We're on a brief winter break right now, but we'll be back later in January. To tide you over, here's one of our favorite episodes from 2021: a conversation with Dr. Luke Rendell about culture in whales and dolphins. Enjoy! -- Whales and dolphins are, without a doubt, some of the most charismatic, enigmatic creatures around. Part of what draws us to them is that—different as our worlds are from theirs, different as our bodies are—we sense a certain kinship. We know they’ve got big brains, much ...
Jan 07, 2022•1 hr 16 min
A pharmacologist and a philosopher walk into a bar . This is not the start of a joke—it’s the start of our 2021 finale and our first ever theme episode. The idea with these theme episodes is that we have not one but two guests, from different fields, coming together to discuss a topic of mutual interest. Our theme for this first one—in the spirit of the holiday season—is intoxication and our guests are Dr. Oné Pagán and Dr. Edward Slingerland . Oné is a Professor of Biology at West Chester Unive...
Dec 22, 2021•1 hr 19 min
You may not remember much about it, but chances are last night you went on a journey. As you slept, your brain concocted a story—maybe a sprawl of interconnected stories. It took you to some unreal places, gave you superpowers, unearthed old acquaintances, and twisted your perceptions. Meanwhile, billions of brains all around you, up and down the tree of life, were probably doing something very similar—dreaming, that is. But why do we do this? What could possibly be the function of these nightly...
Dec 08, 2021•48 min
I’m betting you’ve heard about the next generation of artificial intelligence, the one that’s just around the corner. It’s going to be pervasive, all-competent, maybe super-intelligent. We’ll rely on it to drive cars, write novels, diagnose diseases, and make scientific breakthroughs. It will do all these things better, faster, more safely than we bumbling humans ever could. The thing is, we’ve been promised this for years. If this next level of AI is coming, it seems to be taking its time. Migh...
Nov 24, 2021•53 min
If you're a brain, it can be tough to stay organized. The world comes at you fast, from all angles, in different sensory formats—sights, sounds, smells. You need to take it all in, but you also need to parse it, process it, categorize it, remember and learn from it. And of course you also need react to it, preferably appropriately. So what do you do—as a brain—to handle this organizational overload? Well, for one thing, you make maps. Lots of maps. My guest today is Dr. Rebecca Schwarzlose, a co...
Nov 10, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Our planet is home to an astonishing diversity of plants— close to 400,000 species . Over the millennia, indigenous communities around the world have been studying those plants, experimenting with them, using them as a sort of free-growing pharmacy. Certain species, prepared in certain ways, might be used for digestive ailments; others for the skin, teeth, or liver. But this vast trove of medicinal knowledge is now under threat. Under two threats, really—we’re losing plant species and we’re losi...
Oct 27, 2021•42 min
Welcome back folks! Today’s episode circles some big questions. What does it mean to be human? What’s distinctive about the human mind and the human mode of being? What is human nature—if such a thing exists—and how could we catch a glimpse of it? Should we go looking for it in other primate species? Should we look deep in our fossil record? My guest today is Dr. Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the other of a number of books, most recently The Creative S...
Oct 13, 2021•1 hr 16 min
Welcome back folks! Today, we’ve got an audio essay for you. I won’t say too too much—don’t want to spoil it—but it’s about pupils. Not as in students, but as in the dark cores of our eyes. This one of those that’s been in the works for a little while. About a year ago I started collecting all the cool new pupil-related stuff coming out. Then at some point this summer some extra cool stuff came out and I said, “That’s it—time to do it, time to pull this material together into some kind of episod...
Sep 29, 2021•14 min
We’ve got something special for you today folks: bats. That’s right: bats. Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his famous essay on what it’s like to be a bat, these flying, furry, nocturnal, shrieky mammals have taken up roost in our scientific imaginations. They’ve become a kind of poster child—or poster creature?—for the idea that our world is full of truly alien minds, inhabiting otherworldly lifeworlds. On today’s show, we dive deep into these other minds—and into some of their less appreciated ca...
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 19 min
Why do we make music? Why do we love music? Well, you say, because it's in our nature. Our brains were sculpted over the course of evolution to delight in sonic sequences, to remember melodies, to revel in rhythms. Perhaps. But, actually, not everyone thinks music is an adaptation. Not everything we do was directly shaped by natural selection. And even if music was an evolutionary adaptation, that raises a bunch of further questions, like: Why would musical abilities have been an advantage? Why ...
