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Episode 45: Rounded Brains and Balanced "Play Diets"

Very Bad Wizards

Our Brain Wiring Isn't Set

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Our brain wiring isn't set, it changes depending on what we do with it. If your son spends all day building robots out of Lego, the parts of his brain responsible for spatial skills will work brilliantly. By giving children a wider range of toys and experiences, parents can help them develop a properly rounded brain. It's not to say that a girl can't play with a doll or a boy shoot a toy gun. So they're not going to ban girls from playing with dolls or boys shooting toy guns, but they should also have access to other toys as part of a balanced play diet.

A British tabloid article about kids, brains, and spatial skills somehow provokes the biggest argument ever on the podcast. Dave and Tamler get into it about gender, toys, properly rounded brains, and balanced "play diets." Is Dave a sanctimonious toe-the-line academic liberal? Is Tamler a Fox-News watching, mysoginist genetic determinist? Do they actually disagree about anything?

Plus Dave takes Tamler back after his fling with Partially Examined Life, and we discuss whether the new documentary The Unbelievers the atheist version of God is Not Dead?

Links

The Partially Examined Life podcast, and Tamler's Precognition of Ep. 93. [partiallyexaminedlife.com]
Girls and boys DO have different brains – should they have different toys? by Rachel Carlyle [express.co.uk]
The Unbelievers [unbelieversmovie.com]
My Growing Disappointment with the New Atheist Movement: A Review of the The UnBelievers. Ami Palmer. [missiontotransition.blogspot.com]
Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002). Math= male, me= female, therefore math≠ me. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83, 44. [briannosek.com]
Cvencek, D., Meltzoff, A. N., & Greenwald, A. G. (2011). Math–gender stereotypes in elementary school children. Child development, 82, 766-779. [washington.edu]

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