Héctor Álvarez | Theater Studies, Emory University "Dilating Time: Tempo as Contemplative Tool in Ota Shogo’s Poetics of Deceleration" This talk explores Ota Shogo's groundbreaking wordless play "The Water Station" as a paradigm of temporal expansion in contemporary theater, examining how extreme deceleration creates unique spaces for audience reflection and embodied awareness. Together we'll investigate how slowed theatrical time functions not merely as stylistic choice but as philosophical int...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 301
Shay Welch | Associate Professor of Philosophy | Spelman College "The Bio-Psycho-Social Affect Loop, HyperSensitivity, and Radical Embodied Cognition" If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram | Facebook NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture or Emory University....
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 302
Tara Callaghan | Professor of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada "Fostering Prosociality in Refugee Children: An Intervention with Rohingya Children" Prosocial behavior is a distinguishing characteristic of human nature. Although prosocial behaviors emerge early in development, contextual factors play an important role in how these behaviors are manifested over development. A large body of research focuses on the trajectory of prosocial development across diverse cult...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 300
Alexandra (Sasha) Key | Professor, Marcus Autism Center, Emory University School of Medicine "Building a functional communication system: Does the baby have a say?" For a long time, language development has been framed mainly in the context of nature-nurture interactions. However, research in non-typical development suggests that another critical contributor should be considered. In this talk, I will present findings from neurophysiological studies in infants and children to demonstrate the impo...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 299
Anna Ivanova | Assistant Professor, School of Psychology | Georgia Tech College of Sciences "Dissociating Language and Thought in Humans and in Machines" “What is the relationship between language and thought? This question has long intrigued researchers across scientific fields. In this talk, I will propose a framework for clarifying the language-thought relationship. I will introduce a distinction between formal competence—knowledge of linguistic rules and patterns—and functional competence—un...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 298
Leah Krubitzer | MacArthur Fellow Professor of Psychology | University of California, Davis "Combinatorial Creatures: Cortical Plasticity Within and Across Lifetimes" "The neocortex is one of the most distinctive structures of the mammalian brain, yet also one of the most varied in terms of both size and organization. Multiple processes have contributed to this variability including evolutionary mechanisms (i.e., changes in gene sequence) that alter the size, organization and connections of the ...
Apr 09, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 297
Ivana Ilic | Music Theory, Emory University Jasna Veličković | Composer and Performer "How Do We Know It's Music? On Musical Capacities of the Electromagnetic Field" What happens when the electromagnetic signal is not only deliberately made audible, but also exploited with a specifically musical aim? In this presentation, I investigate the distinctively musical use of electromagnetism in art from the 1960s until the present day. The two case studies include the works by Christina Kubisch (b. 194...
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 296
Richard Moore | Executive Director, Children in Crossfire "Freedom, Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Lessons from Northern Ireland" Dr. Moore’s talk is part of the CMBC's Spring 2024 sponsored course “Empathy, Theater and Social Change” taught by Dr. Lisa Paulsen and Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva. This lunch talk was Co-sponsored by Emory’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics & Woodward Academy “Freedom, Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Lessons from Northern Ireland” Dr. ...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 295
Arkarup Banerjee | School of Biological Science / Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY "Neural Circuits for Vocal Communication: Insights from the Singing Mice." My long-standing interest is to understand how circuits of interacting neurons give rise to natural, adaptive behaviors. Using vocal communication behavior across rodent species, my lab at CSHL pursues two complementary questions. How does the auditory system interact with the motor system to generate the fast sensorimotor loop required fo...
Feb 09, 2024•56 min•Ep. 294
Jack Gallant (Psychology, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science / University of California, Berkeley) "The Distributed Conceptual Network in the Human Brain" Human behavior is based on a complex interaction between perception, stored knowledge, and continuous evaluation of the world relative to plans and goals. Even seemingly simple tasks such as watching a movie or listening to a story involve a range of different perceptual and cognitive processes whose underlying circuitry is broadly d...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 293
Claire White | Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge "An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion" In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understanding, explaining, and predicting many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with t...
