Art of the Question

Adam Green is a professor and cognitive neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he directs a lab studying how the brain produces creative ideas. He earned his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth, did postdoctoral training at Yale, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Creativity Research Journal. He co-founded the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity and, with James Kaufman, leads the Creativity Ontology Project, a collaboration of 200 creativity researchers working to pin down what the word creativity actually means. His lab helped turn creativity into something measurable through semantic distance and showed that electrically stimulating the frontopolar cortex can make people more creative. His recent study of hundreds of thousands of college application essays found that after ChatGPT arrived, students' life stories became more alike even as they looked more creative on the surface.Expect to learn how creativity can be defined as a process rather than a product, how semantic distance turns creativity into a number, what happened when researchers zapped the frontopolar cortex with electrical stimulation, why a walk or run in a familiar place helps ideas come, why creativity feels so rewarding, why creativity may be humanity's biggest evolutionary advantage, whether anyone can learn to be more creative, why almost every creativity intervention works, how a strict constraint gave us Green Eggs and Ham, whether AI can truly be creative, how ChatGPT made college essays more alike while fooling the experts, and why thinking for yourself is worth more in the AI era.Adam Green online:Lab: cng.georgetown.eduSociety for the Neuroscience of Creativity: tsfnc.org0:00 Intro1:07 Defining creativity8:27 Internally directed attention10:53 The Creativity Ontology Project12:20 Measuring creativity with analogies18:50 The brick test19:57 Zapping the brain for creativity23:15 From observation to intervention25:43 How to be more creative28:38 Why walks spark ideas31:13 Why creativity feels good35:23 Why creativity is so desirable39:21 Malevolent creativity40:43 Can anyone be creative41:44 Creativity is a state44:35 Creativity anxiety46:37 Constraints and Dr. Seuss52:04 Can AI be creative56:12 Using AI in creative work1:00:44 Start with your own ideas1:02:08 The college essay study1:06:57 AI blind spots and homogenization1:08:37 Socratic learning with AI1:10:05 Thinking for yourself with AI1:11:50 Where to follow Adam's work

Steven Pedigo is an urban economic development expert and professor who has advised more than 100 cities, universities and companies on growth and innovation. Raised in a small town in rural East Texas, he studied at the University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Illinois, and spent about 15 years working alongside urbanist Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. He later became the inaugural director of the Urban Lab at NYU's Schack Institute of Real Estate, founded the LBJ Urban Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a founding partner of the advisory firm CivicSol. In this episode he traces how Austin grew from a sleepy college town into one of America's fastest growing cities, and what that growth cost the people who lived there. He also explains why the predicted death of big cities like New York and Los Angeles was overstated, and why Americans have now largely stopped moving.Expect to learn whether people are really leaving big cities like New York and Los Angeles, why second tier cities like Austin and Nashville boomed, why Americans have stopped moving, how AI is shrinking entry level jobs for graduates, how Richard Florida's creative class theory shaped Austin, what rapid growth costs a city's culture and affordability, why residents are pushing back on data centers, whether a city can grow without losing its identity, why Europe lags behind the US on innovation, whether companies are really leaving California for Texas, what European and American cities can learn from each other, and how climate change could reshape where Americans move.Steven Pedigo online:Website: https://iamstevenpedigo.comCivicSol: https://civicsol.comX: @iamstevenpedigoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamstevenpedigoInstagram: @iamstevenpedigo0:00 Introduction0:34 How Steven got into urbanism2:46 Why cities breed acceptance4:27 Growing up in Amsterdam7:14 Are people leaving big cities10:25 Cost of living and clustering13:06 Amsterdam versus Texas house prices15:08 Why Americans stopped moving18:05 AI and the graduate job market20:05 Why Austin became so popular22:07 The creative class theory25:13 How the pandemic accelerated Austin27:35 Austin's growing pains29:47 The death of Austin story31:44 Can cities grow and keep identity33:39 Why city priorities changed36:27 Why residents oppose data centers41:21 Federal investment and the CHIPS Act44:28 America's university advantage45:31 Why Europe lags on innovation47:01 Immigration and American innovation48:37 Are companies leaving California52:04 Lessons between European and US cities54:45 How cities attract and keep talent57:13 Where city migration goes next58:29 Climate change and migration1:00:06 Austin the teenage city1:01:19 Where to follow Steven

