Welcome to our first full-length episode! The guest for our inaugural interview is Dr. Andrew Barron, a neuroethologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. (In case you’re wondering what a neuroethologist is, don’t worry, we get to that.)
Andrew specializes in honey bees. He studies their minute brains, their natural behaviors, and their remarkable cognitive abilities. We probably don’t have to tell you that bees are cool. Humans have been fascinated with them for centuries. But one thing that makes Andrews’s work especially cool is how it sheds light on questions that are bigger than bees—questions about how minds work, about how brains support conscious experience, about learning and memory, and a lot else. As you may have heard, bees have seen better days—like so much else in our natural world, they’re starting to show signs of stress. We talk about that, too.
Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the conversation.