Nov 21, 2023•50 min•Ep. 281
Harvey Whitehouse | Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK "Against Interpretive Exclusivism" Interpretive exclusivism is the claim that studying cultural systems is exclusively an interpretive exercise, ruling out reductive explanation and scientific methods. Following the lead of Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, I will argue that the costs of interpretive exclusivism are heavy and the benefits illusory. By contrast, the intellectual benefits of combining interpretivist and scientific a...
Nov 21, 2023•59 min•Ep. 282
Emma Cohen | Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK "From Social Synchrony To Social Energetics. Or, Why There's Plenty Left in the Tank" Thirty years ago, in an article entitled Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity, Bob McCauley and Tom Lawson powerfully critiqued the “hermeneutic exclusivism” that by then prevailed in anthropology and the history of religions. When I read the article as a new doctoral student in anthropology, it blew my mind - and it helped me find my feet. In this talk, I...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 283
Dimitris Xygalatas | Anthropology, University of Connecticut "Ritual, Embodiment, and Emotional Contagion" While the Cognitive Science of Religion has brought the mind to the forefront of analysis, it has had little to say about the body. As a result, the mechanisms underlying much-discussed and well-documented effects often remain elusive. In this paper, I will discuss ritual’s ability to facilitate the alignment of people’s bodies, actions, and emotions by presenting findings from an interdisc...
Nov 21, 2023•48 min•Ep. 284
Justin Barrett | President, Blueprint 1543 "Bringing Technology to Mind: Cognitive Naturalness and Technological Enthusiasm" Sometimes new technologies spread before society has had sufficient time to evaluate them. Can we make better decisions about whether to be enthusiastic or reticent regarding new tech without waiting for thorough testing or the emergence of unintended negative consequences? In his book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (Oxford, 2011), Robert McCauley provides heur...
Nov 21, 2023•58 min•Ep. 285
E. Thomas Lawson | Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, Western Michigan University If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram | Facebook NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture or Emory University....
Nov 21, 2023•15 min•Ep. 286
Mark Risjord | Director, Institute for Liberal Arts, Emory University + Kareem Khalifa | Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles pay a unique video tribute to their former mentor and friend, Robert McCauley on the occasion of his retirement. If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram | Facebook NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do ...
Nov 21, 2023•5 min•Ep. 287
Pascal Boyer | Psychology & Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis "What Kinds of Religion are "Natural"?" McCauley emphasized that religious representations are “natural”, in contrast to other cultural systems that require systematic training or leaning and institutional scaffolding. Pursuing this line of reasoning, we can see how some limited domains of religion are far more natural than others, in McCauley’s sense of that term. This could lead to a re-evaluation of some common ten...
Nov 21, 2023•53 min•Ep. 288
Kareem Khalifa | Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles "The Methodenstreit Ain't Right: McCauley on Interpretation and Explanation" Does interpretation distinguish the human sciences from the natural sciences? Or do explanations drive the human sciences in a manner akin to their more venerable natural-scientific cousins? These questions fueled the decades-old Methodenstreit (“methodological dispute”) about the foundations of the social sciences. Rising above the fray, McCauley has lo...
Nov 21, 2023•30 min•Ep. 289
Bryon Cunningham | Psychology, Occidental College "Evolution, Mood Disorders, and Religious Coping: Interactions Between Explanatory and Interpretive Theories in Clinical Practice" In this talk, I advocate for the view that explanatory and interpretive theories can be mutually enriching in clinical practice. I start with the ecumenical view that the theoretical frameworks of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory are both crucial for explaining human similarities and difference...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 290
Jared Rothstein | Philosophy, Daytona State University "Surfing, Sharks, & The Limits of Reason" Based on personal experience surfing in the “Shark Bite Capital of the World” (Volusia County, Florida) and interdisciplinary research from the fields of behavioral economics, neuropsychology, and philosophy of mind, the author rejects the traditional Rationalist view that ‘future discounting’ is always unreasonable. He argues, on the contrary, that our natural tendency to opt for immediate rewar...