Steven Keener is an assistant professor of criminology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia and one of the few researchers who has studied Flock license plate reader cameras in depth. He directs CNU's Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice Research and Policy, which he co-founded in 2021, and serves on the board of Justice Forward Virginia, a nonpartisan criminal justice reform organization. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in criminology and criminal justice policy. When a federal judge forced the release of every publicly funded license plate camera location in Hampton Roads, Keener and his colleagues ran the first full geospatial analysis of how these cameras are deployed. They found that race and poverty, not violent crime, best predict where the cameras go. That research is published as "Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras."Expect to learn what Flock cameras capture beyond your license plate, how pandemic stimulus money helped Flock dominate the market, why the "nothing to hide" argument falls short, how a Dutch court stopped the tax authorities from using highway cameras, whether Flock cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, why state guardrail laws keep failing, how federal agencies get side door access to local camera data, how police officers have used the cameras to stalk people, why the cameras cluster in Black and low income neighborhoods, whether the cameras reduce crime, and how one Virginia town got rid of them.Steven Keener online:Email: [email protected] profile: https://cnu.edu/faculty/stevenkeener.htmlResearch: Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras0:00 Introduction0:41 What Flock cameras are1:53 License plate readers before Flock4:03 How Flock won over police5:25 How the cameras work7:35 What the cameras capture9:17 Tracking pedestrians and drones10:02 The nothing to hide argument11:53 Wrongly accused by cameras15:06 A Dutch highway camera case19:25 Are Flock cameras legal22:10 The Schmidt v Norfolk lawsuit25:02 A rare bipartisan issue26:29 Virginia's guardrails law30:08 Police hot lists32:45 Penalties for misuse33:36 Searches logged as 12336:49 Stalking and audit logs38:57 Mapping where the cameras are40:09 Judge forces locations public43:33 Race and poverty findings45:02 The legacy of redlining47:00 Testing the crime explanation49:27 Predictive policing and tech washing51:59 How placement was decided53:38 Do the cameras reduce crime57:43 Is a safe version possible1:02:29 Where surveillance is heading1:06:01 How Harrisonburg removed Flock1:07:42 Data centers and surveillance1:09:32 Bluetooth scanners and tsunami cameras1:11:55 Steven's next research1:12:58 Where to follow Steven

Dylan Selterman is a social-personality psychologist and Director of Research and Resource Development at Heterodox Academy, where he also leads the Mike and Sofia Segal Center for Academic Pluralism. He teaches psychology as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, after four years there as an Associate Teaching Professor and more than ten years as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland. His research covers attraction, relationships and sexuality, moral psychology and dreaming, and he has published in journals including Social Psychological and Personality Science and Archives of Sexual Behavior. His studies on infidelity, including a survey of Ashley Madison users who reported low regret alongside high love for their spouses, challenge the long-held idea that people only cheat when their relationship is failing. He writes the Substack column Sharing A Brain and the Psychology Today column The Resistance Hypothesis.Expect to learn how researchers define cheating, whether infidelity can happen in an open relationship, what eight motives drive people to cheat, why most cheating has little to do with an unhappy relationship, how those motives predict whether couples break up or stay together, how long affairs typically last, how men and women differ in why they cheat, what a study of Ashley Madison users revealed about love and regret, why we condemn cheaters even when no one is harmed, whether humans are biologically built for monogamy, why being cheated on hurts so much, and why expecting one partner to meet every emotional need can backfire.Dylan Selterman online:Website: dylanselterman.comSubstack: sharingabrain.substack.comInstagram: @seltermosbyX: @SelterMosbyPsychology Today column: The Resistance Hypothesis, psychologytoday.com0:00 Defining cheating2:38 Cheating in open relationships3:21 Eight motives for cheating8:00 Mismatched sex drives11:17 Alcohol and mixed motives13:49 What happens after an affair17:31 Why cheaters hide affairs20:06 How long affairs last23:56 Why men and women cheat26:55 The Ashley Madison study31:18 Sexless marriages and low regret35:52 Surprising null findings39:22 Why we judge cheaters42:53 Loyalty, purity and morality46:37 Are humans meant to be monogamous52:52 Paternity, evolution and STIs57:27 Why being cheated on hurts59:20 Talking about monogamy early1:02:55 What hurts men and women most1:03:54 Lessons from Temptation Island1:05:29 The case against emotional exclusivity1:10:00 Dylan's current research

Sonja Heintz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she studies the psychology of humour and positive psychology. She earned her PhD at the University of Zurich under Willibald Ruch, one of the leading figures in humour research, and has spent around fifteen years studying what makes people laugh and how humour styles differ from person to person. Her work builds a framework of distinct comic styles, expanding the field's long-standing handful of categories into a far more detailed model that now distinguishes twenty-three. One of her studies looked at whether people who enjoy dark humour score higher on so-called dark personality traits, and found everyday sadism to be the strongest predictor. She has also worked with emergency responders, cancer patients, clinic clowns and hospice patients to understand how dark humour helps people cope with adversity.Expect to learn how humour researchers define humour and why the field settled on such a broad definition, what positive psychology is and how humour fits into it, how the comic styles framework maps the different kinds of funny, whether animals have a sense of humour, why humour may have evolved as a mating signal, how dark humour works as a coping mechanism for illness and grief, what Sonja's study found about dark humour and the dark tetrad of personality traits, why sadism predicts dark humour enjoyment more than narcissism does, why a joke is only funny when no one is actually hurt, why men engage in mockery-based humour more than women, how anonymity online changes what people find acceptable to joke about, whether humour can be trained to make you happier, and why some people seem born without a sense of humour at all.Sonja Heintz online:Website: plymouth.ac.uk/staff/sonja-heintzResearch: Do Dark Humour Users Have Dark Tendencies, in Behavioral Sciences 20240:00 Introduction3:15 What positive psychology is5:10 The comic styles framework12:53 Defining humour and why we have it18:33 Humour as a defense mechanism22:10 Inside a dark humour study25:43 Do you have to be a psychopath32:38 Why men like dark humour more37:02 Being the target of a dark joke44:38 Dark humour in emergency services46:56 The history of humour52:46 Can humour make you happier55:21 People born without humour58:28 What Sonja is working on next1:04:33 Where to find Sonja's work