Many Minds

Our world is brimming with beings—human, animal, and artificial. We explore how they think, sense, feel, and learn. Conversations and more, every two weeks.

Science, AI, and illusions of understanding 06/26/2025

Science, AI, and illusions of understanding AI will fundamentally transform science. It will supercharge the research process, making it faster and more efficient and broader in scope. It will make scientists themselves vastly more productive, more objective, maybe more creative. It will make many human participants—and probably some human scientists—obsolete… Or at least these are some of the claims we are hearing these days. There is no question that various AI tools could radically reshape how science is done, and how much science is done. What we stand to gain in all this is pretty clear. What we stand to lose is less obvious, but no less important. My guest today is . Molly is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. In a recent , Molly and the anthropologist presented a framework for thinking about the different roles that are being imagined for AI in science. And they argue that, when we adopt AI in these ways, we become vulnerable to certain illusions. Here, Molly and I talk about four visions of AI in science that are currently circulating: AI as an Oracle, as a Surrogate, as a Quant, and as an Arbiter. We talk about the very real problems in the scientific process that AI promises to help us solve. We consider the ethics and challenges of using Large Language Models as experimental subjects. We talk about three illusions of understanding the crop up when we uncritically adopt AI into the research pipeline—an illusion that we understand more than we actually do; an illusion that we're covering a larger swath of a research space than we actually are; and the illusion that AI makes our work more objective. We also talk about how ideas from Science and Technology Studies (or STS) can help us make sense of this AI-driven transformation that, like it or no, is already upon us. Along the way Molly and I touch on: AI therapists and AI tutors, anthropomorphism, the culture and ideology of Silicon Valley, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, fMRI, objectivity, quantification, Molly's mid-career crisis, monocultures, and the squishy parts of human experience. Without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Molly Crockett. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode will be posted soon. Notes and links 5:00 – For more on LLMs—and the question of whether we understand how they work—see our with Murray Shanahan. 9:00 – For the paper by Dr. Crockett and colleagues about the social/behavioral sciences and the COVID-19 pandemic, see . 11:30 – For Dr. Crockett and colleagues’ work on outrage on social media, see this . 18:00 – For a recent exchange on the prospects of using LLMs in scientific peer review, see . 20:30 – Donna Haraway’s essay, 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, is . See also Dr. Haraway's book, . 22:00 – For the recent essay by Henry Farrell and others on AI as a cultural technology, see . 23:00 – For a recent report on chatbots driving people to mental health crises, see . 25:30 – For the already-classic “stochastic parrots” article, see . 33:00 – For the study by Ryan Carlson and Dr. Crockett on using crowd-workers to study altruism, see . 34:00 – For more on the “illusion of explanatory depth,” see with Tania Lombrozo. 53:00 – For the more about Ohio State’s plans to incorporate AI in the classroom, see . For a recent essay by Dr. Crockett on the idea of “techno-optimism,” see . Recommendations , by Adam Becker , by L. A. Paul , by Miranda Fricker Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/37169140

The primeval soil of play 06/12/2025

The primeval soil of play Puppies 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 . 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, , 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 . Notes and links 3:00 – A on the finding of “play-like” behavior in fruit flies. The original . 4:30 – For recents 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 , , and . 12:00 – For more on Dr. Burghardt’s early research and hand-rearing of black bears, see . 23:30 – For the recent study on ball play in bumble bees, see . 26:00 – For an example of studies examining self-handicapping, see on belugas. 27:00 – For a video of a bull and goat butting heads, see . For more on cross-species play, see this by Dr. Burghardt and a colleague. 31:00 – For more on the “relaxed open mouth expression” and “play face,” see our on the origins of the smile. For a recent study about such expressions possibly attested in dolphins, see . 44:00 – For the book by Johan Huizinga, see . For some of Dr. Burghardt’s ideas about the connections between play and certain aspects of human culture, see . 54:00 – For research on the value of “risky play,” see work by . For an article connecting “free play” and children’s mental health, see . Recommendations , by David Toomey Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/36977840

