Cognitations
by Jay Richardson and Tanay Katiyar
Latest episode
EP #24 | How Kids Drive Cultural Évolution | Sheina Lew-Levy
EP #24 | How Kids Drive Cultural Évolution | Sheina Lew-Levy
About this podcast
The Cognitations podcast explores how the fascinating quirks of the mind and the world can be understood through the lens of cognitive science. Recorded at several universities like the University of Cambridge, École normale supérieure (ENS - Paris) & Université Grenoble Alpes, the podcast provides insights from leading scientists in the field.
For the academic year 2025-2026, this podcast is financially supported by the The European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association (EHBEA)
Episodes
The newest 20 of 25 episodes
- EP #24 | How Kids Drive Cultural Évolution | Sheina Lew-Levy · 1 h 8 minWe usually think of childhood as an extended preparatory period for adulthood, a time when kids just passively absorb the complex cultural knowledge, skills, and languages that…
- EP #23 | Cultural Varieties of Status-Seeking · 1 h 5 minWe all know the feeling. The urge to be respected, to be someone in the eyes of our peers. All of this arising from a human desire for social status. It is easy to think that…
- EP #22 | Religion as Make-Believe | Neil Van Leeuwen · 1 h 15 minReligion is a puzzling phenomenon. On the one hand, it has been a major historical motor, shaping civilizations and guiding billions of lives. On the other hand, the core of…
- EP #21 | Human Innovation in the AI Age | Bret Beheim · 59 minThere is a specific anxiety that grips almost all of us in the age of generative AI. Whether you are an artist, a coder, or a writer, you are asking yourself: As these AI agents…
- EP # 20 | Are Attractiveness Preferences Universal? | Lynda Boothroyd · 1 h 11 minOur appearance is very important to us. This is evident when we look at advertisements, online trends such as what the youth call “looksmaxxing”, or simply reflect on the amount…
- EP #19 | The Social Lives of Our Ancestors | Manvir Singh · 1 h 0 minFor ages, we've pictured our ancestors as living in small, equal societies, sharing everything around campfires without bosses. Think of popular ideas like the "noble savage" or…
- EP #18 | Relevance & Communication | Dan Sperber · 1 h 26 min · Season 2 Episode 18Conversations shape nearly every aspect of our lives. We joke, argue, persuade, gossip, and comfort—all through spoken and unspoken signals we barely even notice. Yet behind…
- EP #17 | The Anthropology of Leisure Time | Mark Dyble · 54 min · Season 2 Episode 17We often talk about the modern challenge of work-life balance. However, long before the existence of offices, commutes, and calendars, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers…
- EP #16 | What do Auditory Illusions Reveal about the Brain? | Daniel Pressnitzer · 1 h 5 min · Season 2 Episode 16We rarely stop to think about how we make sense of the sounds around us — how we find voices in a noisy room, or why two people can hear completely different things in the same…
- EP #15 | Social Media and Mental Health: The Cognitive Turn | Georgia Turner & Lukas Gunschera · 52 min · Season 2 Episode 15In our episode with Amy Orben, we discussed a big problem in the research on how social media potentially affects mental health. That is, a lot of studies ask really vague, broad…
- EP #14 | How can Social Media Affect Mental Health? | Amy Orben · 1 h 19 minHumans inhabit a social world. With the march of history and the discovery of novel technologies, our ability to socialise has been in a state of constant flux to varying…
- EP #13 | Knowledge, Communication & Curiosity | Jennifer Nagel · 1 h 32 min · Season 2 Episode 13Humans are curious creatures who seek out knowledge about every aspect of the world. We also value knowledge to a great degree. Having a good education is very well-perceived and…
- EP #12 | Understanding Animal Minds | Jacob Beck · 1 h 4 min · Season 2 Episode 12The relationship we sustain with non-human animals is rich and complex. We take care of them, we exploit them, we eat them, and we tell stories about them. The psychological…
- BONUS EP | Meet The Hosts & Season 2 Announcements · 1 h 8 min · Season 2 Episode 1In this update episode, Tanay and Jay reflect on the journey so far and some special guests crash the show...
- EP #11 | Human Behavioral Ecology: Putting Depression & Poverty In Context | Daniel Nettle · 1 h 12 min · Season 1 Episode 11Contemporary life is replete with problems. A very salient example of such a problem is depression, which according to the World Health Organization, affected 5% of the global…
- EP #10 | Insights into Sight: Visual Perception, Saccades, Eye-Tracking | Thérèse Collins · 1 h 16 minLike many of our cognitive abilities, it is easy to take vision for granted. On a daily basis, vision seems rather simple: various objects, people, landscapes present themselves…
- EP #9 | The History And Foundations Of Cognitive Science | Pierre Jacob · 1 h 30 min · Season 1 Episode 9After eight episodes where we discussed intricacies of different areas of cognitive science — reasoning, the evolution of cultures, our relationship to our bodies, public policy…
- EP #8 | A Child's First Words: Psycholinguistics, Development & Linguistic Communities | Alejandrina Cristia & Camila Scaff · 1 h 15 min · Season 1 Episode 8Language is oftentimes viewed as a paradigmatically human capacity. Indeed, we have observed no other creature exhibit linguistic abilities with the same complexity and freedom…
- EP #7 | Social Cognition & Social Motivation: Autism, Climate Change & Public Policy | Coralie Chevalier · 1 h 11 min · Season 1 Episode 7Most actions humans take are social in nature. If they are not directly geared towards affecting others' behaviors and thoughts, they are at least likely to have some impact on…
- EP #6 | The Architecture of the Mind: Cognitive Neuroscience, Modules and Methods | Nancy Kanwisher · 1 h 12 min · Episode 6Our daily experiences (e.g. thinking, acting, talking to people etc.) give us the idea that we/our mind is a singular entity i.e. a unified inner space or soul that perceives and…
