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More reading & sources:

• Fantastic article which echos many of our arguments here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/18/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/
• Science article which summarizes dire wolves news & science: https://www.science.org/content/article/what-s-deal-dire-wolves-iconic-predators-may-have-been-neanderthals-wolf-world
• Article which leaked an internal memo from US interior secretary which said, “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/
• ... which is also discussed in this very good Vox reporting: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/407781/dire-wolves-deextinction-colossal-biosciences
• Updates on recent cuts to NSF: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01263-0

Notes:

• Ashley said bioRxiv is federally-funded, she meant to say the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) archive, where Colossal posted the dire wolf genome, is federally funded
• Here’s what Embark does tell you about “Wolfiness”: https://help.embarkvet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053867714-What-is-Wolfiness

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SHOW NOTES: 

Cat wants you to know she read a *lot* of research for this episode. Major highlights we specifically drew from, and quote sources, were aross three reviews: 

Cat found this one especially helpful and refers to it the most, and this review also proposes the Interpretation Account of math anxiety: 

Ramirez, G., Shaw, S. T., & Maloney, E. A. (2018). Math anxiety: Past research, promising interventions, and a new interpretation framework. Educational psychologist, 53(3), 145-164. 

Amland, T., Grande, G., Scherer, R., Lervåg, A., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2024). Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. 

Chang, H., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). The math anxiety-math performance link and its relation to individual and environmental factors: A review of current behavioral and psychophysiological research. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 10, 33–38.

We briefly mentioned tDCS. An introduction to this technique (used both for therapeutic applications and in scientific studies) can be found here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5702643/ 

The specific study Cat & Ashley talk about, with math anxious adults, is this one: Sarkar, A., Dowker, A., & Cohen, K. R. (2014). Cognitive enhancement or cognitive cost: Trait-specific outcomes of brain stimulation in the case of mathematics anxiety. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 16605–16610. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3129-14.2014

Cat also mentions the connection between teachers’ gender stereotype endorsements and teachers’ math anxiety, and students’ math achievement. This study is here: Beilock, S. L., Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. C. (2010). Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(5), 1860-1863. 

Further helpful reading & evidence about both parental and teachers’ impact on math attitudes and gender from the same authors: 

Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2012). The role of parents and teachers in the development of gender-related math attitudes. Sex roles, 66, 153-166.

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How do human beings work together and learn to be, well, human? Stepping out of our comfortable and cozy silos and learning to communicate our value in new contexts might just be the key to unlocking shared innovation.

In this episode, we explore this question with Cristine Legare, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin interested in the interplay of the universal human mind and the variations of culture, who studies cognitive and cultural evolution and the design of social and behavioral change interventions.

The Center for Applied Cognitive Science, which Cristine founded and directs: https://www.centerforappliedcogsci.com/
Her website, where you can keep up with more of her work as well as her upcoming book on ritual: https://cristinelegare.com/

Cat also mentions the book How Infrastructure Works, which is by Deb Chachra and can be found here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Cat mentions an overlay journal she and her collaborators write to translate more scientific papers for software teams; it's called The Developer Science Review and you can read our issues here: https://dsl.pubpub.org/issues

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In a special edition of Change, Technically, Ashley and Cat get into the facts of the NIH: what it does, how it works, and the consequences of disrupting its essential work. The NIH creates enormous economic impact, 400,000 jobs across the US, and sets science in motion that touches all of us.

How to contact your representatives:

1. Dial (202) 224-3121
2. Tell autoresponder your representative name or zip code when prompted
3. Speak directly to staffer or leave voicemail: “My name is ___, I’m a constituent in [town]. (If clinician/scientist, say so) The NIH freeze harms research and patients and must be lifted immediately. I also believe that it is important to maintain funding mechanisms that improve and diversify the NIH workforce, including those labeled as 'diversity or DEI efforts'”

Relevant executive orders:

• https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/initial-rescissions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions/

Study on new drugs and NIH funding:

E. Galkina Cleary, J.M. Beierlein, N.S. Khanuja, L.M. McNamee, F.D. Ledley, Contribution of NIH funding to new drug approvals 2010–2016, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115 (10) 2329-2334, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715368115 (2018).

