BJKS Podcast

Dan Quintana is a senior researcher at the University of Olso, where his research focuses on oxytocin, autism,  and meta-analyses. In this conversation, we talk about Dan's primer on synthetic datasets, science comunication, Everything Hertz, and podcasting in general. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith....

In episode 42 I interviewed Matthias Stangl about his work on spatial navigation. I wanted to ask him a few questions about postdoc applications, but we ran out of time. Matthias kindly agreed to meet again for a few questions that I would add to the end of our conversation. We ended up speaking for almost an hour, so instead of adding this to an episode that was already more than an hour long, we...

Matthias Stangl is a postdoc at UCLA, where he studies the neural representations of spatial navigation in social situations. In this conversation, we talk about his PhD work about aging, grid cells, and path integration, about his recent Nature paper, about the difference between movement in VR and actual physical movement, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology,...

This is the second episode of an experiment: I'll be reviewing all books called "Prisoner's Dilemma". Today I'm reviewing The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart and Prisoner's Dilemma by Ilexa Yardley. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-S...

This episode is the start of an experiment: I'll be reviewing all books called "Prisoner's Dilemma", and today I'm starting with the first two books. Basically, I use the Prisoner's Dilemma in my own work and realised that there are 26 books with that title (or minor variant thereof). So, as a very silly idea, I decided to review them all and see whether there is anyt...

Nikolai Axmacher is professor at the Institue for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Ruhr University Bochum where his research focuses on memory, spatial navigation, and neurodegenerative diseases. In this conversation, we talk about how he and his colleagues found that people with a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's showed reduced grid-cell like activity and path integration ability, despite ha...

Keno Juechems is a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College in Oxford. He studies how humans make decisions, using computational modelling, behavioural tasks, and fMRI. In this conversation, we talk about his papers  "Optimal utility and probability functions for agents with finite computational precision" and  "Where does value come from?", and various related topics....

Jacob Bellmund is a postdoc at the Max Planck in Leipzig, studying spatial navigation, cognitive maps, and episodic memory. In this conversation, we talk about his research on deforming cognitive maps, abstract cognitive maps, and the translation of the spatial navigation literature to abstract spaces. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted b...

This is the third and final episode of our discussion of  Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. In this episode, we will discuss part 5 and have a general discussion about the entire book. As always with the book club, in each episode we will talk about whatever happened, so there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far a...

This is the second episode of our discussion of  Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. In this episode, we will discuss parts 3 and 4. As always with the book club, in each episode we will talk about whatever happened, so there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have.  For this series, I'm joined by Cody K...

This is the first episode of the third edition of the book club. This time, we're reading Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. In this episode, we will discuss parts 1 and 2. As always with the book club, in each episode we will talk about whatever happened, so there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we hav...

Bryan Bruns is an independent consultant sociologist, working mainly on water irrigation systems in southeast Asia. He also publishes academic papers about game theory. In this conversation, we talk about how he became a consultant sociologist, what that even means, how to learn foreign languages, his work on 2x2 games, how to transform a social dilemma into a win-win situation, and much more. BJK...

In this episode, we discuss Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. Unlike the book club episodes (in which we read around 100 pages per week of the book), the book discussions will be one-off discussions of books that for one reason or another affected me. For this book discussion, I'm again joined by Antonia, who works in academic publishing and with whom I did a series on Dostoyevsky&a...

 Stuart Ritchie is Lecturer at King's College London, where he studies behavioural genetics in relation to personality and cognitive ability. In this conversation, we don't talk about any of that though but instead focus on his book Science Fictions, a book about how science goes wrong, and the topics covered therein. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything...

This is the third and final episode of our book club on Lee Child's first novel Killing Floor, the novel that introduced Jack Reacher. As always with the book club, there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have. I will also be reading some quotes I highlighted from Reacher Said Nothing by Andy Martin, a book I'm reading in parallel in which An...

Anna Riedl is a cognitive scientist, currently finishing her MSc in cognitive science in Vienna. She is also founder of Effective Altruism Austria, and co-organiser of the Rationality Vienna Meetup. In this conversation, we talk about cognitive science, rationality, effective altruism, visualisation in science communication, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology,...

This is the second episode of our book club on Lee Child's first novel Killing Floor, the novel that introduced Jack Reacher. As always with the book club, there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have. I will also be reading some quotes I highlighted from Reacher Said Nothing by Andy Martin, a book I'm reading in parallel in which Andy Martin...

Nichola Raihani is a professor of evolution and behaviour at University College London. Her research focuses on the evolution of punishment and paranoia. In this conversation, we talk about the fieldwork she did for her PhD in the Kalahari desert, the evolution of punishment, proximate and ultimate explanations, cleaner fish, and Nichola's book The Social Instinct. BJKS Podcast is a podcast a...

This is the first episode of our book club on Killing Floor by Lee Child, his first novel, the novel that introduced Jack Reacher. As always with the book club, there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have. I will also be reading some quotes I highlighted from Reacher Said Nothing by Andy Martin, a book I'm reading in parallel in which Andy Martin...

Désirée Brucks is a postdoc at the University of Giessen and studies social cognition in animals, having worked with dogs, wolves, parrots, and a few more species. She is currently studying farm animals. In this conversation, we talk mainly about her work on inequty aversion in dogs and helping behaviour in parrots. Along the way, I get to ask all sorts of questions about animal cognition. BJKS Po...

This is the final episode of our discussion of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Oliver Ready's translation for Penguin Classics), in which we discuss the epilogue and have a more general discussion about the book. For this first book club series, I'm joined by Antonia. We did our Masters degree in Brain and Mind Sciences together at UCL. Since then, Antonia has gotten a PhD...

Pete Trimmer is a behavioural scientist who works as a senior teaching fellow at the University of Wawrick. His research, almost exclusively theoretical, focuses on the evolution of learning, decision-making, and physiological processes. In this conversation, we talk about a wide range of topics: how Pete became a world-class croquet player (former World No. 3), how he got into academia, how he ov...

In this episode, we discuss part 5 and then part 6 of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Oliver Ready's translation for Penguin Classics). For this first book club series, I'm joined by Antonia. We did our Masters degree in Brain and Mind Sciences together at UCL. Since then, Antonia has gotten a PhD in psychology and now works in scientific publishing.  Timestamps 0:00:05: S...

Giuliana Spadaro is a postdoc in the Amsterdam Cooperation Lab, directed by Daniel Balliet. Her research focuses on cooperation and prosociality. In this conversation, we talk about Giuliana's recent work on the Cooperation Databank ( https://cooperationdatabank.org/ ), a database that contains around 2,600 studies on cooperation, coded by experts to facilitate meta-analyses and other tasks a...

In this episode, we discuss part 3 and then part 4 of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Oliver Ready's translation for Penguin Classics). For this first book club series, I'm joined by Antonia. We did our Masters degree in Brain and Mind Sciences together at UCL. Since then, Antonia has gotten a PhD in psychology and now works in scientific publishing.  Timestamps 0:00:05: B...