Stay ConnectedAshley Juavinett, PhD and Cat Hicks, PhD explore technical skills, the science of innovation, STEM pathways, and our beliefs about who gets to be technical—so you can be a better leader and we can all build a better future.
Ashley, a neuroscientist, and Cat, a psychologist for software teams, tell stories of change from classrooms to workplaces.
Also, they’re married.
Copyright: © 2024 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:
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 patient cells
Ashley underestimated how many proof-of-concepts there have been for gene editing in cells derived from patients themselves. There actually are some exciting clinical trials to treat various diseases (though nothing at a large scale as of yet):
Core research papers
The original “Yamanaka” paper (actually Takahashi & Yamanaka, 2006): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16904174/
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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.
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SHOW NOTES
two articles tackling dopamine nation:
other great takes on this topic:
things that cause dopamine release, as studied with PET:
more papers that fueled the sciency talk here:
songs covered in the episode:
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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
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📚 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
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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 effects we also talk about in this episode, can be found here:
https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-opportunities
Cat also wrote a recent piece about the complexity of measuring the impact of AI in Software Organizations: https://www.fightforthehuman.com/how-not-to-measure-the-roi-from-ai-in-your-software-organization/
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This isn't the episode we planned, but it's what is on our minds right now. We talk about the power of knowing your neighbors and a few ways in which we've found solace and meaning in building our local community. Here's a glimpse into our playbook -- tell us about yours in the comments.
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The story from Janet Hyde about her motivations to get a grant and "fight with data" can be found here:
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/janet-shibley-hyde-sinks-stereotypes-with-data
Cat summarizes a ton of research for this episode. Key citations, most of which contain large literature reviews themselves:
Brescoll, V. L., Dawson, E., & Uhlmann, E. L. (2010). Hard won and easily lost: The fragile status of leaders in gender-stereotype-incongruent occupations. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1640-1642.
Carr, M., Jessup, D. L., & Fuller, D. (1999). Gender differences in first-grade mathematics strategy use: Parent and teacher contributions. Journal for research in mathematics education, 30(1), 20-46.
Del Toro, J., Legette, K., Christophe, N. K., Pasco, M., Miller-Cotto, D., & Wang, M. T. (2024). When ethnic–racial discrimination from math teachers spills over and predicts the math adjustment of nondiscriminated adolescents: The mediating role of math classroom climate perceptions. Developmental psychology.
Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2010). Cross-national patterns of gender differences in mathematics: a meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 136(1), 103.
Gesuelli, K. A., Miller-Cotto, D., & Barbieri, C. A. (2025). Variability in math achievement growth among students with early math learning difficulties and the role of school supports. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2006). Gender similarities in mathematics and science. Science, 314(5799), 599-600.
Hyde, J. S., Lindberg, S. M., Linn, M. C., Ellis, A. B., & Williams, C. C. (2008). Gender similarities characterize math performance. Science, 321(5888), 494-495.
Hyde, J. S., & Mertz, J. E. (2009). Reply to Crespi: Gender similarities, culture, and mathematics performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), E103-E103.
Kane, J. M., & Mertz, J. E. (2012). Debunking myths about gender and mathematics performance. Notices of the AMS, 59(1), 10-21.
Makowski, M. B., Lubienski, S. T., Ganley, C. M., Sianturi, I. A. J., & Hart, S. A. (2025). Gender differences in computation strategies: Evidence across adolescent and adult samples. British Journal of Educational Psychology.
Master, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Cheryan, S. (2021). Gender stereotypes about interests start early and cause gender disparities in computer science and engineering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(48), e2100030118.
Miller-
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First of all, in this episode you'll learn why Ashley has shipped ONE THOUSAND COCKROACHES through the mail. Second of all, Ashley shares about getting scientists to tell stories, taking risks to share knowledge, and doing science communication in places that don't look like a university campus.
We talk about work with the following amazing organizations:
If you want more science storytelling in your life, please check out The Story Collider.
The recording kits we sent to students were made by Backyard Brains.
If you're curious about Ashley's neurobiology lab class, you can learn more about it here.
Ashley also wants to give a shout out to the amazing UC San Diego staff who made shipping cockroaches during a global pandemic possible, and who still maintain the ongoing roach colony, occasionally even feeding them donuts.
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Ashley, Cat, and Danilo reflect on the major themes after one year of Change, Technically.
For more information on consulting with Cat, please visit https://www.catharsisinsight.com/
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SHOW NOTES:
On women’s loss of status in gender incongruent professions: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610384744
On links between self-compassion and prosocial behavior: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4026714/
On psychological essentialism: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(04)00183-4
On Shigeru Miyamoto's development of Donkey Kong (Note the line in this article, "Yamauchi [Nintendo's President] assured him [Miyamoto] his lack of technical skills would not be a problem."): https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-secret-history-of-i-donkey-kong-i-
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SHOW NOTES
Dominic Packer’s Normative Conflict Model of Dissent is described in this paper as well as his other work: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868307309606
Cat also mentions Mina Cikara’s work on coalitional cognition. This is a good representation of that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065260121000137
Cat also mentions The Power of Us, which is by Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, and a book she enjoyed! https://www.powerofus.online/
From the same authors, this piece talks about intergroup bias: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315735160-23/dynamic-nature-identity-brain-behavior-dominic-packer-jay-van-bavel
Cat mentions a study about socially shared retrieval induced forgetting, that’s here: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-18938-001
James Baldwin: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5853-you-think-your-pain-and-your-heartbreak-are-unprecedented-in
https://www.pbs.org/video/james-baldwin-suffering-bridge-of7cq3/
Asch’s research on conformity has been reexamined in work such as this: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-24067-001 and this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_1
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2420200104
Babies attending to prosocial actions: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61517-3
The research that we discuss about the targeted-universal message can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/1/pgae588/7942411
Further work on this is here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0009.12651
Podcast we mention with Tressie McMillan Cottom is this one: https://moneywithkatie.com/status-power-economy
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