Sep 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Welcome back friends! Cue the kazoos and the champagne—after a short summer snooze, we’re much revived and ready for a third season of Many Minds ! I could not be more thrilled about the guest we have to help kick things off: Dr. Alison Gopnik. Alison is a Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s the author of several books, including most recently The Gardener and the Carpenter , and she writes the “Mind and Matter” column fo...
Aug 18, 2021•1 hr 5 min
We're on summer break this week. Back in a couple weeks with the kick-off of Season 3! In the meanwhile, here's a favorite episode from our archives: a conversation with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes about her 2020 book, Kindred . Enjoy! --- You probably think you know the Neanderthals. We’ve all been hearing about them since we were kids, after all. They were all over the comics; they were in museum dioramas and on cartoons. They were always cast as mammoth-eating, cave-dwelling dimwits—nasty brutes,...
Aug 04, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Preferences, decisions, goals . When you hear these words, you probably think of humans. Or, if not humans then maybe charismatic animals—you know, great apes, certain species of birds, maybe dogs. In any case, I bet you think of creatures that are more or less cognitively sophisticated. I know I do. But, according to some researchers, this is an outmoded and over-narrow way of thinking. They propose that decisions and goals—not to mention other fancy-seeming constructs like memory, problem-solv...
Jul 21, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Public opinion can sometimes shift dramatically over time. Beliefs that were widely held a few decades ago may now seem antiquated or even repugnant. But what’s driving these shifts? Is it individual people changing their minds? Or is it just folks with old-fashioned worldviews dying out and being replaced? My guest on today’s show is Dr. Stephen Vaisey . He’s a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Duke University and co-director of the compellingly named Worldview Lab. In a recent pa...
Jul 07, 2021•43 min
You’ve no doubt heard that—as humans—our sense of smell is, well, kind of pathetic. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, that we have advanced senses—especially sight and hearing—and then lowly, underdeveloped ones—taste and smell. It’s an idea that has been repeated and elaborated over and over, throughout Western intellectual history. Along with it comes a related notion: that smells are nearly impossible to talk about, that odors simply can’t be captured in words. These ideas may be o...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Let’s say you’re out on the open sea, having a leisurely sail, when you suddenly encounter not one but two sinking boats. One is a boat with two dogs in it; the other is a boat with a single human in it. You can only save one of the boats, so which one do you pick? The answer may seem obvious—you save the boat with the human, right? For many adults—even those who have a special love for animals—there’s little question that a human life is simply worth more, perhaps way more, than an animal life....
Jun 09, 2021•31 min
Welcome back folks! We’ve got an audio essay for you this week. It touches on art, music, the skin, the spine, individual differences, vestigial responses, tiny muscles. There’s even some Darwin thrown in there. It’s a fun one. Hope you enjoy it! A text version of this essay is available on Medium. Notes and links 1:30 – The novel that very recently gave me goosebumps. 2:00 – A brief discussion of Nabokov and his ideas about the tell-tale tingle. 2:45 – Some terms for goosebumps in other languag...
