. After discussing their recent experiment and relating it to the broader field of consciousness science, each of them shares details about their career journeys and their hopes for the future of the field.

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If you found this episode interesting, please consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a minute but will allow us to reach more listeners and make them excited about psychology.

Links:

Link to the paper we discussed

Check out more of Professor Fleming and Dr. Dijkstra?s work at the UCL Metacognition lab website! 

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ 

Let us know what you think of this episode or of the podcast by sending us an email at [email protected]

Anjie chats with Dr. Bryan Brown. Bryan is a professor of teacher education at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. His research interest explores the relationship between student identity, discourse, classroom culture, and academic achievement in science education. In this episode, we chat about his recent work on adopting VR ? Virtual Reality in the classroom. The title of the paper we discuss is Teaching culturally relevant science in virtual reality: ?when a problem comes, you can solve it with science?. Bryan shares his insights on how VR could be a valuable tool to science education. He also talks about how he became interested in this topic. 

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Bryan?s paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1046560X.2020.1778248

Bryan?s personal profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/bryan-brown

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/

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Eric chats with Joshua Jackson, newly minted Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at University of Chicago?s Booth School of Business. In his research, Josh studies how culture co-evolves with psychology. He is interested in how culture has shaped the mind throughout human history, and how it continues to shape human futures. He regularly publishes in the field?s best journals with innovative methods and is by many considered a rising star in psychology.

In this chat, Eric and Josh discuss culture and morality. Why do some cultures have a crude view of another?s morality as either all good or all bad, when some cultures have a more nuanced view? Can we ever know how kind someone truly is? How does social media impact our sense of morality? Finally, Josh shares his exciting journey across the whole globe to find his identity as an academic and opens up about the hopes and anxieties he has over becoming a professor.

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Links:

Josh's paper
Josh's website

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Anjie chats with Dr. Sho Tsuji, an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo where she directs the IRCN baby lab. Her core research interests involve understanding how babies acquire language efficiently. In this episode, we chat about her recent work on approaching this question from a computational perspective, a paper titled ?SCALa: A blueprint for computational models of language acquisition in social context?. Sho explained why a computational perspective is crucial for understanding language acquisition. She also shared her perspective on large language models as a human language acquisition researcher.  

If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology.

Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027721001980?casa_token=qgQQnJZhAtsAAAAA:jpgo27gePFql_iSljm__ZAEcnT-3Qcemy5_QMVxL06DQO_ZJjHuGeBlFHmnnbUd-9UD5xNGK920

Sho?s personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/tsujish/home

Sho?s lab website: https://babylab.ircn.jp/en/

Anjie?s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie?s Twitter @anjie_cao

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This week, Julia chats with George Mashour, the Robert B. Sweet Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. Professor Mashour was the founding director of the University of Michigan Center for Consciousness Science and the Michigan Psychedelic Center. 

In this episode, Julia and Professor Mashour discuss the reinvigorated study of psychedelics and the light it may shed on different dimensions of consciousness. Professor Mashour weighs in on the ongoing normative debate about how psychedelic drugs should be defined. Should they be defined on a molecular level by their mechanism of action in the brain or based upon the subjective experience they produce in the user? 

He relates the results of an exciting recent study that uses psychedelic drugs as a tool to alter normal states of consciousness. This enables him to compare brain network dynamics in these altered states of consciousness with those dynamics in normal states of consciousness and with those in lowered states of consciousness induced by anesthesia. In some ways, this technique allows us to peer into the brain to find out what brain activity is associated with particular experiences. Professor Mashour also offers his perspective on two of the most prominent theories of consciousness and a groundbreaking ongoing adversarial collaboration evaluating them. 

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Links:

Professor Mashour?s paper

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Eric chats with Matt Abrahams, leading expert in the field of communication and lecturer at Stanford University?s Graduate School of Business. Matt is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and communications consultant. He has helped numerous presenters prepare for high-stakes talks, including Nobel Prize award presentations, and appearances at TED and the World Economic Forum. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award-winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast.

In this chat, Eric and Matt discuss all things public speaking and stage fright, introducing Matt?s upcoming book Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You?re Put on the Spot which provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.

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Links:

Matt's upcoming NEW BOOK
Matt's LinkedIn
Matt's website

Eric's website
Eric's Twitter @EricNeumannPsy

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