01.08 Ghost Cognition with Michael Greenstein
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This week’s episode features an interview with Michael Greenstein, a visiting professor of cognitive psychology. In our interview we talk about life as an underpaid grad student and adjunct, the two body problem, and what it's like when your peers are also your teaching assistants.
This week’s “Science Informationist” segment is all about the secret origin of the podcast.
Want more info about Mike?
Mike doesn’t maintain much of a public profile online, but you should check out the paper he co-authored with the very first guest on Bold Signals, Mona Xu.
Want more info about John and Bold Signals?
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John Borghi | John on About.Me
Production Notes:
Ok. So King Kong vs. Godzilla is not actually a nature documentary. Nor is it the worst ape-themed monster movie I’ve seen with my grandmother.
My great grandfather, Robert Kingsbury, published at least one article that has made its way online. He also wrote (though my great grandmother did the actual typing) an introductory physics textbook that has since fallen out of print.
If you’re interested in learning more about how the National Science Foundation (NSF) defines STEM, check out this comprehensive report on the America COMPETES Act.
There is a lot of commentary related to the tough situation faced by visiting or adjunct professors online, but for a strikingly illustrative example, see this article. For a look at the depressingly dim statistics, take a gander at this study released by the U.S. House of Representatives.
According to the American Psychological Association, cognitive psychology is “The study of higher mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking.”
The “standard” academic path we discuss is as follows: Grad School → Postdoc → Tenure Track Professorship. In some contexts this is also, somewhat problematically, known as the “academic pipeline.”
In case you’re wondering, I was Mike’s teaching assistant for an introductory statistics course. Mostly I corrected homework, administered, exams, and ran review sessions
Obtaining free Indian Food at the Velvet Lounge is something of a tradition among Stony Brook graduate students. For me, the taste of chicken tikka masala is inexorably linked to complaining about graduate school and listening to Scuba Tiger cover Neutral Milk Hotel.
Check out this article for more on the two body problem in higher education (and beyond).
Another part of academia, another crisis. This article provides a nice summary of the ongoing post-doc crisis.
What is soft money? Something that strikes fear into hearts of academics everywhere.
For another conversation about whether or not psychology is a science, listen to the first ever episode of Bold Signals, The Hardest Science.
I’m not sure I would have predicted that it would take this long for me to bring up Daryl Bem’s paper on ESP (or, as he calls it, psi). As you may have predicted, there were many critical responses to Bem’s paper. Though Bem has attempted to respond to these criticisms, it should be noted that attempts to replicate his experiments have failed.
As a neuroscientist, I find River Tam’s backstory in Firefly to be thoroughly ridiculous. Your mileage may vary.
Mayim Bialik, who plays Amy Fowler on The Big Bang Theory does indeed have a PhD in neuroscience. She’s also been criticized by members of the scientific community for her advocacy of Attachment Parenting.
As usual, the intro is music “Enterprise 1″ by Languis. Additional music includes ““The Bears Just for Show” by Krackatoa, “Fortsetzung Folgt” by Gumbel, and “Keepin it Steady” by Jared C. Balogh.
I saw Ant Man over the weekend and a particularly silly scene reminded me of the perfection that is Disintegration by The Cure. Thus, this week’s song recommendation is “The Same Deep Water As You”.
