Cognitations
Episodes
EP #18 | Relevance & Communication | Dan Sperber
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations shape nearly every aspect of our lives. We joke, argue, persuade, gossip, and comfort—all through spoken and unspoken signals we barel...
EP #17 | The Anthropology of Leisure Time | Mark Dyble
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often talk about the modern challenge of work-life balance. However, long before the existence of offices, commutes, and calendars, our ancestors l...
EP #16 | What do Auditory Illusions Reveal about the Brain? | Daniel Pressnitzer
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Pressnitzer. Originally trained in engineering, he went on to complete a Master's degree in acoustics, signal processing, and computer scie...
EP #15 | Social Media and Mental Health: The Cognitive Turn | Georgia Turner & Lukas Gunschera
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 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 stu...
EP #14 | How can Social Media Affect Mental Health? | Amy Orben
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humans 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 cons...
EP #13 | Knowledge, Communication & Curiosity | Jennifer Nagel
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humans are curious creatures who seek out knowledge about every aspect of the world. We also value knowledge to a great degree. Having a good educatio...
EP #12 | Understanding Animal Minds | Jacob Beck
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 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 ...
BONUS EP | Meet The Hosts & Season 2 Announcements
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 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
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary life is replete with problems. A very salient example of such a problem is depression, which according to the World Health Organization, ...
EP #10 | Insights into Sight: Visual Perception, Saccades, Eye-Tracking | Thérèse Collins
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Like many of our cognitive abilities, it is easy to take vision for granted. On a daily basis, vision seems rather simple: various objects, people, ...
EP #9 | The History And Foundations Of Cognitive Science | Pierre Jacob
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After eight episodes where we discussed intricacies of different areas of cognitive science — reasoning, the evolution of cultures, our relationship...
EP #8 | A Child's First Words: Psycholinguistics, Development & Linguistic Communities | Alejandrina Cristia & Camila Scaff
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Language is oftentimes viewed as a paradigmatically human capacity. Indeed, we have observed no other creature exhibit linguistic abilities with the s...
EP #7 | Social Cognition & Social Motivation: Autism, Climate Change & Public Policy | Coralie Chevalier
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most actions humans take are social in nature. If they are not directly geared towards affecting others behaviors and thoughts, they are at least like...
EP #6 | The Architecture of the Mind: Cognitive Neuroscience, Modules and Methods | Nancy Kanwisher
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our 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 spa...
EP #5 | Predictive Processing and Mental Health | Sam Wilkinson
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is normal? What is a disorder? Often, when we interact with people who behave in ways we cannot understand, the question of defining ‘normal...
EP #4 | Neuroeconomics & Learning in Humans, Rats and Robots | Stefano Palminteri
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A defining feature of us humans is that we continuously adapt to our environments in order to thrive. One key component of this process is ‘learning...
EP #3 | Minding the Body | Frédérique de Vignemont
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our relationship with our body is extremely complex. We have a wide range of different kinds of sensations: that is, the senses, pains, pleasures, the...
EP #2 | Cognitive Approaches To Studying Culture | Olivier Morin
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Culture is everywhere: it includes art, the dissemination of theories and of social norms, customs, the food we cook and eat, and so on. Culture also ...
EP #1 | The Evolutionary Function Of Reasoning and Epistemic Vigilance | Hugo Mercier
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Humans reason about many matters: from the most simple of concerns, like the planning of a weekend outing; to the most complex and intellectual topics...