From the archive: Philosophers on psychedelics
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We will be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired May 14, 2025] Some call it the "psychedelic renaissance." In the last decade or so, interest in psychedelic drugs has surged—and not just among Silicon Valley types and psychiatrists and neuroscientists. It's also surged among a stereotypically soberer crowd: academic philosophers. The reasons are clear. With their varied and sometimes transformative effects, psychedelics raise ethical questions, epistemological questions,...
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The origins of Darwin's ideas
Many Minds
No discipline, no sphere of intellectual life, has been untouched by the work of Charles Darwin. He died in 1882 but his ideas are very much alive; they're now central to how we understand the natural world, the human mind, non-human minds, plants, biogeography, morality and emotion, culture, language, and more. But where did his ideas come from? How did they grow out of his travels, his social circle, his hobbies, his particular cast of mind? My guest today is . Janet is Professor Emerita at Harvard University in the department of the History of Science. She is perhaps best known for...
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The sparkling deep
Many Minds
It’s tempting to see bioluminescence as an oddity, one of those rare eccentricities of life on earth. And, on land, maybe that’s true. But our planet is mostly water, and out in the open ocean bioluminescence is utterly commonplace. Creatures of all shapes and sorts sparkle and glow, glitter and pulse. But what are these displays for? Why did they evolve? How did light become the currency of the deep? My guest today is . Sönke is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Duke University, where he and his research group study the visual ecology of the ocean. He’s the author of...
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Is Man the Hunter just a myth?
Many Minds
There's a story about of our past that you know well. It goes like this: At some point earlier in human evolution, we started to hunt. Men in particular—perhaps channeling some deep-seated aggressive impulses—began to seek out big game. This new food source, this bonanza of calories, was what allowed our brains to expand. It changed our bodies and our societies and sent our species off on a whole new track. In short, Man the Hunter made us human. This story—told in different versions, with different points of emphasis—has circulated for decades. It's been debunked and revived, rejected...
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Babies, dogs, and the riddles of word learning
Many Minds
It's kind of astonishing, really, that kids ever learn words. Each one poses a little riddle. Does this sound string refer to a person? A category of things? Or maybe some other feature of the blooming, buzzing world? And yet word learning happens. In fact, we now know it begins earlier in infancy than we realized. And we now know, further, that dogs (or at least some dogs) understand words as well. So how does this happen? What do babies and dogs really know about words? And how might we go about figuring this all out? My guests today are and Dr. Claudia Fugazza. Elika is an Associate...
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The inner life of the hand
Many Minds
Newton saw in the human hand proof of the divine; Darwin saw a key to our species' success. Many others, too, have described the hand in hyperbolic terms, as a paragon of design, a cornerstone of human uniqueness, an engine of our achievements. But what makes the human hand so powerful? Is it the proportions of the fingers? Is it the opposability of the thumb? Or, could it be none of this? Could it be that the real power of our hands lies—not in the physical design—but elsewhere, out of sight? My guest today is . Matt is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of...
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From the archive: The cuttlefish and its coat of many colors
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're skipping a beat to take care of some spring housekeeping tasks. We will be back in May! In the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired April 30, 2025] We humans have a hard time becoming invisible. For better or worse, we're basically stuck with the skin and body we have; we’re pretty fixed in our color, our shape, our overall appearance. And so we're fascinated by creatures that aren't—creatures that morph to meet the moment, that can functionally disappear, that can shape-shift on a dime. And no creatures are more skilled,...
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Illuminating cave art
Many Minds
Deep in our past, in the dark depths of caves, our ancestors did something strange and beautiful. Working by firelight, some doodled little designs. Others made hand stencils. Some saw a bulge of rock, or a crack in the wall, and thought to turn it into a horse or a bison. Why did they make this art? What did it mean to them? Who were these artists? These questions are old—very old—but thanks to new methods and new interpretive frameworks, archaeologists are beginning to see them in a new light. My guest today is . Izzy is an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark,...
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What can AI teach us about the mind?
Many Minds
Everyone is talking about AI these days. Often these conversations are about how AI might upend education, or work, or social life, or maybe civilization itself. But among cognitive scientists and psychologists the conversation inevitably drifts toward other questions. What does this latest generation of AI tell us about the human mind? Is it putting old ideas and theories to rest? Is it ushering in new ones? Will AI—in other words—also upend cognitive science? My guests today are and . Mike is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where focuses on language learning and...
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Mutualisms all the way down
Many Minds
No one is an island. We all depend on each other in critical, often tangled ways. And when I say "we" and "each other" I don't just mean humans. Yes, we humans rely on other humans. But we also rely on bees, yeasts, dogs, bacteria, and countless other creatures big and small. These interspecies dependencies—or mutualisms, as biologists call them—have deflected and inflected our history. And there's no doubt they will also inflect our future. My guest today is . Rob is Professor of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, where he studies the creatures and ecologies all...
info_outlinePuppies wrestling and mock-biting each other. Toddlers playing hide and seek. Kittens pouncing—repeatedly—on a toy mouse. You've no doubt looked on at scenes like this with amusement. And you've no doubt seen some of those viral videos—of ravens sledding down hills, of bumble bees playing with balls. All these moments make us smile, maybe even giggle. But the scientific questions they raise merit serious attention. Where do we see play in the animal kingdom? Where do we not? What functions does play serve? Do we—and many other creatures—have an elemental need for play?
My guest today is Dr. Gordon Burghardt. Gordon is a longtime Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. For decades now, Gordon has been a pioneer in the study of animal play, with a particular focus on play in reptiles and other animals not usually considered playful. His 2005 book, The Genesis of Animal Play, remains a landmark in the field.
Here, Gordon and I talk about the major types of play: locomotor play, object play, and social play. We discuss the five criteria he has proposed for recognizing play across animal taxa. We survey several of the functions of play that have been proposed over the decades, and discuss how—in the end—play doesn't seem to have just one function. We also talk about human play—about what sets it apart, and about the possibility that play lies at the root of many of the capacities and institutions we think of as distinctively, impressively human. Along the way, Gordon and I touch on play in bears, pythons, turtles, fruit flies, and octopuses. We consider play between members of taxonomically distant species. We talk about “self-handicapping”; the surplus resource theory of play; the importance of "risky play" and "free play"; the immersive quality of play; bodily and vocal play signals in mammals; and whether human play is increasingly endangered.
Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Gordon Burghardt. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A news article on the finding of “play-like” behavior in fruit flies. The original study.
4:30 – For recent reviews of play by Dr. Burghardt and colleagues, covering the three major types of play, the five criteria for recognizing play, and many other topics, see here, here, and here.
12:00 – For more on Dr. Burghardt’s early research and hand-rearing of black bears, see here.
23:30 – For the recent study on ball play in bumble bees, see here.
26:00 – For an example of studies examining self-handicapping, see this study on belugas.
27:00 – For a video of a bull and goat butting heads, see here. For more on cross-species play, see this recent paper by Dr. Burghardt and a colleague.
31:00 – For more on the “relaxed open mouth expression” and “play face,” see our previous episode on the origins of the smile. For a recent study about such expressions possibly attested in dolphins, see here.
44:00 – For the book by Johan Huizinga, see here. For some of Dr. Burghardt’s ideas about the connections between play and certain aspects of human culture, see here.
54:00 – For research on the value of “risky play,” see work by Dr. Ellen Sandseter. For an article connecting “free play” and children’s mental health, see here.
Recommendations
Kingdom of Play, by David Toomey
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show 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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