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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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,...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outlineAlright, 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 enjoy it.
Now, the holiday season is a time when people might be shopping around for new podcasts to listen to. That makes it a great time to recommend us to your friends and family and colleagues. You can think of it as an especially thoughtful gift, one that’s absolutely free, and that keeps on giving throughout the year.
Speaking of gifts, as an addendum to this episode you’ll find a little stocking stuffer after the credits. It’s a reading of a poem that figures prominently in today’s essay.
Without further ado, here is my essay—‘In search of names.’ Enjoy!
A text version of this essay is available here.
Notes
2:00 – The text of ‘The Naming of Cats' by T.S. Eliot is here. See also the full collection, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The lines about cats’ taste preferences and cats having different kinds of minds comes from another poem in the collection, ‘The Ad-Dressing of Cats.’
3:00 – The 2019 study finding that cats know their names, and the 2022 study showing that cats know the names of their friends.
4:00 – For an overview of research on dolphin “signature whistles,” see here.
5:00 – For the 2024 study reporting name-like rumbles in elephants, see here.
6:00 – For the 2024 study reporting vocal labels for individuals in marmosets, see here. A critical response to the study is here; the authors’ response to the criticism is here.
12:00 – For overviews of cross-cultural variation in names and naming practices, see here, here, here, and here. Richard Alford’s 1988 study, published in book form, is here.
13:30 – The study reporting name signs in Kata Kolok is here.
15:00 – For research on expectations based on the sounds of people’s names, see here and here.
16:00 – For recent work on the “face-name matching effect,” see here. For the study on “nominative determinism” in the medical profession, see here. (Note that, while this latter study does report empirical data, its rigor is questionable. And, yet, at least one other study has reported similar findings.)
17:30 – For the example of over-used names in Scotland, see here.
19:30 – For discussion of names in New Guinea, see here. For examples of research on “teknonymy,” see here and here. For discussion of Penan “necronyms,” see here.
20:30 – For an overview of name taboos, see here. For more on “alexinomia,” see here.
22:30 – For an example of recent work on “name uniqueness,” see here.
23:00 – William Safire’s column on dog names is here. The study of gravestones in the world’s oldest pet cemetery is here.
Tile image credit: Image by Jon Tyson via Unsplash
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.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).