The PrimateCast Andrew MacIntosh

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Tesla Monson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Western Washington University.

Tesla was in Japan visiting our own Dr. Susumu Tomiya to start some work with our collection of primate bones, so I asked Susumu to join us in the studio as well.

Tesla runs the Primate Evolution Lab at Western Washington University, and has conducted some fascinating research into how we can use bones and fossils and especially teeth to understand the “squishy parts” of our collective evolutionary past that don’t preserve, like the life history traits of an animal or its behavior. 

Tesla tells us about some of her discoveries about correlated or patterned evolution that link tooth characteristics with other anatomical and physiological processes and allowed her and her colleagues to hypothesize about things like life history traits and behavior that aren’t preserved in the fossil record. 

These include how dental patterns correlate with vitamin D delivery to infants in ancient populations of humans living in Arctic Beringia, or with prenatal growth rates and endocranial volume in catarrhine primates.

After hearing Tesla talk about these things I became a lot more interested in teeth myself, and what they can tell us about extinct species! But there’s a lot in this interview beyond teeth for anyone interested in evolution and the diversity of life, how scientists are often just like detectives, and just generally about being a whole person.

While discussing Tesla’s efforts in science communication, we talk about the phenomenon of imposter syndrome, which can affect anyone in any role but seems to be particularly common among academics, and especially in early career researchers. All three of us seemed to have something to say on the topic, as it’s an ongoing struggle for so many of us and any encouragement and open discussion about it may land with someone in need at the right time. 

We close by looking at her current projects on inclusion in and out of science, such as 
her symposia in Integrative Human Evolution, geared toward early career researchers and interdisciplinarity, her involvement with the Bearded Ladies, who are out there to show the world that, to quote Tesla, “You don’t have to have a beard to be a scruffy paleontologist out in the field”, and her efforts to highlight the key roles played by historical women in Washington, which she calls Washington Women.Some other things that come up in the interview  include:
Tesla’s study about teeth, prenatal growth rates and endocranial volumeTesla’s coauthored study about teeth, mammary gland anatomy and vitamin D deliveryIt’s a Long Way from AmphioxusTesla’s outreach programsI hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I and Susumu did!
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

“You should always collaborate with your friends!”
- Sarah Brosnan

In this episode I am really excited to be able to bring to you an interview with Dr. Sarah Brosnan, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Philosophy and Neuroscience in the Language Research Center at Georgia State University.

Dr. Ikuma Adachi,  from Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior, also joined us for the interview.

Sarah Brosnan is probably best known for her work on inequity aversion in primates. Her early experiments published in Nature [Monkeys reject unequal pay] showed that capuchin monkeys are sensitive to what others receive for the same amount of work and reject unequal pay.

Note that the video of these experiments is absolutely delightful and should be required viewing for every student of nature, the nature of the mind, and probably bratty child out there. Check it out here: capuchin monkey fairness experiment.

In the interview, Sarah explains how inequity aversion is likely a key component of social knowledge, and likely evolved as a suite of abilities linked to prosocial behavior.

After discussing some of the nuts and bolts of experimentation and the challenges of interpretation, we move into Sarah's more recent line of research: comparative experimental economics.

What's fascinating about this work is that Sarah is testing multiple different species of primate - capuchins, macaques, chimpanzees, and humans - by setting them up with more or less identical experimental situations. 

These experiments are really allowing Sarah and her colleagues to learn the mechanical foundations of how we make decisions; and how they may be the same or very different foundations to those of other species even when the outcomes - like being able to maximize the payoff in any given game -  look exactly the same!

I learned a lot from Sarah in this interview, and had an absolute blast with this conversation! I hope you all enjoy this interview with Dr. Sarah Brosnan as much as I did.

Other topics discussed in the interview:
“Let the monkeys show you the way” as a foundation for scientific discoveryMaximizing interpretability through well-designed experiments … and follow-ups! How widespread inequity aversion is in the animal kingdomWhether spite is likely among the suite of emotionally-driven behaviors available to animalsGetting into the weeds with games for game theoristsBeing careful not to confuse cause and consequence as mechanism and outcometesting cognition in group settings and all the chaos that bringsOne final thought. At 24:14 of the interview, Sarah mentions a 2023 paper that demonstrates that bonobos are sensitive to inequity (Paywall). The author, whose name she forgot in the moment, is Jonas Verspeek.
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.

The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.

For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.

Unlike our normal format for these lectures, in which our guests normally provide us with an origin story lecture, we instead ran IPLS 18 as an interview with Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Frans de Waal. Frans almost needs no introduction, but you can find out more about him through some links to Emory University here and here, and on his Wikipedia page here. 
 
The interview was conducted by Dr. Michael Huffman and yours truly, with a smattering of questions from participants, including students and postdoctoral researchers affiliated with Kyoto University’s program in primatology and wildlife science.

The conversation was recorded on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.

In the interview, we talk about:
his book Chimpanzee Politics and communicating science and writing popular booksEnglish, writing and storytelling as a non-native English speaker, and extending rigorous scientific research into popular science prosethe responsibility of scientists to communicate their findings when they relate to society and how their ideas might be coopted for certain agendas end users may have - think Konrad Lorenz falling in with eugenicists or Richard Dawkins calling us 'slaves to our genes'primate culture and empathy for Japanese primatologyhow our views of the pillars of primate society have evolved from competition, aggression, dominance and conflict to peacemaking, conflict resolution and cooperationdrawing the line between anthropomorphism and anthropodenial, and what components of animal cognition and emotion overlap with those of humanshow measuring emotions in animals is not the same thing as understanding their 'feelings', for example grief, which was asked about by an audience memberand much, much more!An here is that video of Frans hugging a Telenoid! It can't be missed!
Enjoy!
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

This episode is all about where, how and why primates got their names!

