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This is podcast #67 with Dr. Susumu Tomiya.

It's such a pleasure to be able to share my interview with Dr. Susumu Tomiya, my colleague for the past 3+ years in the Center for International Collaboration and Advanced Studies in Primatology (CICASP).

Susumu and I have worked closely over that time toward developing our capacity at Kyoto University to teach science communication to our graduate students, and to encourage and promote their activities in various ways, such as through news stories on the CICASP website and co-developing educational programs with students themselves. Here are a couple of examples of Susumu's work in that regard, in interviews with graduate student Tianmeng He and postdoc Gao Jie about their research.

Susumu is an assistant professor, now based in the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Kyoto University's new Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). But, he is a vertebrate paleonologist interested in mammalian diversity, with a background in studying extinct carnivorans in North America! You might wonder what he's up to at a research institute dedicated to the study of primates, and you can find out by listening to the podcast right here! To find out more about his research, visit his personal website. 

In the interview, we discuss a pretty wide range of topics, from understanding biodiversity in an evolutionary context to contextualize biodiversity loss in the present and future, to exploring some of the amazing species he's studied (think, beardogs!). We then get on to the process of doing and communicating science, and onto science education, as Susumu has long been involved in the latter through programs at the museums he's worked at - including Chicago's famous Field Museum - and now through CICASP. 

It was such a treat to record this interview, so I hope my enthusiasm for speaking with Susumu comes through, and that you all feel a little more nourished coming away from this interview with Dr. Susumu Tomiya as much as I did.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field..

The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories about experienced researchers of primatology and related fields, through lectures delivered by those very individuals. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program, but we decided to release the audio right here on The PrimateCast.

Unlike most academic lectures, which are usually focused on testing scientific hypotheses, this series is designed to offer a feel for how one becomes a professional in the field of primatology. In a way, we might think of it as a career primer for young primatologists just starting their own journeys into the nether regions of Academia. At the same time, anyone might enjoy the stories told of big dreams, exotic locations and species, and the humanity inherent in forging a new path in life and in work.

For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to CICASP's YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.

Prof. Dunbar is behind some key scientific ideas, such as the Social Brain Hypothesis - which has had ample success in explaining the distribution of higher forms of cognition across the animal kingdom - and Dunbar’s number, the iconic idea that there is a numerical cap on the number of relationships we can realistically maintain at any given time in our lives.

During the talk, he explains the origins of these ideas and their origins in his own fieldwork on primates and ungulates, as well as some accidental collaborations with people from a wide range of other disciplines.

Robin Dunbar is Professor Emeritus in Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. You can find out more on our dedicated page for this event. 

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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This is podcast #65 with Dr. Ikuma Adachi.

Before getting into the interview, I announce with great sadness the passing of Dr. Steve Ross, as announced by Lincoln Park Zoo. Steve was a formidable figure in chimpanzee conservation and animal welfare science in general, in addition to being an all around good person and key figure at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. He will be missed.

This is also the first podcast released since the restructuring of the Primate Research Institute, which had an exceptional 55 year run as a leading primatological institute. I make a note of that as well before getting into the interview.

Now, Dr. Ikuma Adachi is no stranger to these parts, and he's been on the podcast twice before, way back in our second episode in April 2012, and again in March 2016 on Episode #20. Feel free to check those out in addition to listening to the current episode.

Ikuma is associate professor of Cogntiive Neuroscience at Kyoto University's new Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). He's also the new head of CICASP, assuming the role this month after a 5 year hiatus from being part of the center. But he's always had a big inlfuence on how we operate, so it was great getting him back in the studio.

In the interview, we discuss a range of topics, from internationaliation at Kyoto University to running a chimpanzee lab and managing the expectations of incoming students. We talk about his own experiences with chimpanzees and research in comparative cognitive science, and end with some speculations about the metaverse and humans in space...

yeah, you read that correctly!

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field. 

"Dreams are not destinations, they're journeys. So, dare to dream"

- Zimbo

In the third podcast in this lecture series, we hear from Dr. Ramesh Boonratana, Zimbo, talking about why he's not a primatologist and - according to him! - other incoherent ramblings.  

Zimbo details his journey into and then out of primatology, with a couple of important messages for teh audience. It's clear from the lecture that Zimbo values education, doing things the right way, and offering a roadmap for young students wishing to get into the field. I think that's what makes him so popular in the world of Southeast Asian primatology, where he's actively involved in various educational and conservation-oriented activities.

Zimbo is an associate professor of conservation biology at Mahidol University in Thailand, and has many advisory roles for organizations as diverse as the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Primate Specialist Group, the Bukit Merah Orang Utan Foundation, and the Creation Justice Commission of Kota Kinabalu rchdiocese. He talks about some of these roles and how he's involved in bringing people together for conservation in this lecture.

