A talk with roboticist and artificial intelligence researcher and roboticist Hod Lipson. Topics include: how close he thinks we are to genuinely self-aware machines; research strategies that he sees as most likely to yield self-aware machines; how do we define what it means to be self-aware; how existentialist questions might relate to AI consciousness questions; his views of the risks of AI; how such research can help us better understand human minds and behavior.

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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A talk with criminologist Eric Piza about how video has affected crime rates. Topics discussed include: what the research shows about video surveillance and crime reduction; what factors make camera presence more likely to be effective; the effectiveness of police body cams; some practical ideas for how one might discourage crime at one's property; and the role of America's huge number of guns on violence by police. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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Host Zachary Elwood examines liberal reactions about the Rittenhouse verdict and how some of the more extreme and pessimistic reactions may be seen as being caused by political us-vs-them polarization. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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A talk with social scientist Saul Albert (saulalbert.net) about conversation analysis — the scientific analysis of talking — and the wider field of ethnomethodology. Topics discussed: what conversation analysis (CA) is and how it's done; some of the interesting findings in CA; Saul's own research; the complexity and difficulty of communication; the role of silence in conversation; transcription/notation methods used; and more.   

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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I talk with Rob Speiden, an expert in sign cutting, which is the tracking of humans or animals over the ground using clues of physical disturbance. Topics discussed include: common methods of tracking; how tracking is used in search and rescue scenarios; debunking some misconceptions about what's possible with tracking; the importance of being fully aware and open to all sensory input; and interesting stories from his career. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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I talk with Emily Kubin, who recently, with her co-researcher Christian Von Sikorski, did a comprehensive review of 121 studies on social media effects on political polarization. We talk about her research, why polarization is a problem, the different types of polarization (affective vs ideological), our psychology tendency to become us-versus-them in our thinking, her own opinions on what social media is doing to us, and the mechanisms by which social media may be amplifying polarization. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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I talk with Ben Tyler, a professional musician and musical educator based in Portland, Oregon, about reading and understanding people in the musical world. (I use Ben's music for my intro music.) Topics include: reading fellow band members' gestures and eye contact in jazz and other musical performances; being able to tell when audiences are having a good time or not; how practicing improvisation can make us more flexible; and the social aspects of the musical world. Ben's personal musical project is called Small Skies. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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A talk with Jannine Lasaleta, who has researched the psychological effects of nostalgia, including how nostalgic feelings make people more loose and uncaring with money.  We talk about the connection between our desire for nostalgia and our desire to engage in old-fashioned or ancient or "authentic" activities . We talk about how our attraction for these things might be connected to our search for meaning, our desire to have a consistent and stable sense of self, and our attempt to fend off existential anxieties related to meaninglessness and isolation. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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If you're someone who pays a lot of attention to politics, but feels that doing so makes you miserable, this may be an important listen. What if someone were to tell you that paying attention to politics is not a morally correct way to spend your time and energy? Political philosopher Chris Freiman is the author of "Why It's OK to Ignore Politics." He makes a case that paying a lot of attention to politics is often a waste of time, and may even be immoral compared to other ways you could be spending your time and energy. We talk about how our collective focus on and anger about politics may be contributing to society's us-versus-them animosity and polarization (which may be the root cause of our dysfunction). 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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Jennifer Cohn is an attorney and election integrity advocate. Since 2016 she has been drawing attention to problems with U.S. election security and was frustrated during the Trump admin years to see the GOP block efforts to improve security. Now that GOP has become the party of "the election is illegitimate", things have swung the other way and it is Democrats who seem unwilling to acknowledge flaws that many on that side were willing to talk about up until recently. We talk about how politics and polarization can impact attempts to solve election security problems, and she gives insights on the problems she sees with elections. 

Learn more about the show and get transcripts at⁠ ⁠behavior-podcast.com⁠⁠.   

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