The big five and beyond 05/29/2025

The big five and beyond If you've heard anything about the study of human personality, you've probably heard about the “big five.” This is a framework that attempts to characterize human personality in terms of five broad factors or dimensions—neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The big five framework has been enormously influential, generating heaps and heaps of data, and study after study on the stability of personality, on the factors that shape our personalities, on how our personalities predict success and satisfaction. But is the big five really the best we can do? What does it miss? What does it mask? Where should the science of human personality go next? My guest today is . René is Professor of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and a leading researcher in the scientific study of human personality. He’s also one of the hosts of the . Here, René and I talk about the history and colossal success of the “big five.” We consider whether personality is ultimately rooted in our biology—and, if so, how. We dwell on each of the five factors and dig into the facets and nuances within them. These are, actually, technical terms in the field for the more granular aspects of personality that sit within each of these broad dimensions. We talk about personality change across the lifespan, and what factors seem to be driving it. We talk about personality and occupation, personality and birth order, personality and gender. Along the way, René and I touch on the Myers-Briggs; an alternative to the Big 5 known as the HEXACO model; the power of explicit questionnaires over experiments; the concept of "personality age"; the social investment theory; honesty, humility, humor, jealousy; life satisfaction; gene-environment correlations; and why evolutionary stories about personality seem to fail. Alright friends, I think you'll like this one. On to my conversation with Dr. René Mõttus. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 5:30 – For a popular discussion of the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests, see . For a book-length treatment of the history of the Myers-Briggs test, see . 11:30 – For Dr. Mõttus’s preprint on “personality age,” see . 17:00 – For our episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski, see . 18:00 – For Dr. Daniel Nettle’s book on personality, see . 22:00 – See Dr. Mõttus’s on the genetic basis of personality. 25:00 – For our episode with Dr. Eric Turkheimer about IQ, see . For Dr. Turkheimer’s “phenotypic null hypothesis” about personality, see . 28:00 – For a theoretical paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues about “carving personality at its joints” and “big few models”—among many other issues—see . 31:00 – See for a classic overview of the “big five.” 38:00 – For an overview of the predictive power of the “big five,” see . 40:00 – On the topic of “nuances,” see Dr. Mõttus’s recent co-authored paper . 43:00 – For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues of the personality profiles of different occupations, see . For an online tool that allows you to explore the data, see . For an online tool that matches your personality with the personality profiles of different occupations, see . 47:00 – A on the HEXACO model of personality. 51:00 – An example of a to map out the “facets” of personality. 1:11:00 – For a on the possibility of gene-environment correlations in the area of music, see here. For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on children “becoming less alike” through adolescence, see . 1:18:00 – For a classic statement of the “five factor theory,” see . 1:20:00 – The Wikipedia page for the idea of the “gloomy prospect” is . This is also the name of Dr. Turkheimer’s . 1:22:00 – The in the longstanding debate about birth order and personality. 1:27:00 – A comparing the “five factor” and “social investment” accounts of personality development. 1:33:00 – For a recent paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on personality and gender, see . 1:38:00 – A on the Estonian Biobank. Recommendations ‘,’ by Bühler et al. ‘,’ by Bleidorn et al. ‘,’ by Yarkoni & Westfall Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/36765960