You can find out more about the talk and about Zimbo on our dedicated page for this event, complete with a biosketch with his academic history. 

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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This is podcast #63 with Drs. Chia Tan and Fred Bercovitch - and was recorded in March 2015.

The setting for this interview was one of the symposiums for our Primatology and Wildlife Science graduate program at Kyoto University, where students and wildlife professionals gathered to share their research and efforts towards conservation, environmental stewardship and advocacy.

At the time, Chia Tan was working in San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research (now the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance), and so I took the opportunity to talk with her, among other things, about the role of zoos in conservation.

As will become obvious to you during the interview, Chia is absolutely passionate about people and nature. Though trained as a scientific researcher, she’s been a driver of numerous conservation initiatives that have a strong human element to them. We talk about two in this interview - TIPS, or the training in primatology series, which helps motivated young conservationists and researchers from primate range countries attend international training programs and conferences, and Little Green Guards, which aims to foster nature appreciation in children through education, reflection and action, with the hope to inspire and prepare the next generation of Earth’s guardians.

Chia remains the VP and Global Program Director for Little Green Guards, but she’s also VP and Treasurer for Ludi International, a US non-profit dedicated to preserving biological diversity on Earth by inspiring and empowering people through scientific research, education and capacity building. She’s also adjunct professor of Anthropology at San Diego State University and the School of Agroforestry Engineering and Planning at Tongren University (Guizhou, China), and she sits on the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. And I’m probably missing a few things here as well!

Now, in the interview, you’ll also hear from Dr. Fred Bercovitch, who previously worked at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Behavioral Biology Division before becoming professor at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute until his retirement in 2017. If you want to learn more about Fred, you can go way back in time and listen to The PrimateCast #2, which was published on April 12th, 2012!

Fred had invited Chia to the symposium, as their time at San Diego Zoo overlapped and he thought she’d be an excellent role model for our own graduate students in the program.

And so, kind of coming full circle to zoos before we jump into the interview, when Fred was here at Kyoto University, he was teaching some undergraduate courses in Conservation Biology and Zoo Biology. When he retired in 2017, a couple of years after this interview, I actually inherited those courses, and I’m still teaching them today.

So in some ways, talking about zoos and conservation with Fred and Chia turned out to be a little bit of foreshadowing for my own future.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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In this installment of The PrimateCast we continue with our International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field. 

"Expect Problems; you won't be disappointed"

- Vernon Reynolds

In the second podcast in this lecture series we hear from Dr. Vernon Reynolds, in a talk entitled "Budongo: The Making of a Field Station". In the lecture, Vernon gives us the story behind many decades of chimpanzee research in Uganda, leading to the Budongo Forest Project and later the Budongo Conservation Field Station. 

You can find out more about the talk and about Vernon on our dedicated page for this event, complete with a biosketch with his academic history. And make sure you check out his very own Wikipedia page! 

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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Our guest in this installment of The PrimateCast is Dr. Julie Duboscq, researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research based at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, in the department of EcoAnthropology. I interviewed Julie just before she left Japan to join the CNRS after a five years of postdoctoral study here at the Primate Research Insitute.

Note to readers: this podcast interview was recorded in June 2018, but I'm only now getting to releasing it. For shame! It's not for lack of quality, but sometimes things get shuffled down the pack. This is also only the fifth podcast released since that time! Also for shame! 

All Hail the Fieldwork Fail...

Julie’s been a fixture in research on the evolution of sociality and social behavior in the macaque genus. She's a long-term member of the Macaca nigra project, with those mischievous selfie-taking crested macaques on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. And studied the Japanese macaque, Macaca fuscata, over a five-year period with me here in Japan. 

Julie’s spent a good deal of time thinking about and studying relationships between individuals within groups and all the costs and benefits those relationships entail. We speak about some of those costs in the interview, as they relate to transmission of infectious organisms like lice within macaque social networks. You can see some of that work featured here and here (Paywall). 

We also talk about Julie's time on Koshima and the various fieldwork fails that plagued her work there. She showed the the reslience and ingenuity of a true fieldworker during her time there! 

Although we don't get into it in the interview, Julie is also a founding member of the MacaqueNet, which is a group and database aiming to facilitate and encourage collaboration between macaque researchers. It's a wonderful initiative that I'm happy to be a part of, and I look forward to the various novel projects and results that arise from such a large-scale collaboration. Julie talks about oen science toward the end of the podcast, and MacqueNet is a perfect example of the kind of collaborative atmosphere she envisions for science and the scientists that populate it.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

Here's what you can do to get in touch!

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