Stanford Psychology Podcast

• 164 - Susan Engel: Do We Become Less Curious As We Grow Older?

  Adani chats with Dr. Susan Engel, a Senior Lecturer and Senior Faculty Fellow in Psychology at Williams College. Susan’s research spans many areas, including the development of curiosity and invention, children’s ideas, the impact of college, and school reform. In this conversation, we discuss Susan’s seminal research on children's curiosity, how curiosity develops into adulthood, and her latest book, The Intellectual Lives of Children. Susan also shares the story behind how she first started in this field of research, and the projects she’s excited to work on next.Susan’s website: https://psychology.williams.edu/profile/sengel/ Susan’s book The Hungry Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Mind-Origins-Curiosity-Childhood/dp/0674984110Susan’s book The Intellectual Lives of Children: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-intellectual-lives-of-children-susan-engel/1136606329Susan’s upcoming book American Kindergarten: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo258923309.htmlAdani’s website: https://www.adaniabutto.comAdani’s Bluesky: @adaniPodcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

  --------  

  48:50

  --------

  48:50
• 163 - Roger Levy: The Science of Language in the Era of AI

  Su chats with Dr. Roger Levy. Dr. Levy is a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Computational Psycholinguistics Laboratory. His research focuses on theoretical and applied questions in the processing and acquisition of natural language. His work furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of language processing and acquisition, combining computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, and analysis of large, naturalistic language datasets, to help design models and algorithms that will allow machines to process human language. In today's episode, we discuss his research background together with his recent work "The Science of Language in the Era of Generative AI".Roger’s review: https://mit-genai.pubpub.org/pub/ak3evnmm/release/1 Roger’s lab website: http://cpl.mit.edu/  Roger’s personal website: https://www.mit.edu/~rplevy/ Su’s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

  --------  

  40:57

  --------

  40:57
• 162 - Adam Benforado: How prioritizing kids benefits us all

  In today’s episode, Adani chats with Adam Benforado, a lawyer, writer, and professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law. Adam’s research, teaching, and advocacy are focused on children’s rights and criminal justice, and he brings insights from the mind sciences—most notably cognitive psychology—to law and legal theory. In this conversation, Adam tells us about his latest book, A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All, laying out the multifaceted, complex context around children’s rights and parental authority in the U.S. Adam also shares how he first got to work on the issues he now champions and what his future vision is, for children and society more broadly.Adam’s website: https://www.adambenforado.com/Adam’s book, A Minor Revolution: https://www.adambenforado.com/a-minor-revolution Adam’s twitter: @Benforado Adam’s new organization, Minor Power: ​​https://www.minorpower.org/Adani’s website: https://www.adaniabutto.comAdani’s Bluesky: @adaniPodcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod Podcast Substack Stanford Psychology Podcast - Newsletter for the official Stanford Psychology Podcast!Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

  --------  

  50:35

  --------

  50:35
• 161 - Yuan Chang (YC) Leong: Emotional arousal & dynamic brain connectivity

  Su chats with Dr. Yuan Chang (YC) Leong. YC is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is the director of Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Lab, which is a part of the Department of Psychology, a member of the Institute of Mind and Biology and the Neuroscience Institute, and an affiliate of the Data Science Institute. His research explores the neural and computational mechanisms underlying how goals, beliefs, and emotions influence human cognition, with a focus on why people interpret and respond to identical situations in different ways. In today's episode, we discuss what’s on YC intellectual radar these days, alongside with his recent paper "Dynamic brain connectivity predicts emotional arousal during naturalistic movie-watching," in which they show that we can decode arousal with open movie fMRI datasets.YC’s paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40215238/ YC’s lab website: https://mcnlab.uchicago.edu/ YC’s personal website: https://ycleong.github.io/ Su’s Twitter @sudkrcSu’s Bluesky @sudkrc.bsky.social Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Bluesky @stanfordpsypod.bsky.socialPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

  --------  

  40:58

  --------

  40:58
• 160 - Jennifer Hu: From Human Minds to Artificial Minds

  Su chats with Dr. Jennifer Hu. Jenn is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, directing the Group for Language and Intelligence. Her research examines the computational principles that underlie human language, and how language and cognition might be achieved by artificial models. In her work to answer these questions, she combines cognitive science and machine learning, with the dual goals of understanding the human mind and safely advancing artificial intelligence. We are discussing Jenn’s paper titled “Signatures of human-like processing in Transformer forward passes."Jenn’s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14107 Jenn’s lab website: https://www.glintlab.org/ Jenn’s personal website: https://jennhu.github.io/ Su’s Twitter: https://x.com/sudkrc Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPodPodcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) [email protected]

  --------  

  35:21

  --------

  35:21

More Science podcasts

Trending Science podcasts

About Stanford Psychology Podcast

Stanford Psychology Podcast: Podcasts in Family