Nov 21, 2023•43 min•Ep. 291
Charles Nussbaum | Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin "Why Normative Ethics Is Natural and Metaethics Is and Is Not" Morality prescribes privileged standards for action and character. Ethics is the philosophy of morality. Normative ethics codifies the prescriptive principles of morality that justify considered judgments of cases. Metaethics is the second-order study of ethics. It investigates the truth conditions of moral judgments and principles, the ontological commitments of moral princi...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 292
Oliver Rollins | American Ethnic Studies / African American Studies / Sociology, University of Washington "Towards an Anti-Racist Neuroscience: Possibilities and Problematics with Scientific Progress" Alongside the deadly COVID-19 outbreak, the biomedical and health sciences have been altered by the continued challenge of racism. Major academic science journals (e.g., Nature, Science, and JAMA) have responded with calls to better recognize and combat the latent harms of (systemic) racism. Yet, i...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 280
Sashank Varma | Psychology and Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology "Mathematical Concepts in Humans and Machine Learning Models" The nature of mathematical concepts has long been a topic of philosophical debate. Recent theorizing in mathematical cognition has tended towards nativist accounts and postulations of built-in neural circuitry. In this talk, I consider whether this status quo is being challenged by the emergence of machine learning models capable of near-human levels...
Sep 13, 2023•53 min•Ep. 279
Using the Science of Love and Bonding to Bring New Perspectives on Social Relationships, Health, and the Practice of Female Genital Mutilation in East Africa. Larry Young | Center for Translational Social Neuroscience | Psychiatry, Emory University Rev. Patti Ricotta | President, Life Together International Discussants: Kathryn M. Yount | Global Health and Melvin Konner | Anthropology, Emory University Larry Young and Rev. Patti Ricotta will discuss their work in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in wh...
Apr 20, 2023•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 278
"Can 'Wild' Sounds Teach Us What it Means to be Human?" David Haskell | Biology & Environmental Sciences | University of the South, Sewanee, TN Presented by hosts Laura Emmery (Department of Music / Emory University) and Cynthia Willett (Department of Philosophy / Emory University) Co-sponsored by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture, and The Department of Psychology. "I will use examples from the history of sound on Earth to argue that the world’s sonic diversity – both human and nonhuma...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 276
Tom Griffiths | Psychology & Computer Science | Princeton University "The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources" Psychologists and computer scientists have very different views of the mind. Psychologists tell us that humans are error-prone, using simple heuristics that result in systematic biases. Computer scientists view human intelligence as aspirational, trying to capture it in artificial intelligence systems. How can we reconcile these two perspectives? In this talk, I will argue that we c...
Mar 14, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 275
Michael Goldstein | Psychology, Cornell University "Simple Interactions Construct Complex Communication in Songbirds and Human Infants" Despite the immense variety of sounds we associate with the animal world, the ability to learn a vocal repertoire is a rare phenomenon, emerging in only a handful of groups, including humans. To gain a better understanding of the development and evolution of vocal learning, we will examine the processes by which birds learn to sing and human infants learn to tal...
Mar 02, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 274
"Widowhood, Archives, and the Musical Work of Mourning in Postwar Europe" Martha Sprigge | Musicology | University of California, Santa Barbara Presented by Dept. of Music with co-sponsorship from Dept. of Philosophy / Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture / Center for Faculty Development and Excellence This presentation examines how gendered mourning practices have shaped the historiography of German art music after World War II. It focuses on widows in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR,...
Feb 13, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 277
Have you thought about applying to the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER)? These prestigious awards can provide a major boost to your career and require an integration of education and research activities different from more conventional research grant applications. Learn more about this program and how to put together a successful application through this discussion and informal Q&A with two recent Emory awardees, Dr. Joyce Ho (Computer Science) and Dr. John Lindo (Anthro...
Jan 27, 2023•47 min•Ep. 273