Philosophers on psychedelics 05/14/2025

Philosophers on psychedelics 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, metaphysical questions, questions about the nature of experience and the nature of the mind. My guest today is . Chris is a philosopher of cognitive science at the University of Western Australia and the author of the 2021 book, . Here, Chris and I talk about the so-called classic psychedelics—LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and others—and how interest in them has gone through three distinct waves. We discuss the effects that these substances seem to have, in particular their capacity to treat certain psychiatric conditions and their tendency to induce "mystical-like" experiences. We consider the idea that psychedelics might serve as agents of moral enhancement. And we dig into the psychological and neural mechanisms by which psychedelics seem to have their diverse—and often salutary—effects. Along the way, we talk about ontological shock, comforting delusions, brain plasticity, unselfing, microdosing, placebo effects and adverse effects, physicalism and idealism, the REBUS model, environmental virtues, plant consciousness, meditation, and much more. Maybe this is obvious but this episode is not just for the seasoned psychonauts out there. Whatever your personal experience with these substances, they offer a distinctive window into the mind—a new way of grappling with big questions. Perhaps this much is also obvious but we're not encouraging or endorsing the use of psychedelics here—just offering a little fuel for your intellectual fires! Alright friends, on to my conversation w/ Dr. Chris Letheby. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – For a brief historical overview of research into psychedelics, see 8:30 – For work by an early trailblazer in the philosophy of psychedelics, see Thomas Metzinger’s . 12:30 – For our earlier episode on the psychology and philosophy of visual illusions, see . 18:00 – For a history of the concept of “set and setting,” see . 19:00 – A of “adverse events” in classic psychedelics. 26:00 – A on the history of the term “psychedelic.” 27:00 – A of the use of psychedelic therapy for depressive symptoms. 31:00 – On mystical experience see Walter Stace’s classic work, On the measurement of mystical-type experiences, see, e.g., Walter Pahnke’s paper . 36:00 – On the idea of “psychoplastogens,” see . 39:00 – See our on placebo effects. 41:00 – For the study using Ritalin as an active placebo, see . 44:00 – Michael Pollan’s book on psychedelics is . 48:00 – On the idea of “idealism,” see . 50:30 – For the 2021 study on psychedelics’ capacity to alter metaphysical beliefs, see . 54:00 – For Dr. Letheby and collaborators’ paper about the “mysticism wars,” see . 1:02:00 – For a popular article on the possibility that psychedelics reduce fear of death, see . 1:03:00 – For Dr. Letheby’s paper on psychedelics and the fear of death, see . 1:11:00 – The phrase “comforting delusion” comes from by Michael Pollan. 1:15:00 – For the “REBUS model,” see . 1:20:00 – On the idea that psychedelics could serve as agents of moral enhancement, see the paper by Brian Earp . 1:21:00 – For Dr. Letheby’s paper on psychedelics and environmental virtues, see . For his paper on psychedelics and forgiveness, see . 1:23:00 – On the subfield of “virtue ethics,” see . On the virtue of “living in place,” see the paper by Nin Kirkham . 1:28:00 – For the New Yorker article, by Matthew Hutson, on how psychedelics led him to see trees as smart, see . For the study, led by Sandeep Nayak, on psychedelics leading people to expand their attributions of consciousness, see . 1:32:00 – For a first paper by Dr. Letheby on the comparison between meditation and psychedelics, see . Recommendations , Aidan Lyon , Robert Masters & Jean Houston , Benny Shanon Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/36571940

The cuttlefish and its coat of many colors 04/30/2025

The cuttlefish and its coat of many colors 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, more astonishing, more bedazzling in their abilities to do this kind of thing than the cephalopods. But how do they do this exactly? What's going on in their skin? What's going on under their skin? And what's going on in their brains that makes this all possible? My guest today is . Tessa is a neuroscientist in the Axel Lab at Columbia University; she studies the brain and behavior of the dwarf cuttlefish, with a special focus on the biology of their dynamic skin behaviors. Here, Tessa and I talk about how cuttlefish and other cephalopods exhibit the most impressive camouflaging abilities on the planet. We discuss how they change their skin's appearance with remarkable speed and fidelity—and not just when trying to blend in, but also when hunting, courting, fighting, and more. We talk about whether these behaviors are flexible and whether they're voluntary. We linger on the cruel irony that cuttlefish seem to be colorblind. We talk about the idea that a cephalopod's skin is kind of a window into their brain. We lay out the cells and organs in the cephalopod skin the make these behaviors possible—especially the tiny pigment-bearing structures called "chromatophores." And of course we also dive deep into the cephalopod brain and its sometimes bizarre and poorly understood structures. Excited to share it with you friends—I think you'll enjoy it. Without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Tessa Montague. A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – For more on Dr. Montague’s recent expeditions to the Philippines, including photos, see . 7:30 – Dr. Montague has published two recent reviews of dynamic skin behaviors in cephalopods—see and . We previously discussed cephalopod intelligence in a with Dr. Alex Schnell and a with the novelist Ray Nayler. 18:30 – For discussion of a recent “renaissance” in new model organisms, see . 20:30 – For more on how chameleons change color, see . 25:00 – A on cuttlefish camouflage, featuring the researcher Dr. Robert Hanlon. 30:30 – A on the details of pattern matching in cuttlefish camouflage. 31:00 – For more on the mimicking plant Boquila trifoliolata, see this . See also our with Dr. Paco Calvo and Dr. Natalie Lawrence. 35:00 – A about the so-called mimic octopus. 40:00 – For the hypothesis about color discrimination via chromatic aberration and pupil shape, see . 44:00 – For more on the “split body” skin behaviors observed in some cuttlefish, see . 51:00 – For the David Attenborough clip about a cuttlefish hypnotizing a crab, see . For the recent New York Times article on cuttlefish hunting behavior, including videos, see . For the academic article that inspired the New York Times piece, see . 58:00 – A on the possibility of octopus skin activity during dreaming. A that helped popularize the idea of cephalopod skin activity as evidence of dreaming. Our on why we—and other creatures—dream. 1:06:00 – For a study on chromatophore development from the lab of Dr. Gilles Laurent, see . 1:11:00 – For more on papillae, including videos, see . 1:17:00 – To explore an animated model of the cuttlefish brain, see of Dr. Montague’s website, . Recommendations , Danna Staaf , Peter Godfrey-Smith , Roger Hanlon & John B. Messenger Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/36381575