No, we won't be talking about popular primates like Kanzi the bonobo or Pan-kun (if you're in Japan), but rather the terms we use for the common and scientific names of primates across their taxonomy.

Dr. Elaine Guevara is a Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and in 2021, she coauthored a study published in the International Journal of Primatology called “Whom do primate names honor: rethinking primate eponyms” (Open Access), along with Chloe Chen-Kraus, Casey Farmer, Katherine Meier, David P. Watts & Jane Widness.

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Eponym (noun): one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named.
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In the interview, we do a deep dive into primate names and the various contexts within which they are given. Key topics of discussion include:
colonial roots of primate naminghonorifics, hero worship and challenge of getting it rightdecolonizing science and having dialogues toward greater inclusivity in science and societyVerreaux's sifaka, Geoffroy's spider monkey, Dian's tarsier and the Bemaraha woolly monkey (a.k.a. Avahi cleesei), whose epithet (species name) honors John Cleese!pronunciation and the challenge of Anglicizationbetter ways to name as conceived by the international primatological community-----------
CORRECTION
At 1:00:02 of the interview Elaine notes that the term 'maias' - suggested by JM Rubis (2020) to replace the established common name orangutan - is an indigenous Malay term, when in fact it is the term used by the Iban, a group indigenous to the island of Borneo.
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For more information, and to contribute to understanding primate names and what we should do about them, explore these links!
Primate Eponyms website - learn more about primate namesakes and contribute if information for your species is missing!Survey for primatologists (at all career stages!) where you can provide your thoughts on primate eponyms. CLICK HERE!The orang utan is not an indigenous name: knowing and naming the maias as a decolonizing epistemology (Paywall) by Jane M. Rubis (2020).Decolonizing the Ourang-Outang (Open Access) by Maeve Fairbanks,  Luke D. Fannin & Nathaniel J. Dominy (2022) published in the International Journal of Primatology.The family that built an empire of pain - The Sackler family is a notorious namesake with dark roots underlying the opioid crisis. Elaine discusses this in the context of honorifics and the injustices felt by those harmed.Photo Credit: Elaine Guevara
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

This episode of The PrimateCast: Origins is taken from CICASP's International Primatology Lecture Series: Past, Present and Future Perspectives of the Field.

The IPLS is dedicated to providing origin stories told by experienced researchers in primatology and related fields. The lectures are conducted via Zoom within our CICASP Seminar in Science Communication for graduate students of our program at Kyoto University. We are releasing the audio from these lectures right here on The PrimateCast: Origins.

For anyone interested in viewing the video versions of these lectures, head over to the CICASP TV YouTube channel, where you can also watch them live as we stream our Zoom feeds there.

For the 12th international primatology lecture we invited distinguished professor Dr. Mewa Singh to share his origin story with us. This lecture took place on May 25, 2022.

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"One need not have a formal degree in a discipline, to become a specialist in that discipline"
-Mewa Singh, 2022
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Dr. Mewa Singh is Life-Long Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Excellence at the University of Mysore. Throughout his career he has investigated the behavior and ecology of mammals, most notably primates, and has been heavily invested in their conservation and management in different regions throughout India.

In this lecture, he describes his activities related to the conservation of primates in India, particularly through distinctions between forest-dependent species and others that are more adaptable to human-dominated landscapes. He then describes various behavioral adaptations that have allowed more commensal macaque species to thrive in urban settings.

Key topics that come up are:
genetic diversity in lion-tailed macaques with respect to habitat fragmentationprotecting habitat and regrowing wildlife corridors with rainforest treesprimate commensalism and behavioral plasticity in urban environmentsacquisition of novel foraging strategies as adaptations to extracting human resourcesHe begins the lecture talking about how he became a wildlife biologist and primatologist, and that it wasn't exactly a straight line or so predetermined from a young age. And he closes with some further advice about studying primates ethically in human landscapes. 

In between, he provides numerous pieces of advice and bits of wisdom that will no doubt have value for all listeners. 

Enjoy!. 
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

This episode features paleoanthropologist and science educator Dr. Briana Pobiner.

Briana works in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She is also Associate Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at George Washington University. 

Briana’s anthropological research focuses on understanding the human diet, and changes therein over the past few million years. Her work on science education and communication focuses on promoting understanding of evolution through examples from our own bushy branches of the evolutionary family tree. 

In the interview, we cover a range of topics including:
the question "what makes us human?"reconstructing the diets of our ancestors using paleontological 'time machines'ancient hominins sharing the savannas - and food? - with ancient carnivoresbusting some common myths, like the idea of linear evolution and the 'paleodiet'balancing doing, teaching and communicating science to broad audienceshow to go about becoming a strong communicator of scientific ideasbeing a mom in the field with kidsThere is so much in this interview for everyone, and we couldn't be happier to be sharing it on The PrimateCast. 

Here are a few links to help you learn more about Briana Pobiner and her work:
Briana's professional bioBriana's research websiteAnswer the question "what does it mean to be human" yourself on the Smithsonian Human Origins Program’s website A brilliant 2016 paper on accepting, understanding, teaching and learning evolution in the USBriana's academic page on GWU's websitePhoto Credit: Smithsonian
The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.
Connect with us on Facebook or Twitter Subscribe where you get your podcasts Email theprimatecast@gmail.com with thoughts and comments A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.