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More reading & sources:

• Fantastic article which echos many of our arguments here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/18/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/
• Science article which summarizes dire wolves news & science: https://www.science.org/content/article/what-s-deal-dire-wolves-iconic-predators-may-have-been-neanderthals-wolf-world
• Article which leaked an internal memo from US interior secretary which said, “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/
• ... which is also discussed in this very good Vox reporting: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407781/dire-wolves-deextinction-colossal-biosciences
• Updates on recent cuts to NSF: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0

Notes:

• Ashley said bioRxiv is federally-funded, she meant to say the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) archive, where Colossal posted the dire wolf genome, is federally funded
• Here’s what Embark does tell you about “Wolfiness”: https://help.embarkvet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053867714-What-is-Wolfiness

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
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• https://www.drcathicks.com/
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SHOW NOTES:

Cat wants you to know she read a *lot* of research for this episode. Major highlights we specifically drew from, and quote sources, were aross three reviews:

Cat found this one especially helpful and refers to it the most, and this review also proposes the Interpretation Account of math anxiety:

Ramirez, G., Shaw, S. T., & Maloney, E. A. (2018). Math anxiety: Past research, promising interventions, and a new interpretation framework. Educational psychologist, 53(3), 145-164.

Amland, T., Grande, G., Scherer, R., Lervåg, A., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2024). Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin.

Chang, H., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). The math anxiety-math performance link and its relation to individual and environmental factors: A review of current behavioral and psychophysiological research. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 33–38.

We briefly mentioned tDCS. An introduction to this technique (used both for therapeutic applications and in scientific studies) can be found here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5702643/

The specific study Cat & Ashley talk about, with math anxious adults, is this one: Sarkar, A., Dowker, A., & Cohen, K. R. (2014). Cognitive enhancement or cognitive cost: Trait-specific outcomes of brain stimulation in the case of mathematics anxiety. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 16605–16610. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3129-14.2014

Cat also mentions the connection between teachers’ gender stereotype endorsements and teachers’ math anxiety, and students’ math achievement. This study is here: Beilock, S. L., Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. C. (2010). Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(5), 1860-1863.

Further helpful reading & evidence about both parental and teachers’ impact on math attitudes and gender from the same authors:

Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2012). The role of parents and teachers in the development of gender-related math attitudes. Sex roles, 66, 153-166.

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• analog-ashley.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social

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How do human beings work together and learn to be, well, human? Stepping out of our comfortable and cozy silos and learning to communicate our value in new contexts might just be the key to unlocking shared innovation.

In this episode, we explore this question with Cristine Legare, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin interested in the interplay of the universal human mind and the variations of culture, who studies cognitive and cultural evolution and the design of social and behavioral change interventions.

The Center for Applied Cognitive Science, which Cristine founded and directs: https://www.centerforappliedcogsci.com/
Her website, where you can keep up with more of her work as well as her upcoming book on ritual: https://cristinelegare.com/

Cat also mentions the book How Infrastructure Works, which is by Deb Chachra and can be found here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Cat mentions an overlay journal she and her collaborators write to translate more scientific papers for software teams; it's called The Developer Science Review and you can read our issues here: https://dsl.pubpub.org/issues

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
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Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social