We talk with Professor Gail Sahar about her new book, entitled "Blame and Political Attitudes: The Psychology of America's Culture War", where she applies social psychology to understand where and why we assign blame in the political sphere.

https://www.amazon.com/Blame-Political-Attitudes-Psychology-Americas/dp/303120235X

We talk to Dr. Daniel Sternberg, head of data at Notion Labs, about how to understand new developments in AI (artificial intelligence) like DALL-E-2 and chatgpt. Topics include the possibility for general intelligence in AI, similarities between human cognition and generative AI models, and the potential for sentient AI.

Stephanie Preston (University of Michigan) returns to the show to talk about her latest research. Why do we hoard stuff? And how can we get people to care about the consequences of all that stuff on the environment? Her research has taken her from the strategies that some rats use to hide seeds (some hide in lots of small caches, while others hoard in a single location), to the cognitive/neural/emotional mechanisms of human beings with hoarding disorder. People tend to have emotional attachments to the stuff they own, and although most of us have more stuff than we need, for those with hoarding disorder it can be overwhelming.

In other recent research, Stephanie and her colleagues found individual differences in how connected people felt to the environment -- impassive people were less likely to be concerned about the destructive effects on the environment, and that politically conservative people tended to be more impassive.

Paper discussed:

Bickel, L. A., & Preston, S. D. (2022). Environmental impassivity: Blunted emotionality undermines concern for the environment. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001072

Special Guest: Stephanie Preston.

Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Aric Prather, a clinical psychiatrist at UCSF and author of the new book "The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest" about why sleep is important, the relationship of stress to sleep, and how to tune your body and environment to get a great night's sleep.

Special Guest: Aric Prather.

Our guests, Dr. Sheila Macrine and Dr. Jennifer Fugate, discuss the concept of "embodied cognition" and its implications for the classroom. They argue that traditional cognitive psychology has ignored the fact that the brain is situated in the body, and that learning happens most effectively if it is connected with our body and our environment, rather than learned abstractly.

Joe and Rolf once again scry the future with bold and entirely accurate predictions about the year 2022

Joshua Miele is a blind scientist and inventor living in the Bay Area. Amongst his many initiatives is the Blind Arduino Project, where participants learn how to navigate a world of maker electronics that are really designed for the sighted. He talks to Joe and Rolf about his work to bring accessible and useful tools to the blind community. He teaches blind soldering classes, and he has worked to make braille maps easily accessible. He discusses what technology in recent years has helped the blind, and what hasn't.

Blind Arduino Blog: http://blarbl.blogspot.com/ Josh's Handle: @BerkeleyBlink Mailing list for the Bay Area blind arduino monthly meeting: babamm@groups.io

Special Guest: Joshua Miele.