BJKS Podcast
A podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related. Long-form interviews with people whose work I find interesting.
Episodes
101 episodes
101. Julie Old: Wombats, saving endangered species, and the difficulties of studying wild animals
Julie Old is as Associate Professor at Western Sydney University. We talk about her experiences and research with wombats, various aspects of wombat behavior, conservation efforts, challenges such as sarcoptic mange and roadkill, the Northern h...
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1:14:18
100. Tom Chivers: Thomas Bayes, Bayesian statistics, and science journalism
Tom Chivers is a journalist who writes a lot about science and applied statistics. We talk about his new book on Bayesian statistics, the biography of Thomas Bayes, the history of probability theory, how Bayes can help with the replication cris...
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1:19:46
99. Laura Luebbert: gget, hunting viruses, and questionable honeybee dances
Laura Luebbert just finished her PhD in computational biology and will soon be a postdoc with Pardis Sabeti, to hunt some viruses. We talk about how she got into biology, how she created a widely-used software project (gget) with no prior codin...
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1:51:48
98. Laura Wesseldijk: Behavioural genetics, music, and the importance of twins
Laura Wesseldijk works at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt at the Behavioral Genetics unit in collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry at Amsterdam UMC. We talk about her research on the genetics of music an...
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1:20:54
97. Arne Ekstrom: Spatial navigation, memory, and invasive recordings in humans
Arne Ekstrom is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, where he studies spatial navigation and memory. We talk about how he got into psychology, his unusual path to getting a PhD, his work on using single-cells recordings from ...
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1:17:01
96. Benjamin Ehrlich: Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the neuron doctrine, and combining art & science
Benjamin Ehrlich is the author of the recent biography of Santiago Ramon y Cajal (The brain in search of itself), and The Dreams of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. We talk about Cajal's life and work, Cajal's unlikely beginnings in a rural Spain, how h...
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1:06:09
95. Emily Finn: Neural fingerprinting, 'naturalistic' stimuli, and taking time before starting a PhD
Emily Finn is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College. We talk about her research on neural fingerprinting, naturalistic stimuli, how Emily got into science, the year she spent in Peru before her PhD, advice for writing well, and much more....
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1:43:43
94. David Van Essen: The Human Connectome Project, hierarchical processing, and the joys of collaboration
David Van Essen is an Alumni Endowed Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In this conversation, we talk about David's path to becoming a neuroscientist, the Human Connectome project, hierarhical pr...
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1:01:39
93. Nachum Ulanovsky: Bats, spatial navigation, and natural neuroscience
Nachum Ulanovsky is a professor at the Weizman Institute. We talk about his research on spatial navigation in bats, how Nachum started working with bats, the importance of natural behaviour, how to build a 700m long tunnel for neuroscience, and...
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1:25:56
92. Tom Hardwicke: Meta-research, reproducibility, and post-publication critique
Tom Hardwicke is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. We talk about meta-science, incuding Tom's work on post-publication critique and registered reports, what his new role as editor at Psychological Science entails, and much...
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1:06:48
91. Jessica Polka: Preprints, publishing peer reviews, and the joys of pipetting
Jessica Polka is Executive Director of ASAPbio, a non-profit that promotes innovation and transparency in life science publishing. We talk about her work at ASAPbio, how she got into it, preprints, the many functions of peer review, and m...
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1:16:13
90. Brian Boyd: The life & works of Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, and writing biographies
Brian Boyd is a Distinguished Professor in English and Drama at the University of Auckland. We talk mainly about Vladimir Nabokov: Brian wrote the defining biography on Nabokov (in addition to books on more specific aspects about Nabokov), so w...
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1:40:38
89. Camillo Padoa-Schioppa: Value in the brain, orbitofrontal cortex, and causality in neuroscience
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa is a Professor of Neuroscience at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In this conversation, we talk about Camillo's work on economic values in the brain, whether it is causally involved in choice, C...
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1:52:19
88. Juliana Schroeder: Talking to strangers, undersociality, and replicable field studies
Juliana Schroder is a professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. In this conversation, we talk about her research in which she asks people to talk to strangers, and how this experience is usually a lot more pleasant than people expec...
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1:02:24
87. Rick Betzel: Network neuroscience, generative modeling, and collaborations
Rick Betzel is an Associate professor at India University Bloomington. We talk about his research on network neuroscience, how to find good collaborators, Rick's path to network neuroscience, and much more.Support the show:
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1:23:30
86. Elisabeth Bik: Reporting scientific misconduct, the arms race between fraud & fraud detection, and the microbiome of dolphins
Elisabeth Bik is a science integrity consultant. In this conversation, we talk about her work on reporting scientific errors and misconduct, how one becomes a full-time scientific integrity consultant, her postdoc work on the microbiome of dolp...
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1:32:49
85. Peter Bandettini: The history, present, and future of fMRI
Peter Bandettini is director of the fMRI core facility at the National Institute of Mental Health. In this episode, we talk about the history, present, and future of fMRI, alongside Peter's career.Support the show:
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1:23:44
84. Brian Nosek: Improving science, the past & future of the Center for Open Science, and failure in science
Brian Nosek is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. In this conversation, we discuss the Center for Open Science, Brian's early interest in improving scie...
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1:02:09
83. Rachel Bedder: Rumination, teaching without grades, and managing yourself as a PhD student
Rachel Bedder is a postdoc with Yael Niv at Princeton. In this conversation, we talk about her research on rumination and repetitive negative thinking (in the context of a partially observable Markov decision process), her work as a curator, wh...
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1:36:05
82. Geoff Cumming: p-values, estimation, and meta-analytic thinking
Geoff Cumming is an Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University. In this conversation, we discuss his work on New Statistics: estimation instead of hypothesis testing, meta-analytic thinking, and many related topics.Support the show:
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1:12:41
81. Brooke Macnamara: Growth mindset, deliberate practice, and the benefits of diverse experiences
Brooke Macnamara is an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University. In this conversation, we talk about her research on growth mindset and deliberate practice, whether deliberate practice is falsifiable, the benefits of diverse exper...
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1:06:02
80. Simine Vazire: Scientific editing, the purpose of journals, and the future of psychological science
Simine Vazire is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. In this conversation, we talk about her work on meta-science, the purpose of journals and peer review, Simine's plans for being Editor-in-Chief at Psychological Science,...
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1:21:29
79. Nanthia Suthana: Invasive brain recordings in humans, learning as a PI, and the joys of mentorship
Nanthia Suthana is an Associate Professor at UCLA. In this conversation, we talk about her research using invasive brain recordings from humans, how the technologies have changed and what might happen in the future. We also talk about how she r...
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49:02
78. Gillian Coughlan: Dementia, spatial navigation, and menopause
Gillian Coughlan is a postdoc whose work focuses on the role of spatial navigation in dementia. In this conversation, we talk about how Gillian went from Ireland to doing a PhD in the UK, different ways for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, what ...
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57:28
77. Lynn Nadel: Collaboration, Hippocampal History, and clinical applications of hippocampal development
Lynn Nadel is an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona, where his research focuses on the role of the hippocampus in memory. This is our second conversation. We discuss how the Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map was received, Lynn's caree...
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48:38