Change, Technically

Ashley and Cat discuss stem cells, gene editing, a future in which we can grow new organs, and explore the borders of creepy-exciting science! Show Notes Gene editing in the news Gene editing incident described in the introduction: https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-death-girl-chinese-gene-editing-trial-was-never-made-public More recent coverage of this incident and others: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02497-2 Proof-of-concept reports on gene editing in p...

Are we addicted to talking about dopamine? In this episode, we tackle dopamine hype with real science: what dopamine is doing in the brain, how we study it, and how it's been misunderstood. ---- SHOW NOTES two articles tackling dopamine nation: https://awjuliani.medium.com/beyond-dopamine-nation-towards-a-fuller-picture-of-addiction-and-recovery-97b37e17235e https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/opinion/addiction-dopamine-brain-chemistry.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yVA.uvbi.PVfFQMzMu...

You can find the talk Cat gave about learning and its citations here: https://github.com/DrCatHicks/tailscale_talk On beliefs about humans being more genetically dissimilar than they are, work primarily done by Brian Donovan: Donovan et al. (2024). "Humane genomics education can reduce racism." Science, 383(6685), 818–822. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7895 Learn more about Ashley: https://ashleyjuavinett.com/https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashleyashleyjuavinett...

📚 PREVIEW CAT'S BOOK, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOFTWARE TEAMS! Pre-orders will be available in June. https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Software-Teams/Hicks/p/book/9781032963389 📝 EPISODE NOTES Jeff Shreve's Substack that Ashley mentions in the beginning https://jeffshreve.substack.com/Ashley is not linking anything about the reiki on rats paper here because she doesn't want that paper to get more hits than warranted but she *does* you to see the figure from it and has pu...

Can people learn in the AI era? Ashley and Cat think so. We talk about Ashley's experiences teaching programming and co-designing WITH students (not against them) to create shared classroom norms around AI, and about the metacognitive skills that Cat is sharing with the software teams and developers she works with to bring a "dynamic textbook" approach to using AI to build understanding, not degrade it. Cat's Learning Opportunities Claude Skill, with a scientific reference list to the e...