Melinda Baldwin is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland. We talk about her work studying the history of Nature, scientific journals more broadly, what it means to be a scientist, peer review, the Tyndall project, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Melinda's chemistry-history double major 0:03:42: Wh...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr 33 min
Steve Fleming is a professor in psychology at University College London. I invited Steve to talk about his work on meta-cognition, but we ended up spending the entire episode talking about lab culture, starting a lab, applying for funding, Steve's background in music, and what drew him to do cognitive neuroscience. There's even a tiny discussion about consciousness research at the end. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin Jame...
May 26, 2025•1 hr 41 min
Damian Blasi is a professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. We talk about his article 'Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science', linguistic diversity, how to study across the world's languages, his career path, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Why Damian studied physics 0:06:31: How to deal with smal...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 41 min
Gordon Pennycook is an Associate Professor at Cornell University. We talk about his upbringing in rural Northern Canada, how he got into academia, and his work on misinformation: why people share it and what can be done about it. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Straight outta Carrot River: From Northern Canada to publishing in Nature 0:3...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 50 min
Renzo Huber is a staff scientist at NIH. We talk about his work on layer-fMRI: what it is, how Renzo got into it, how to do it, when it makes sense to do it, what the future holds, and much more. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: How Renzo got into high-resolution fMRI 0:11:28: The difference between 3T and 7T fMRI 0:22:46: Is a bigger fMRI scanner always better? 0:33:35: Layer-fMRI 0:56:28: For what types of research is layer-fMRI most useful? 1:02:35: How to do...
Jan 17, 2025•1 hr 37 min
Ella Marushchenko is a scientific illustrator who runs a studio of artists and scientists that creates cover art, scientific and illustrations, and more. We talk about her unlikely path from artist in Russia to scientific illustrator in the US, digital vs classic art, how to interact as scientists with illustrators, how to improve scientific figures, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Suppor...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 32 min
Roberto Bottini is an Associate Professor at the University of Trento. We talk about his recent work on unusual cognitive maps in blind people, image spaces, metaphors, and he gives me some advice for writing successful grant applications. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Roberto's background 0:03:20: Start discussing Roberto's paper on a...
Dec 08, 2024•1 hr 24 min
Robert (Bob) Wilson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgia Tech. We talk about his tutorial paper (w/ Anne Collins) on computational modelling, and some of his recent work on detecting phishing. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Bob's strange path through computational cognitive neuroscience 0:07:37: Phishing: a computational m...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 51 min
Nick Wise is a postdoc in fluid dynamics at Cambridge University. We talk about his 'detective work' on publication fraud which has gotten more than 800 papers retracted to date, including tortured phrases, discovering Facebook groups and Telegram channels in which people sell authorships on papers, how 'Special' issues can be exploited, and what we can do about this. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Sup...
Nov 15, 2024•2 hr 1 min
This is the 2nd part of my interview with Eugenie Reich, who is a lawyer who represents scientific whistleblowers, and a former investigative science journalist. We talk about her transition from journalism to law, and discuss the legal aspects of scientific fraud: why fraudsters rarely go to prison, what whistleblowers are legally allowed to do, how and when to seek legal advice, and much more. Obviously, none of this is legal advice, but hopefully it provides some useful pointers. BJKS Podcast...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Eugenie Reich is an attorney who represents scientific whistleblowers, and a former investigative science journalist. We talk about her previous work as a science journalist, in particular her book Plastic Fantastic about one of the biggest fraud cases in physics, the case of Jan-Hendrik Schön. We'd planned to also discuss Eugenie's current work as an attorney, but spent all our time on the Schön case. Eugenie kindly agreed to do another interview, in which we cover the legal aspects of fraud, w...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 27 min
James (Mac) Shine is a PI and fellow at the University of Sydney. We talk about his background in sports, using fMRI to integrate various parts of neuroscience, collaboration, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Mac's sporting background 0:07:46: Overview of Mac's review in Nature (w/ Emily Finn and Russell Poldrack) 0:14:03: ...
Oct 25, 2024•1 hr 48 min
Brandon Brown is a professor at University of California Riverside, where he studies global health and ethics. He also writes career columns for Nature and Science, which we talk about: negotiations in academia, his sabbatical, his life owning and working a farm, different types of grants and contributions in academia, and much more BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-...
Oct 18, 2024•1 hr 53 min
Soledad Gonzalo Cogno is a group leader at the Kavli Institute for Science Neuroscience in Trondheim. We talk about how she went from studying physics in Argentina to working on the brain in Norway, the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to neuroscience, why researchers should give their research animals a nice life, mentorship, and discuss her recent Nature paper on ultraslow oscillatory sequences in medial entorhinal cortex. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and...
Oct 11, 2024•1 hr 38 min
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 hairy-nosed wombat's critically endangered status and efforts to translocate them safely, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 14 min
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 crisis, how Tom became a journalist, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: Tom's book abou...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 20 min
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 coding experience, her recent reports when she discovered questionable data in key papers about honeybee dances, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 52 min
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 and mental health, methods in behavioural genetics, the role of large samples, the importance of twins for behavioural genetics, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James K...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 21 min
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 people, the relationship between memory and spatial navigation, why he uses multiple methods, and much more. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: How Arne ended up studying psychology and neuroscience 0:06:23: Arne's route to ...
May 24, 2024•1 hr 17 min
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 he discovered that neurons were separate from each other, leading to the neutron doctrine, how Cajal became famous seemingly overnight, Cajal's rivalry with Camillo Golgi, the relationship between art and science, how to write a biography of someone whose a...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 6 min
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. There are occasional (minor) audio disturbances when Emily's speaking. Sorry about that, still trying to figure out where they came from so that it won't happen again. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related,...
Mar 02, 2024•1 hr 44 min
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 processing in the cerebral cortex, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: David's childho...
Feb 18, 2024•1 hr 2 min
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 much more. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: How Nachum started working with bats 0:09:29: The technical difficulties of working with bats and in a new species 0:16:03: The Egyptian Fruit Bat 0:19:42: Wild bats vs lab-born...
Feb 09, 2024•1 hr 26 min
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 more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: What is meta-science/meta-research? 0:03:15: How Tom got invol...
Feb 02, 2024•1 hr 7 min
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 much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: The Jessica-Polka 0:01:25: What is ASAPbio? 0:03:53: Do we ...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 16 min
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 we discuss Nabokov's life & work, Brian's approachh to writing biographies, with some hints of the new biography Brian is writing about Karl Popper. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjam...
Jan 19, 2024•1 hr 41 min
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, Camillo's career, working with different species, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00:...
Jan 13, 2024•1 hr 52 min
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 expect. We talk about how the research came to be, what they found, how culture and norms affect the results, how to create robust and replicable field studies, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely relate...
Jan 05, 2024•1 hr 2 min
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: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon Timestamps 0:00:00: What's the purpose of connectomics if understanding a species' entire connectome (as in C elegans) doesn't allow us to fully understand its behaviour? 0:03:57: Rick's very very linear path to network neuroscience 0:19:41: Mult...
Jan 01, 2024•1 hr 24 min
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 dolphins, reactions to her work (both positive and negative), how to deal with online abuse, the arms race between fraudsters and fraud detectors, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by ...
Dec 22, 2023•1 hr 33 min
