Think back to high school. Did you take a foreign language? If so, how much do you remember? Could you say what you ate for breakfast today in that language? Exchange a few pleasantries? Thinking back, how well do you think you could speak in that foreign language even at the time you were learning […]
The physical impact of a smile
What’s in a smile? Encouragement? A friendly hello? A threat? It turns out that humans are fairly good at parsing the subtle signals sent in expressions like smiles, and those expressions and our perceptions of them can impact our body chemistry. In our March 15 show, Producer Will Cushman talks to Justin Martin, a graduate […]
Memories: The Brain and the Research
Last week we learned a little about the science of memory. Tonight, the Perpetual Notion Machine continues the topic of memory. Our guest, psychologist and neuroscientist at UW-Madison Brad Postle, is back to tell us more. In his conversation with PNM’s Dennis Shaffer, Brad mentions that each memory has its own set of neurons, connections, […]
Memories: What are They?
During this holiday season, we’ll certainly remember the good times of some of the Christmas’ in the past, and also form good memories of this Christmas. So, for this episode of the Perpetual Notion Machine, we look into the science of memory – what are they, how do they form, and what triggers a memory […]
More on the Mind Club
A few months ago, on the June 30 show to be exact, PNM’s Jake Walters spoke with University of North Carolina psychologist Kurt Gray about his, and his colleague Daniel Wegner’s, book called The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters. In a nutshell, he describes morality as a perception of mind. […]
The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters; A conversat...
The question of what is “right” and what is “wrong” is about as commonplace and pedestrian as philosophical debates get. Some point to an inherent and universal moral compass that guides all of our ethical decision-making, while others gravitate towards a more relative approach that calls into question whether anything can be ultimately right or […]