May 26, 2021•13 min
Whales and dolphins are, without a doubt, some of the most charismatic, enigmatic creatures around. Part of what draws us to them is that—different as our worlds are from theirs, different as our bodies are—we sense a certain kinship. We know they’ve got big brains, much like we do. We know that some cetacean species live long lives, sing songs, and form close bonds. If you’re like me, you may have also wondered about other parallels. For example, do whales and dolphins have something we might ...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Have you ever seen what seemed to be a spirit? Or heard a voice from an unseen source? Or maybe just sensed a presence and found yourself with goosebumps all over? These kinds of experiences can be incredibly powerful— life-altering, in fact—but they don’t happen often, and they don’t happen to everyone. So what drives this individual variation? Why do some of us have these extraordinary experiences while others never do? Could it be something about our personalities? Or our cultures? Could it h...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Greetings, all! It’s been a minute, but we’re back, we’re refreshed, and we’re buzzing with excitement about the next few months of Many Minds . This episode we’re talking about one of humanity’s most powerful cognitive tools: numerals. Numerals are those unassuming symbols we use whenever we read clocks, check calendars, dial phone numbers, or do arithmetic. My guest on today’s show is Stephen Chrisomalis . Steve is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Michigan, w...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 17 min
We're doing some spring cleaning this week, but please enjoy this pick from our archives. It's a conversation with Dr. Alex Taylor that aired originally in September 2020. We've got a terrific spring lined up for the show. See you in two weeks! --- There’s a viral video clip from 2014—maybe you’ve seen it. It features a subject in a pretty remarkable psychology experiment. He’s put in room full of different apparatuses, one of which contains reward. After sizing up the room, the subject gets sta...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Welcome back folks! Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but rumor is that in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the signs of spring are starting to emerge—little buds and shocks of color. We’ll be monitoring the situation closely over the coming weeks. My guest today is Melanie Challenger. Melanie is a writer and researcher whose work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world. The subject of our conversation is her latest book, How to be Animal: A New History of Wha...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Do you remember the first time you made a good joke? Most likely not. Turns out the first forms of humor emerge super early in infancy, before the first birthday even. We’re not talking about stand-up routines here. We’re talking about a more basic but no less interesting behavior: teasing. In what’s known as “playful teasing,” one individual intentionally violates another’s expectations for the sake of amusement. In this week’s episode, we’re going behind a recent paper that ask whether apes al...
Mar 03, 2021•48 min
Guess what folks: we are celebrating a birthday this week. That’s right, Many Mind s has reached the ripe age of one year old. Not sure how old that is in podcast years, exactly, but it’s definitely a landmark that we’re proud of. Please no gifts, but, as always, you’re encouraged to share the show with a friend, write a review, or give us a shout out on social. To help mark this milestone we’ve got a great episode for you. My guest is the writer, Brian Christian. Brian is a visiting scholar at ...
Feb 17, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Greetings friends and happy February! Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna, an Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics. Michael’s research takes on a suite of topics that all start from a single big question: Why are we so different from other animals? Part of the answer has to do with our neural hardware. There’s no question we’ve got big brains—and Michael has some cool things to say about why they may have gotten so big. But Mich...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Today we’ve got another “behind the paper” episode for you. In it, we’re talking about some of the most alien-seeming yet charismatic creatures around. I chatted with Dr. Alex Schnell , a Comparative Psychologist and Research Fellow at Cambridge University. We discuss a paper she recently published with a few colleagues titled, ‘ How intelligent is a cephalopod ?’ I’ve been charmed by cephalopods for awhile now—octopuses specifically. Maybe you have too. You’ve probably seen those videos of octo...
Jan 20, 2021•42 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Welcome to our first episode of 2021! Super excited to get this year going—we’ve got, I promise, lots of great conversations in store for you. But this week, to kick things off, we have a brief audio essay. It’s about tracks—that’s right, footprints. This might seem at first glance like a narrow topic but, fear not, it contains multitudes. I started thinking about this theme a month or so ago after the first snowfall of the winter. It was just a dusting but perfect conditions for clear, distinct...
Jan 06, 2021•15 min
When you think of domestication, I bet you think of farm animals—you know cows and pigs and alpacas—or maybe house pets. You might think of corn or wheat or rice. You probably don’t think of us—humans, Homo sapiens . But, by the end of today’s conversation, I’m guessing you will. For this episode I talked with Dr. Brian Hare of Duke University. He’s a core member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience there, as well a Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology. Along with Vanessa Woods, he’s the a...
Dec 09, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Welcome back folks! Today’s episode is a conversation about the nature of knowledge. I talked with Dr. Briana Toole, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. Briana specializes in epistemology—the branch of philosophy that grapples with all things knowledge-related. In her work she is helping develop a new framework called “standpoint epistemology.” The basic idea is that what we know depends in part on our social position—on our gender, our race, and other factors. We ...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Today we’ve got another installment in our “behind the paper” format. In case you missed the first iteration, these are 30-minute or so interviews that dig into recent notable papers. This episode takes on a timeless question: Do concepts differ from one language to the next, or are they basically the same? Maybe you think we already know the answer. You’ve probably heard of cases where one language labels a concept that other languages don’t—the German word schaudenfreude , or the Danish notion...
Nov 11, 2020•34 min•Season 2Ep. 6
