In search of names
Many Minds
Alright, friends—we’ve come to the end of the 2025 run of Many Minds! Our final episode of the year is an audio essay by yours truly. This is a classic format for the show, one that we only do every so often. Today’s essay is about names. It’s about the question of whether animals have something like names for each other. And it’s also about a deeper question: What even is a name? How do humans use names? How does the historical and ethnographic record kind of complicate our everyday understanding of what names are. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I do hope you...
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The value of animal cultures
Many Minds
Not long ago culture was considered rare in nature, maybe even uniquely human. But that's changed. We now know that the tree of life is buzzing with culture—and not just on a few lonely branches. Creatures great and small learn songs, migration routes, and feeding techniques from each other. Many species build up reservoirs of knowledge over generations. This has profound implications, not just for our understanding of the natural world, but also for our efforts to protect it. My guest today is . Philippa is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Exeter, with one foot in science and...
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What is memory for?
Many Minds
Everyone loves a good evolutionary puzzle. Why do we have appendices? Why do we dream? Why do we blush? At first glance, memory would not seem to be in this category. It's clearly useful to remember stuff, after all—to know where to find food, to remember your mistakes so you don't repeat them, to recall who’s friendly and who’s fierce. In fact, though, certain aspects of memory—when you hold them up to the light—turn out to be quite puzzling indeed. My guests today are and . Ali is a philosopher at the London School of Economics (LSE); Johannes is a philosopher at York University,...
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Of breeds and brains
Many Minds
It's hard to say exactly when, but some tens of thousands of years ago, our best friends were born. I'm referring, of course, to dogs. This didn't happen overnight—it was a long process. And it not only changed how those canids behaved and what they looked like, it also changed their brains. As wolves gave way to proto-dogs, and proto-dogs gave way to dingoes and dalmatians and Dobermanns and all the rest, their brains have continued to change. What can we learn from this singular saga? What does it tell us about dogs, about domestication, and about brains? My guest today is . Erin is...
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Monsters and their makers
Many Minds
It seems we've always had monsters among us. We've long been enthralled by dragons and giants, by the likes of Frankenstein and Godzilla and Dracula, by witches and werewolves and countless others. They roam our maps and creation myths; they crop up in our dreams, in our children's books, in our political rhetoric. Where do these beings spring from? What do they do for us? How have they changed over time? And, ultimately, what do our monsters say about their makers? My guests today are and . Both are historians of science and authors of recent books on monsters: Natalie's book is . Surekha's...
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The age of social AI
Many Minds
AI therapists and caregivers. Digital tutors and advisors and friends. Artificial lovers. Griefbots trained to imitate dead loved ones. Welcome, to the bustling world of AI-powered chatbots. This was once the stuff of science fiction, but it's becoming just the stuff of everyday life. What will these systems do to our society, to our relationships, to our social skills and motivations? Are these bots destined to leave us hollowed out, socially stunted, screen-addicted, and wary of good-old-fashioned, in-the-flesh human interaction? Or could they actually be harnessed for good? My guest today...
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Brains of a feather
Many Minds
Birds do the darnedest things. They fly, of course. They sing. They hunt in pitch darkness. They hide their food and remember where they put it. They use tools and migrate over astonishingly vast distances—sometimes even sleeping while in flight. How do they do all this? What's going on in their brains that makes these and other remarkable behaviors possible? How did their evolutionary path mold them into the incredible creatures they are today? My guests today are and . Andrew is a comparative neuroscientist and Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge in Canada. Georg is a...
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How nature restores the mind
Many Minds
One afternoon you decide to snub your responsibilities and go for a hike. You spend a few hours in the woods or the mountains. You study the bark of trees, you bathe in birdsong, you let your eyes roam along a distant ridgeline. And you come back feeling better, restored somehow—like you have more energy, more patience, more bandwidth. We've all, I'm guessing, had experiences like this. But what's behind these effects? Why would nature restore us? What's the evidence that it really does? And what is even being restored, actually? My guest today is . Marc is an Associate Professor in the...