United for Medical Research resource where you can look up NIH impact for your state along with many resources about NIH impact: https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/ 

News articles on pausing of NIH meetings and travel:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00231-y
• https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-hits-nih-devastating-freezes-meetings-travel-communications-and-hiring
• https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/health/nih-scientists-purchase-supplies-trump-administration-pauses-communications/index.html

Information about STARTneuro:

• http://startneuro.ucsd.edu
• https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/transfer-students-triumph-class-2024#manuel 
• Support the STARTneuro program directly: https://crowdsurf.ucsd.edu/campaigns/support-the-startneuro-prog

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In this special 'Change, Technically: Holidays On The Couch' edition of the podcast, Ashley & Cat discuss their philosophies of measurement and goal tracking, debate the value of data, and ponder the behavioral science of doing the stuff we resolve to do.

Notes:

Cat & Ashley mention this essay: https://issues.org/limits-of-data-nguyen/

Show correction: Ashley wrongly said the Nguyen essay above had reminded her about Goodhart’s Law (the idea that as soon as we measure something, it loses meaning). Rather, she re-discovered it in Calling Bullshit by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin D. West. Ashley’s error explains why Cat was so confused about her comments on the essay, oops. :)

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Much like open source software, open science is a path to distributed collaboration. By sharing the data from experiments and investigations open and available, scientists can multiply impact and discovery for teams they've never even met.

Our guest, Saskia de Vries, talks to us about her work at the Allen Institute, including accelerating the pace of discovery by making scientific data available to everyone who wants it.

Credits
Saskia de Vries, guest
Ashley Juavinett, host + producer
Cat Hicks, host + producer
Danilo Campos, producer + editor

You can learn more about the Allen Institute on their website: https://alleninstitute.org/

Read some of Saskia's recent thoughts on sharing data in neuroscience here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/85550

The CRCNS open data repository that Saskia mentions: https://crcns.org/

Read about the FAIR principles for scientific data management and stewardship: https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618 

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Can creativity mean more for software than productivity? Do we need to let go of “hardcore developer stuff”? Will getting more people to major in computer science fix everything? Ashley and Cat chat with Change, Technically’s first guest star SUE SMITH about developer learning and the future of software teams as technology changes.

Credits
Sue Smith, guest
Ashley Juavinett, host + producer
Cat Hicks, host + producer
Danilo Campos, producer + editor

While not mentioned in the episode, we would be remiss if we did not link you to Sue's illustrated collections of HTTP status codes:

- Golden Girls variant
- Keanu Reeves variant

Cat mentioned this paper by Dr. Natasha Quadlin as an example of how the same achievement information can be interpreted very differently by biased viewers during hiring:

Quadlin, N. (2018). The mark of a woman’s record: Gender and academic performance in hiring. American sociological review, 83(2), 331-360.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0003122418762291

Dr. Quadlin has many fascinating projects on inequality and a book with Brian Powell tackling questions about inequality and college: https://www.russellsage.org/publications/who-should-pay

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Neuroscience is the hottest STEM field. Why? What does a neuroscientist actually do? Is the brain some mechanically deterministic box configured at birth? Cat knows Ashley has the answers, and now you will, too.

Credits
Ashley Juavinett, host + producer
Cat Hicks, host + producer
Danilo Campos, producer + editor

For an incisive breakdown of “the crimes against dopamine” please read the piece of that title by Mark Humphries.

The myth of mental illness book that Ashley mentioned was written in 1961 and we don’t really think it’s worth reading.

The longitudinal fMRI study that Ashley contributed to while in graduate school: Stewart JL, Juavinett AL, May AC, Davenport PW, Paulus MP (2015) Do you feel alright? Attenuated neural processing of aversive interoceptive stimuli in current stimulant users. Psychophysiology 52:249–262.

This is the Twitter/X account that highlights when a study happens IN MICE: https://x.com/justsaysinmice. And here’s the creator’s motivation: https://jamesheathers.medium.com/in-mice-explained-77b61b598218 

The study that recorded from someone’s brain while they died is Vicente et al. (2022) Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience 14. See also this commentary about their claims.

