Stanford Psychology Podcast

176 - Elizabeth Bonawitz: How to Have Fun While Studying How Children Learn so Much From so Little 29.05.2026 46min

Adani chats with Elizabeth Bonawitz, Professor of Learning Sciences at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Elizabeth’s work focuses on basic theories of learning with the broader goal of informing educational practice. She uses computational, behavioral, and neural methods to study a broad variety of things within cognitive development, from children’s curiosity and belief revision to their exploration and play. We discuss Elizabeth’s view of cognitive development research and, most importa...

175 - Nicholas Epley: A Little More Social 14.05.2026 56min

Nick Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. Nick is one of the “World’s Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets and Quants. He just published his second book for a popular audience called "A Little More Social." In this ep...

174 - Amit Goldenberg: Collective Emotions and Social Media (REAIR) 16.04.2026 48min

In this reair episode from 2023, Eric chats with Amit Goldenberg, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Amit studies emotions in social interactions, for example in political contexts and on social media. He was a journalist and author before becoming an academic. In this episode, Eric and Amit talk about how emotions operate in groups. Do crowds easily go “mad”? What emotions spread faster in groups? Why are we drawn to people more politically extreme tha...

173 - Juliana Schroeder: Mistakenly Seeking Solitude (REAIR) 02.04.2026 46min

In this reair episode, Eric chats with Juliana Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas. She studies how people think about the minds of other people, and how they are often wrong trying to understand what others are up to. Her work has been discussed in outlets ranging from Vice to The Atlantic and Forbes. Eric and Juliana review her exciting recent work on “undersociality.” Talking to other people is often meaningful, not just for extraverts, and ye...

172 - Julia Chatain: Embodied Learning and Educational Technology in Mathematics and Beyond (REAIR) 19.03.2026 37min

Adani chats with Dr. Julia Chatain, Senior Scientist at the Singapore-ETH Centre of ETH Zürich. Julia is a computer scientist and learning scientist responsible for building a new research program, “Future Embodied Learning Technologies” (FELT), focusing on exploring AI-powered embodied learning interventions to support low-progress learners and learners with special needs, both at the cognitive and the affective levels. Before that, she led the EduTech group at ETH Zürich, conducting Researc...

171 - Casey Kenyon Brown: Can Your Relationships Make You Depressed? (REAIR) 05.03.2026 39min

This week, Enna chats with Dr. Casey Kenyon Brown, Professor at Georgetown University in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging and the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science. Casey’s research examines how we share, understand, and influence one another’s emotions. She’s interested in how ...

170 - Marginalia Episode: Erica Bailey on Authenticity (REAIR) 19.02.2026 50min

Marginalia Episodes are in collaboration with Marginalia Science! Marginalia Science is a community committed to promoting the work of scholars who are traditionally underrepresented in academia. In each Marginalia Episode, we feature a guest who has been featured in the Marginalia Science Monthly Newsletter. In this re-air episode from 2025, Enna chats with Professor Erica Bailey at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Erica broadly studies the construct of authenticity, asking questions lik...

169 - Tamar Kushnir: The Power of Imagination 05.02.2026 47min

Adani chats with Tamar Kushnir, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Tamar’s research spans pretty much everything you can imagine: Cognitive development, causal learning, social cognition, moral cognition, cultural psychology, free will, imagination, counterfactual thinking, self-control, and more! In this conversation, we discuss Tamar’s fascinating review on imagination and social cognition in childhood alongside many fun tangents about superheroes, the Wright Broth...

168 - Robin Dunbar: How Many People Can You Be Friends With? (REAIR) 22.01.2026 1j 12min

In this re-air episode from 2022, Eric chats with Robin Dunbar, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford. Robin has famously studied the evolution of the human brain, arguing that our brain developed to understand the complex social world we have created for ourselves. Most know him for “Dunbar’s number,” or the limit to the number of individuals we can maintain stable relationships with. Robin has received more awards than could be counted, including the prestigious Huxley Mem...

167 - Nicky Sullivan: Bridging the Gap Between Academic Research and Real-World Impact 08.01.2026 38min

Anjie chats with Dr. Nicky Sullivan, senior researcher at Impact Justice, a national non-profit innovation and research center focused on transforming the U.S. criminal justice system. Dr. Sullivan received his PhD from Stanford Psychology Department in 2024. During his PhD, he studied parents' and children's beliefs about race and racial inequality. In this episode, Nicky shares his journey from studying race in the lab to evaluating innovative initiatives like The Homecoming Project at Impa...

166 - Steve Rathje: The Psychology of Virality 19.12.2025 1j 6min

Su chats with Dr. Steve Rathje. Dr. Rathje is an incoming Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an NSF and AXA postdoctoral fellow at New York University. Steve’s work centers on the psychology of technology. He studies how core psychological phenomena like polarization, intergroup conflict, the spread of information, and mental health interact with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and soci...

165 – Ying Wong: From Cultural Psychology to Global Business 04.12.2025 29min

Anjie chats with Dr. Ying Wong, founder and CEO of B.peachy and former cultural psychologist. Ying received her PhD in Psychology from Stanford in 2007, where she studied shame and guilt through a cultural lens. After academia, she built an impressive career across global business, and she now is the founder and CEO of B.peachy, a company dedicated to menstrual care. In this episode, Anjie and Ying discuss Ying’s remarkable journey from academia into the business world, and how she has carr...

164 - Susan Engel: Do We Become Less Curious As We Grow Older? 20.11.2025 48min

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...

163 - Roger Levy: The Science of Language in the Era of AI 13.11.2025 40min

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, naturalist...

162 - Adam Benforado: How prioritizing kids benefits us all 06.11.2025 50min

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 aroun...

161 - Yuan Chang (YC) Leong: Emotional arousal & dynamic brain connectivity 30.10.2025 40min

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, ...

160 - Jennifer Hu: From Human Minds to Artificial Minds 23.10.2025 35min

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 advanc...

159 - Dawn Finzi: From Vision Neuroscience to ML Engineering (Psychologist in the Wild Series) 16.10.2025 26min

Elizabeth chats with Dr. Dawn Finzi, a Machine Learning engineer on the Perception team at Zoox, and a recent alumni of our very own Stanford’s Department of Psychology, as a part of our new Psychologist in the Wild series. During her PhD, Dawn studied the functional organization of the human visual system, focusing on both the structural underpinnings and the overarching computational goals. In this episode, Dawn shares her scientific journey from PhD to industry, and how her PhD experience ...

158 - David Almeida: Can Stress Be Good For You? 09.10.2025 44min

Jane chats with Dr. David Almeida, a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE), the largest longitudinal diary study of daily experiences and health in the United States. Dr. Almeida’s work examines how daily experiences of stress are associated with health and well-being. In this episode, Jane and Dr. Almeida discuss the ways in which people experience and react to stress in ...

157 - Diyi Yang: Socially Aware Large Language Models 02.10.2025 42min

In this episode, Su chats with Diyi Yang, an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford Human Computer Interaction Group, Stanford AI Lab, and Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She is also leading the Social and Language Technologies Lab, where they study Socially Aware Natural Language Processing. Her research goal is to better understand human communication in social context and build sociall...