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From the archive: Revisiting the dawn of human cognition
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a much-needed summer pause—we'll have new episodes for you later in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! ------- [originally aired June 1, 2023] There's a common story about the human past that goes something like this. For a few hundred thousand years during the Stone Age we were kind of limping along as a species, in a bit of a cognitive rut, let’s say. But then, quite suddenly, around 30 or 40 thousand years ago in Europe, we really started to come into our own. All of a sudden we became masters of art and ornament, of symbolism and...
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From the archive: Of molecules and memories
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a much-needed August pause—we'll have new episodes for you in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! _____ [originally aired February 8, 2024] Where do memories live in the brain? If you've ever taken a neuroscience class, you probably learned that they're stored in our synapses, in the connections between our neurons. The basic idea is that, whenever we have an experience, the neurons involved fire together in time, and the synaptic connections between them get stronger. In this way, our memories for those experiences become minutely etched...
info_outlineScientists who study the mind and brain have always been drawn to periods of intense change—to those life stages marked by rapid transformation. Infancy is one of those periods, of course. Adolescence is another. But there's a less-discussed time of life when our brains and minds have to reconfigure: the window surrounding when we become parents.
My guests today are Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. Winnie is a cognitive neuroscientist and postdoctoral scholar at the Yale Child Study Center. Jodi is a neuroscientist, author, and podcaster affiliated with the University of Rennes in France. Both are experts in the neural and cognitive changes that surround pregnancy, motherhood, and parenthood more generally.
Here, we talk about the idea of "matrescence" as a distinctive developmental stage. We discuss the research around memory loss in early motherhood, as well as findings that certain brain areas get fine-tuned during this period. We talk about postpartum anxiety, depression, and psychosis, and what may be causing them. We consider the finding that having children—and, in fact, having more children—seems to confer a protective effect on the aging brain. Throughout we talk about which of these changes also occur in fathers and other non-birthing parents. And we consider the difficulty of scientifically studying a period of life—parenthood—that is not only rife with social and psychological changes, but also fraught with expectations and narratives.
Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. As you'll hear, this research area is very much still in its infancy. There are definitely some provocative findings. But maybe more exciting are all the questions that remain.
Without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:45 – For more on the relationship between adolescence and “matrescence,” see this recent review paper by Winnie and colleagues in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
6:00 – For discussions surrounding the idea of “mommy brain,” see Jodi’s podcast, ‘Mommy Brain Revisited.’ See also this recent editorial by Jodi and colleagues in JAMA Neurology.
17:00 – A recent meta-analysis on cognitive impairment during pregnancy.
25:00 – A study by Winnie and colleagues showing subjective—but not objective—memory deficits in mothers one year after giving birth.
26:45 – An influential study showing structural changes in the brain following pregnancy. The same study also found that some of these changes correlated with measures of maternal attachment.
28:00 – A recent review article by Jodi and colleagues on the idea of neural fine-tuning in early motherhood.
41:45 – A recent review paper by Jodi and colleagues about the neural underpinnings of postpartum depression and anxiety.
44:00 – A review paper about postpartum psychosis.
51:00 – A study on the prevalence of postpartum depression across cultures.
58:00 – A 2014 review of research on mother-child synchrony.
1:00:00 – A recent study by Winnie and colleagues looking at how having children affects later life brain function. Another study by Winnie and colleagues on the same topic.
1:13:00 – Several studies have documented general changes in “Big 5” personality factors as people age. A study examining this in both American and Japanese participants is here.
1:18:00 – Since we recorded this interview, the publication date for the English version of Jodi’s book has been scheduled. It comes out in September 2023—more info here.
Recommendations
Dr. Orchard recommends:
Baby Brain, Sarah McKay
Mother Brain, Chelsea Conaboy
Dr. Pawluski recommends:
Matrescence, by Lucy Jones
After the Storm, by Emma Jane Unsworth
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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