Island of the tool users
Many Minds
Tool use is rare in the animal kingdom—but maybe not as rare as we once thought. Since Jane Goodall famously observed a chimpanzee fishing for termites, many new examples of animals using tools have come to light. Birds using sticks to forage for grubs. Sea otters using rocks to smash open mussels. Digger wasps using stones to close off their burrows. But as these examples mount, so do the scientific questions. What is tool use, really? What different forms does it take? Does it always imply a high degree of intelligence? And perhaps the biggest question of all: Why do some creatures use...
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Cognitive offloading and its consequences
Many Minds
For thousands of years—maybe for as long as we've been human—we've offloaded our thinking. We've counted on our fingers. We've carved tallies into bone. We've invented a long series of tools to help us reason, remember, and manage information—tools like abacuses, calendars, writing systems, calculators, smartphones, and many, many more. So cognitive offloading is hardly new—but the questions around it seem newly urgent. As cognitive technologies accumulate, as opportunities for offloading tempt us at every turn, as headlines warn of "digital dementia" and "cognitive surrender," it...
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Coming of age in Ngogo
Many Minds
It's a familiar story in many ways. A child is born, and for years afterward is adored and indulged and anchored to home and family. But then the child grows up and starts crossing that long threshold into adulthood. The transition proves—to say the least—a bit turbulent. Now when I say this story is familiar, I don't just mean familiar to us as human beings. After all, a similar story has long played out among our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. My guest today is . Rachna co-directs the longstanding in Uganda and is an incoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of...
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The natural history of linguistic diversity
Many Minds
Thousands of languages are used around the world today, and this linguistic diversity is a precious part of our human heritage. But it's also more than that. Linguistic diversity provides clues—a vast crazy quilt of clues—about how language works, about how history has unfolded, about the dynamics of culture, and about the nature of the human mind. My guest today is . Damián is an based at the at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Over the last decade or so, Damián’s emerged as one of the most innovative researchers in the study of language and linguistic diversity. He’s...
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From the archive: Electric ecology
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're still taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back at the end of August—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired September 19, 2024] There's a bit of a buzz out there, right now, but maybe you haven’t noticed. It's in the water, it's in the air. It's electricity—and it's all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of reality. But many other creatures are—and scientists are starting to take note. My guest today...
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From the archive: Varieties of childhood
Many Minds
Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired July 10, 2025] Childhood is a special time, a strange time. Children are adored and catered to—they're given their own menus and bedrooms. They're considered delicate and precious, and so we cushion them from every imaginable risk. Kids are encouraged to play, of course—but very often it's under the watchful eye of anxious adults. This, anyway, is how childhood looks in much of the United States today. But is this the way childhood...
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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...
info_outlineIt 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 Dr. Natalie Lawrence and Dr. Surekha Davies. Both are historians of science and authors of recent books on monsters: Natalie's book is Enchanted creatures: Our monsters and their meanings. Surekha's book is Humans: A monstrous history.
Here, Surekha, Natalie, and I talk about monsters as category breakers and boundary walkers—and about how monstrosity is in the eye of the beholder. We walk through a menagerie of monsters—from the apocryphal blemmyes of old travelogues, to a hairy-faced girl in 16th century France, to the figure of Caliban in The Tempest. We discuss the psychological and cultural forces that generate monsters. And we talk about whether anyone would want to live in a world without them.
Along the way, we touch on the "monstrification" of social groups; psychoanalysis; our primal fear of snakes; curiosity cabinets; therianthropes and the Cave of the Three Brothers; the relationship between monstrosity and geography; our long fascination with so-called monstrous births; the Muppet Show; dinosaurs and sea creatures; and the question of what monsters might do for children in particular.
Alright friends, it's the monstrous season and this is a fun one to help you celebrate. Enjoy!
Notes
3:00 – Grendel's mother has often been a subject of critical discussion and adaptation. See, for instance, the 2018 novel, The Mere Wife.
12:30 – For a classic history-of-science treatment of “wonders” (including monsters) and our conceptions of nature, see here.
18:30 – For those unfamiliar with muppets, an episode of the Muppet Show, which premiered in 1976.
24:00 – The blemmyes were often the subjects of illustration—for examples, see here.
26:00 – For more on Sir Walter Raleigh and the blemmyes, see Dr. Davies’ recent newsletter post.
29:00 – One example of monsters at the margins of maps can be seen in the Psalter World Map.
32:00 – For more on Cave of the Trois-Frères and the Sorcerer, see here.
34:00 – For more on shamanism, see our recent episode with Manvir Singh.
37:00 – Therianthropes are relatively rare in cave art, but have nonetheless been widely discussed. For an example, see here.
39:00 – For more on Antonietta Gonsalvus and her family, including examples of how she was represented in paintings of the era, see here.
45:00 – The trope of monsters in creation stories is often called “chaoskampf.”
47:00 – The meanings of Medusa have been widely discussed and debated. See here for an example.
52:00 – For more about Caliban, and the racial and colonial dimensions of the Tempest, see here.
57:00 – The Steinbeck quote comes from his book, The Log from ‘The Sea of Cortez.’
Recommendations
The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman & Peter J. Dendle
Spectacle of Deformity, by Nadja Durbach
The Modern Myths, by Philip Ball
The Monsters and the Critics (and other essays), by J.R.R. Tolkien
No Go the Bogeyman, by Marina Warner
Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak
Tile image credit: Image from the Bakemono Zukushi “Monster” Scroll via Public Domain Review
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.
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