Episodes

  • Math is for girls
    Dec 22 2025

    The story from Janet Hyde about her motivations to get a grant and "fight with data" can be found here:

    https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/janet-shibley-hyde-sinks-stereotypes-with-data

    Cat summarizes a ton of research for this episode. Key citations, most of which contain large literature reviews themselves:

    Adamecz-Völgyi, A., Jerrim, J., Pingault, J. B., & Shure, N. (2023). Overconfident boys: The gender gap in mathematics self-assessment.

    Brescoll, V. L., Dawson, E., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2010). Hard won and easily lost: The fragile status of leaders in gender-stereotype-incongruent occupations. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1640-1642.

    Carr, M., Jessup, D. L., & Fuller, D. (1999). Gender differences in first-grade mathematics strategy use: Parent and teacher contributions. Journal for research in mathematics education, 30(1), 20-46.

    Del Toro, J., Legette, K., Christophe, N. K., Pasco, M., Miller-Cotto, D., & Wang, M. T. (2024). When ethnic–racial discrimination from math teachers spills over and predicts the math adjustment of nondiscriminated adolescents: The mediating role of math classroom climate perceptions. Developmental psychology.

    Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2010). Cross-national patterns of gender differences in mathematics: a meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 136(1), 103.

    Gesuelli, K. A., Miller-Cotto, D., & Barbieri, C. A. (2025). Variability in math achievement growth among students with early math learning difficulties and the role of school supports. Journal of Educational Psychology.

    Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2006). Gender similarities in mathematics and science. Science, 314(5799), 599-600.

    Hyde, J. S., Lindberg, S. M., Linn, M. C., Ellis, A. B., & Williams, C. C. (2008). Gender similarities characterize math performance. Science, 321(5888), 494-495.

    Hyde, J. S., & Mertz, J. E. (2009). Gender, culture, and mathematics performance. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 106(22), 8801-8807.

    Hyde, J. S., & Mertz, J. E. (2009). Reply to Crespi: Gender similarities, culture, and mathematics performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), E103-E103.

    Hyde, J. S., Bigler, R. S., Joel, D., Tate, C. C., & van Anders, S. M. (2019). The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges to the gender binary. American Psychologist, 74(2), 171.

    Kane, J. M., & Mertz, J. E. (2012). Debunking myths about gender and mathematics performance. Notices of the AMS, 59(1), 10-21.

    Lindberg, S. M., Hyde, J. S., Petersen, J. L., & Linn, M. C. (2010). New trends in gender and mathematics performance: a meta-analysis. Psychological b

    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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    51 mins
  • Science deserves stories
    Dec 9 2025

    First of all, in this episode you'll learn why Ashley has shipped ONE THOUSAND COCKROACHES through the mail. Second of all, Ashley shares about getting scientists to tell stories, taking risks to share knowledge, and doing science communication in places that don't look like a university campus.

    We talk about work with the following amazing organizations:

    • Guerilla Science
    • SASSY San Diego
    • Caveat NYC

    If you want more science storytelling in your life, please check out The Story Collider.

    The recording kits we sent to students were made by Backyard Brains.

    If you're curious about Ashley's neurobiology lab class, you can learn more about it here.

    Ashley also wants to give a shout out to the amazing UC San Diego staff who made shipping cockroaches during a global pandemic possible, and who still maintain the ongoing roach colony, occasionally even feeding them donuts.

    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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    37 mins
  • The Change, Technically anniversary special
    Sep 16 2025

    Ashley, Cat, and Danilo reflect on the major themes after one year of Change, Technically.

    For more information on consulting with Cat, please visit https://www.catharsisinsight.com/

    ---

    SHOW NOTES:

    On women’s loss of status in gender incongruent professions: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610384744

    On links between self-compassion and prosocial behavior: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4026714/

    On psychological essentialism: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(04)00183-4

    On Shigeru Miyamoto's development of Donkey Kong (Note the line in this article, "Yamauchi [Nintendo's President] assured him [Miyamoto] his lack of technical skills would not be a problem."): https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-secret-history-of-i-donkey-kong-i-

    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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    33 mins
  • Andor and the psychology of resistance
    Jul 22 2025

    SHOW NOTES

    Dominic Packer’s Normative Conflict Model of Dissent is described in this paper as well as his other work: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868307309606

    Cat also mentions Mina Cikara’s work on coalitional cognition. This is a good representation of that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065260121000137

    Cat also mentions The Power of Us, which is by Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, and a book she enjoyed! https://www.powerofus.online/

    From the same authors, this piece talks about intergroup bias: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315735160-23/dynamic-nature-identity-brain-behavior-dominic-packer-jay-van-bavel

    Cat mentions a study about socially shared retrieval induced forgetting, that’s here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-18938-001

    James Baldwin: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5853-you-think-your-pain-and-your-heartbreak-are-unprecedented-in

    https://www.pbs.org/video/james-baldwin-suffering-bridge-of7cq3/

    Asch’s research on conformity has been reexamined in work such as this: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-24067-001 and this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_1

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2420200104

    Babies attending to prosocial actions: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61517-3

    The research that we discuss about the targeted-universal message can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/1/pgae588/7942411

    Further work on this is here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12651

    Podcast we mention with Tressie McMillan Cottom is this one: https://moneywithkatie.com/status-power-economy


    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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    49 mins
  • You deserve better brain research
    Jun 23 2025

    SHOW NOTES:

    For an example of a consideration of learning with information searching, a paper by Saskia Giebl and co-authors explored students learning basic programming concepts aided with a search engine and how active problem-solving before the search helps encourage stronger learning. This paper draws from a lot of the classic learning science/memory effects that Cat references:
    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1475725720961593

    “Cognitive offloading” is a concept with a lot of interesting work behind it, and cognitive offloading can be as broad as just making a grocery list. Exploring task performance, and the mixed costs and benefits associated with cognitive offloading, can be started with this review and its citations: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-025-00432-2

    Andrew Hogan wrote a nice post for parents concerned about their children's learning and brain health here, centering on helping people understand the limitations of study methodology: https://www.parent.tech/p/should-your-kids-use-chatgpt-for-homework-c028

    Robert and Elizabeth Bjork and colleagues have published many relevant papers on the generation effect and other aspects of learning and metacognition about learning. Here are a few references Cat recommends:

    • https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823
    • https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196872
    • https://escholarship.org/content/qt56w8q3z9/qt56w8q3z9.pdf

    Because Ashley loves giving people an opportunity to play with the data for themselves, here’s an online interactive textbook with an introduction to EEG: https://neuraldatascience.io/7-eeg/introduction.html

    Research on the seductive power of putting a brain on it:

    • https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article/20/3/470/4473/The-Seductive-Allure-of-Neuroscience-Explanations
    • https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12162

    Paper which nicely explains the dDTF technique step-by-step and applies it to understand motor imagery: https://braininformatics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40708-022-00154-8

    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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    53 mins
  • Dire wolves and bullshitters
    Apr 25 2025

    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
    • analog-ashley.bsky.social


    Learn more about Cat:

    • https://www.drcathicks.com/
    • https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
    • grimalkina.bsky.social
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    41 mins
  • Who's afraid of math?
    Mar 28 2025

    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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    53 mins
  • Stepping out of the silo
    Feb 10 2025

    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
    • analog-ashley.bsky.social


    Learn more about Cat:

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