Life, free energy, and the pursuit of goals 04/17/2025

Life, free energy, and the pursuit of goals You've probably come across the "free energy principle." It's become one of the most influential ideas in the broader cognitive sciences. Since the neuroscientist Karl Friston first introduced it in 2005, the theory has been fleshed out, extended, generalized, criticized, and cited thousands and thousands of times. But what is this idea, exactly? What does it say about the nature of brains and minds? What does it say about the phenomenon of life itself? And is anything that it says really that new? My guest today is . Kate is a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the new book, . In the book, Kate offers an extended critical analysis of the free energy principle and situates it in a broader landscape of ideas about the nature of life and mind. In this conversation, Kate and I talk about how the free energy principle has changed over time, from its beginnings as a theory of cortical responses in the brain to its eventual status as a theory of... well, a lot. We discuss why this theory has had such an enormous influence, and we talk about how many of the key ideas behind it actually have a long history. We consider some kindred spirits of the free energy framework— approaches like cybernetics, enactivism, predictive processing, and autopoiesis. We walk through a series of questions that all these approaches have long grappled with. Questions like: What does it mean to be alive? What is the relationship between being alive and being cognitive? What are the roles of prediction and representation in cognition? And we ask how—if it all—the free energy principle gives us new answers to these old questions. Along the way, Kate and I touch on: surprisal, visual phenomenology, vitalism, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Maturana and Varela, pendulums and bacteria, computation and models, primordial purposiveness, pancakes, and whether we'll ever be able to create artificial life. As you might be able to tell from the description I just gave, this conversation goes pretty deep—and it does get a bit technical. It dives down into the history and philosophy around some of the most foundational questions we can ask about minds. If that sounds like your cup of tea, enjoy. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Kate Nave! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 5:00 – The in which Karl Friston proposed the principle of free energy minimization. Friston later generalized the ideas and . 14:00 – For influential philosophical work on action in perception, see Alva Nöe’s book, . 17:00 – One of the classic works in the “enactivist” tradition is Evan Thompson’s book, . 18:00 – The actual quip, credited to Carl Sagan, is about “apple pie” not pancakes: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” 20:00 – The notion of “autopoiesis” (or “self-creation”) was introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in their book, . 24:00 – A classic paper of cybernetics from 1943, ‘.’ 37:00 – For more on the idea of “predictive processing,” see our with Dr. Mark Miller. 43:00 – For a discussion of the idea of “representation” in the philosophy of cognitive science, see . For a discussion of “anti-representationalism,” see . Recommendations ‘Organisms, Machines, and Thunderstorms: A History of Self-Organization,’ () (), Evelyn Fox Keller , Jean-Pierre Dupuy ‘,’ M. Chirimuuta Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/36202405