We once again mentioned field-specific ability beliefs. Here’s Cat’s blogpost on her own research.

This study explores the basic dynamics of field-specific ability beliefs and shows their connection to gender inequities in academic disciplines: Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347(6219), 262-265.

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What makes someone technical? What are our preconceptions about "technical" skills? How do those beliefs influence outcomes, and the success of who we include? Ashley and Cat dig in.

Credits
Ashley Juavinett, host + producer
Cat Hicks, host + producer
Danilo Campos, producer + editor

On Communities of Practice, Ashley has published a paper on the impact of the program she co-directs:

Zuckerman, A. L., Juavinett, A. L., Macagno, E. R., Bloodgood, B. L., Gaasterland, T., Artis, D., & Lo, S. M. (2022). A case study of a novel summer bridge program to prepare transfer students for research in biological sciences. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research, 4(1), 27. Available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s43031-022-00067-w

On Ambient Belonging, here is a great representative article that includes the evidence Ashley was sharing about the impact that stereotypical cues can have for women in technical spaces:

Cheryan, S., Plaut, V. C., Davies, P. G., & Steele, C. M. (2009). Ambient belonging: how stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(6), 1045. PDF here:

https://sparq.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj19021/files/media/file/cheryan_et_al._2009_-_ambient_belonging.pdf

The cogsci paper Cat mentioned is this one: Fendinger, N. J., Dietze, P., & Knowles, E. D. (2023). Beyond cognitive deficits: how social class shapes social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(6), 528-538.

Here's an article that's a good introduction to Alison Gopnik's Child as Scientist work:
Gopnik, A. (2012). Scientific thinking in young children: Theoretical advances, empirical research, and policy implications. Science, 337(6102), 1623-1627.
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1223416

Cat mentioned Contest Cultures in tech and Field-specific ability beliefs. Here’s Cat’s blogpost on her own research.

This is a study that explores how Contest Cultures lead to exclusion: Vial, A. C., Muradoglu, M., Newman, G. E., & Cimpian, A. (2022). An emphasis on brilliance fosters masculinity-contest cultures. Psychological Science, 33(4), 595-612.

And this study explores the basic dynamics of field-specific ability beliefs and shows their connection to gender inequities in academic disciplines: Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions acros

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What does it take to make STEM work more accessible and effective? Ashley and Cat introduce their work and their values by answering this question.

Credits
Ashley Juavinett, host + producer
Cat Hicks, host + producer
Danilo Campos, producer + editor

Ashley on teaching coding to neuroscientists:

Juavinett, A. L. (2022). The next generation of neuroscientists needs to learn how to code, and we need new ways to teach them. Neuron, 110(4), 576-578.

Zuckerman, A. L., & Juavinett, A. L. (2024, March). When Coding Meets Biology: The Tension Between Access and Authenticity in a Contextualized Coding Class. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (pp. 1491-1497). PDF here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3626252.3630966

Sense of Belonging is a widely-studied concept across the psychological sciences. Cat’s work on Developer Thriving includes a measure of Belonging on software teams:

Hicks, C. M., Lee, C. S., & Ramsey, M. (2024). Developer Thriving: four sociocognitive factors that create resilient productivity on software teams. IEEE Software. PDF here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10491133

This recent article provides a helpful commentary, summarizing an impressive collaboration across 22 campuses and 26k+ students: Walton, G. M., Murphy, M. C., Logel, C., Yeager, D. S., Goyer, J. P., Brady, S. T., ... & Krol, N. (2023). Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college?. Science, 380(6644), 499-505. PDF here: https://www.greggmuragishi.com/uploads/5/7/1/5/57150559/walton_et_al_2023.pdf

Mark Appelbaum, Cat’s first stats teacher, had a positive impact on many, many students. You can read about his life here: https://psychology.ucsd.edu/people/profiles/mappelbaum-in-memoriam.html

Schools, Technology and Who gets to Play?

Rafalow, M. H. (2014). The digital divide in classroom technology use: A comparison of three schools. International Journal of Sociology of Education, 3(1), 67-100.

Rafalow, M. H., & Puckett, C. (2022). Sorting machines: digital technology and categorical inequality in Education. Educational researcher, 51(4), 274-278.

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