Here We Are

Helena Miton is a cognitive anthropologist and complexity postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. She investigates how culture is maintained through time and what determines the shapes traditions take. She holds her Ph.D. in cognitive science from Central European University and previously was a member of the Minds & Traditions research group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Follow her on Twitter @HelenaMiton.

Helena and I discuss cultural evolution, the balance between biological and societal influences on culture, and how history and ideas embellish across time, similar to a game of telephone. 

Enroll in Helena's Introductory course to Open Science here: https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/125-open-science-tutorial

Today I'm speaking with Dr. Christopher Kavanagh, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology. Chris is also the cohost of the Decoding the Gurus Podcast. We talk about the effect that internet gurus and thought leaders have on public perception of science and politics. 

Chris’ research focuses broadly on collective rituals and their impact on social identity and group orientated behaviors, using a combination of field and lab based experiments, online surveys, and traditional ethnographic methods.

Check out the Decoding the Gurus podcast: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/

Today I am speaking with Cecilea Mun, who is a Visiting Assistant Professor of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, with the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Louisville, KY, and the founding director of the Society for Philosophy of Emotion, and the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion. We talk about how money shifts the way we think about our ethical principles, Realism emotional theory and Instrumentalism emotional theory, how people on the autism spectrum process emotions, and much more!

Check out Ceclia's book "Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion" here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-71194-8

Also check out her website here: https://sites.google.com/site/muncecilea

Thank you for watching and being an inquisitive being.

This week I’m talking with Dave Ader, an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of sustainable agriculture and rural development. He currently works as the Assistant Director and Research Assistant Professor in the Smith Center for International Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Tennessee.  

Joining me as a part of the One Health Initiative, we discuss how agricultural issues in one area can end up affecting communities on the other side of the globe and how very niche scientific research can be used to solve much larger issues.

https://onehealth.tennessee.edu/

This week I am talking with Itai Yanai, Director of the Institute for Computational Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU. 

We discuss Richard Dawkin’s book: The Selfish Gene, Darwin’s work with Evolution and Itai’s Podcast: The Night Science Podcast.

Throughout the conversation we dive into extended phenotypes, spandrels in genetics, and evolution of things like facial hair and tails.  Thank you for watching and being an inquisitive being.

https://night-science.org/

This week I’m talking all about science communication with Susanna L Harris. Susanna earned her PhD in microbiology at UNC-Chapel Hill and is now working to build better communication in Biotech.  We chat about how to more effectively communicate scientific information by guiding conversations, getting other people’s individual contexts, and the best way to present new information.  We also explore ideas like celebrating being wrong, enjoying boredom and how covid has affected scientific thinking. Thank you for watching and being an inquisitive being.

Shane and Ramin have TWO tremendous pieces of news.  Don’t miss this episode as it involves some plans you are going to want to make!

The Charmed Boys of Comedy™ are feeling The Luck of the Irish.

This week we chat about the history of St Paddy’s Day.  We talk about Shane’s Irish ancestry, potato famines, and early American immigrants.  After doing Origins of Halloween (ep 29), Christmas Origins (ep 36), and now exploring St Paddy’s Day as a respite from Lent, we are starting to notice a bit of a theme with the holidays, religions, and traditions during the coldest months.  We speculate on cultural evolution and why we may not need luck and ritual may be seasonal.

After going through some struggles at the end of winter, The CBC™ recently found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and are feeling festive.  We are sure you will too once you hear what is in store for the coMUMity.

After the show, head to https://mindunderpod.com/pages/festival to get more details about our upcoming event!

The Necromancers of Comedy™ use modern alchemy to determine how conspiratorial they are. 

If you enjoy it, the second part is available now on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/63465356