Universal emotions in fact and fiction 04/02/2025

Universal emotions in fact and fiction Are human emotions universal? Or do they vary from one place to the next and from one time period to the next? It's a big question, an old question. And every discipline that's grappled with it brings its own take, its own framings and forms of evidence. Some researchers appeal to cross-cultural experiments; others turn to neuroimaging studies or conceptual analysis. Some even look to fiction. My guest today is , an Associate Professor of English Literature at Arizona State University. Brad is the author of a new book, ; in it he maps the landscape of debate around this long-contested topic. Brad is also the author of numerous articles and books on the emotions in Shakespeare's plays, as well as in the work of other early modern authors. Here, Brad and I talk about both sides of his work—his writing as an observer of cross-disciplinary debates about the universality of emotion and his writing as a scholar of literature. We sketch four prominent theories of emotions—basic emotions theory, appraisal theories, psychological construction theories, and social construction theories. We weigh the idea that some emotions are more universal than others. We talk about the role that language might play in our emotional experience. And we consider why many literary scholars tend to be deeply suspicious of claims about human universality. Along the way, Brad and I also touch on: the theory of ur-emotions, the aims of literary analysis; disgust, anger, schadenfreude, anxiety; frogs and public dissections; Shakespeare as a supposedly universal poet; and Brad's latest project on neurodiversity in literature. If you're enjoying the show, we would be most grateful if you could give us a rating or review, maybe even a shout-out on your social media platform of choice. For those who listen on Spotify, you can also now leave comments on individual episodes—which is a great way to let us know what you think. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Brad Irish. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 7:00 – For an example of an anti-universalist treatment from a literary scholar, see . See also Dr. Irish’s brief on the idea of universality in literary studies. 12:00 – For Dr. Irish’s first book—on emotions in the early modern period—see . 15:00 – For a recent review/update of the “basic emotions theory” tradition, see . 21:00 – An influential on facial expressions of emotion across cultures. A more recent, on the relationship between facial expressions and emotions. 23:00 – For a review of social constructionist approaches to emotion, see . 24:00 – A of the “appraisal theories” of emotion. 26:00 – Psychological constructionist theories of emotion are most strongly associated with the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues. For an articulation of these views, see . 33:00 – For more on the relationship between language and emotion, see influential recent studies , , and . 39:00 – The introducing the concept of “ur-emotions.” 44:00 – Dr. Patrick Colm Hogan’s book, . 49:00 – Dr. Irish’s book, . 58:00 – For an influential paper on disgust in general, see . For more on moral disgust in particular, see . 1:07:00 – For the idea that disgust evolved to help us avoid disease, see . 1:15:00 – For more on the idea that fictions can be thought of as simulations of psychology and the social world, see our on stories. 1:16:00 – For more about Dr. Irish’s latest research project, see his new book, . Recommendations , edited by Andrea Scarantino Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/35982720

From the archive: Fermentation, fire, and our big brains 03/19/2025

From the archive: Fermentation, fire, and our big brains Hi friends, We're taking care of some spring cleaning this week. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! - The Many Minds team ––––––––– [originally aired February 22, 2024] Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky. My guests today are , Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and , Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of titled 'Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.' In it, they argue that fermented foods could have provided the caloric boost that allowed our brains to expand. Here, we talk about how the human body differs from the bodies of other great apes, not just in terms of our brains but also in terms of our bowels. We discuss the different mechanisms by which fermented foods provide nutritional benefits over unfermented foods. We consider how fermentation—which basically happens whether you want it to or not—would have been cognitively easier to harness than fire. Along the way, we touch on kiviaq, chicha, makgeolli, hákarl, natto, Limburger cheese, salt-rising bread, and other arguably delectable products of fermentation. This is a fun one friends. But before we get to it: a friendly reminder about this summer's Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This a yearly event in St Andrews, Scotland; it features a rich program of lectures and events devoted to the study of cognition, mind, and intelligence in all its forms. If you have a taste for cross-disciplinary ferment and bubbly conversation, DISI may be for you. The application window is now open but is closing soon. You can find more info at . That's D-I-S-I.org. Alright, friends, on to my conversation with Erin Hecht and Katherine Bryant. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A for the bread. 6:00 – An about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about , the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places. 11:30 – An about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees. 12:30 – A by Dr. Hecht and colleagues on the evolutionary neuroscience of domestication. 13:00 – For discussions of the encephalization quotient (aka EQ) and of human brain evolution, see our previous episodes and . 15:00 – The on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” 22:00 – An about the role of meat in human evolution; an about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, . 26:00 – A on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago. 31:30 – A on how fermenting cassava reduces its toxicity. 38:30 – There have been various claims in the ethnographic literature that the control of fire has been lost among small groups, such as in Tasmania. See footnote 2 in . 44:30 – A about kiviaq. 45:00 – The from the New Yorker, by Rebecca Mead, about the foodways of the Faroe Islands. 53:00 – For more discussion of the so-called drunken monkey hypothesis, see our about intoxication. 1:00:30 – A about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark. Recommendations , by Michael Pollan , by Sandor Katz , by Sandor Katz “,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/35782845

Howl, grunt, sing 03/06/2025

Howl, grunt, sing The tree of life is a noisy place. From one branch come hoots and howls, from another come clicks and buzzes and whines. And coming from all over you hear the swell of song. But what is all this ruckus about? Why do so many animals communicate with sound? What kinds of meaning do these sounds convey? And—beyond the case of human speech—do any of these sounds merit the label of “language”? My guest today is , a zoologist at Cambridge University. Arik is an expert on vocal communication across the animal kingdom and the author of the recent book . Here, Arik and I talk about why the acoustic medium is a popular choice for complex communication. We sketch a key difference between forms of communication that are purely expressive and forms that are also referential. We discuss, in turn, Arik's field research on wolves, hyraxes, and gibbons—and talk about what makes each of these animals such a revealing case study. We evaluate our prospects for quote unquote "translating" different kinds of animal communication, and we speculate about what communication systems could look like on other planets. Along the way, Arik and I touch on: noisy versus tonal sounds; short-range versus long-range communication; chorusing and duetting; simplicity and complexity; syntax and meaning; entropy; alarm calls; dolphins, orcas, and cuttlefish; and how you can tell that wolves take a certain pleasure in howling. Without further ado, here’s my chat with Dr. Arik Kershenbaum. A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 6:30 – In the human case, of course, our most elaborated form of communication—language—comes in both spoken and signed forms. For more on the different modalities of human language, see, e.g., with Dr. Neil Cohn. 7:30 – The distinction between expressive and referential communication is perhaps most strongly associated with the linguist Roman Jakobson—see, for instance, . For more on the question of whether animal communication systems involve reference, see this . 9:00 – For a classic example of work on predator alarm calls in vervet monkeys, see . 13:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on wolf (and other canid) howls, see . The study provides evidence for howling “dialects.” 24:30 – An example of coyote chorusing can be heard . 27:00 – A showing that human listeners overestimate the size of a coyote group. 29:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on hyrax song, see . An example of hyrax song can be heard . 34:00 – For a primer on syntax in animal acoustic communication, see . 40:00 – Examples of gibbon song can be heard and . 45:00 – For a paper on the syntax and complexity of gibbon songs, see . 48:30 – A by Dr. Kershenbaum and colleagues on entropy and Zipf’s law in animal communication. 57:30 – A on Darwin’s theory of “musical protolanguage.” 59:30 – An of research on orca communication. 1:00:00 – For more about Project CETI, see . 1:07:00 – See Dr. Kershenbaum’s other book, . Recommendations , by Rick McIntyre , by Jane Goodall Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/35554795

The development of evolution 02/20/2025

The development of evolution Evolution is not what it used to be. A lot has changed since Darwin's day. In the first half of the 20th century, evolutionary theory was integrated with an emerging understanding of genetics. Late in the 20th century, biologists started taking seriously the idea that organisms don't just adapt to their environments, they change them. Recently, researchers have started to acknowledge the role of culture in evolutionary processes. And so slowly our understanding of evolution has been reconsidered, updated, expanded. And more updates are underway. But it's not just our understanding of evolution that has changed over time. Evolution itself has changed, too. My guest today is . Kevin is an evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Over his long career, Kevin has been at the forefront of key debates about—and updates to—evolutionary theory. He's known, for instance, for his pioneering work on niche construction as well as for his work on gene-culture co-evolution. In a new book titled , Kevin and his four co-authors present a new synthesis of evolution, one that places developmental processes front and center. Here, Kevin and I sketch the notion of a "developmental bias" and why it's central to this new understanding of evolution. We talk about the orthodox gene-centric way of thinking about development—and what it gets wrong. We discuss so-called exploratory processes in development. We dig into the increasingly popular, but much debated construct of "evolvability." And we consider what this newest update to evolutionary theory might tell us about the origins of human cognition. Along the way, Kevin and I talk about floppy ears in mammals and fragmented faces in fish; symbionts and soft inheritance; Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Richard Lewontin, and August Weismann; development as an artist and evolution as curator; maps; plants; manual dexterity; brain size; and why evolution is a bit like walking on a trampoline. A final reminder about the 2025 , or DISI. DISI is a three-week long summer institute held in St Andrews, Scotland; it's a place for the wide-ranging, transdisciplinary exploration of ideas about mind, cognition, and intelligence. It's a place where early career scholars get to hobnob with thinkers like Kevin Lala, who was a faculty member with us in 2019. There's still , but do act fast—review of applications begins March 1st. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Kevin Lala. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – A describing so-called domestication syndrome. For more on domestication (and self-domestication), see our earlier episode with . 11:00 – A describing cavefish as a new model organism in the study of evolution and development. 15:00 – An influential , led by Dr. Lala, describing the “extended evolutionary synthesis.” 22:00 – A of niche construction theory, led by Dr. Lala. 27:00 – An on “lobtail feeding” in humpback whales. 33:00 – A describing “gaping behavior” in cichlid fishes. 35:00 – A of “soft inheritance.” The showing that mice pass on learned associations to offspring. 41:00 – A on the gut microbes that allow woodrats to digest toxic creosote. 44:00 – See our with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. 50:00 – See Winther’s book, . 56:00 – A reviewing the idea of “exploratory mechanisms” in development, as well as other ideas associated with the concept of “plasticity-led evolution.” 1:05:00 – A on the notion of “evolvability.” 1:13:00 – For one example of a “major transitions” framework, see our with Dr. Andrew Barron. 1:17:00 – A about how dogs developed the ability to digest starch, initially by acquiring symbionts. 1:20:00 – For discussion of the evolution of human brain size, see our earlier episode ‘.’ 1:28:00 – A recent of the idea that humans are “self-domesticated.” Recommendations , by Mary Jane West-Eberhard Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/35367570

String theories 02/06/2025

String theories Where would our species be without string? It's one of our most basic technologies—so basic that it's easy to overlook. But humans have used string—and its cousins rope, yarn, cordage, thread, etc.—for all kinds of purposes, stretching back tens of thousands of years. We've used it for knots and textiles and fishing nets and carrier bags and bow-strings and record-keeping devices. It's one of the most ubiquitous, flexible, and useful technologies we have. But we haven't only put string to practical purposes. We've also long used it to tickle our minds. My guest today is . Roope is a cognitive anthropologist and postdoc at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Along with an interdisciplinary team, Roope recently conducted two studies that showcase the centrality of string in human culture. One is on the history and diversity of "string figures” (which are visual designs made with a loop of string held between the hands, often known to English speakers as “Cat's Cradle”). The other study is on the history and diversity of knots. Here Roope and I discuss the deep history of string in human culture. We talk about the seemingly universal spread of string figures across the globe. We zoom in on one string figure in particular—the Jacob's ladder—which seems to be the most widespread string figure of all, despite its complexity. We talk about how both knots and string figures are related to the branch of mathematics known as “topology," and about how knots and string figures have evolved under different constraints. Finally, we discuss what our fascination with string designs might tell us about the human mind. And we lament the fact that much of our string-based cultural heritage is headed—quite rapidly—for extinction. Just a reminder that applications are now open for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute or DISI. If you are an early career researcher and you like this show, you would probably like DISI. Actually, fun fact: our guest today, Roope, is a DISI alum. We met at the Institute a couple years ago and I've followed his work ever since. That should give you some flavor for the people who attend. In any case, for more info, check out —that’s d-i-s-i. org. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Roope Kaaronen. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – The reporting the use of string by Neanderthals. 8:00 – A describing the Antrea Net and its discovery. 10:00 – On the issue of gender bias in the study of textiles, see Virginia Postrel’s book, . 12:00 – Dr. Kaaronen’s other ethnomathematical projects include work on . 16:30 – The website of the . 19:30 – The first introducing the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. 22:20 – A for how to make Jacob’s Ladder. 30:30 – A for how to make the Swan. 38:00 – An of a string figure that uses the Caroline Extension. 40:35 – A demonstrating the string figure game of Cat’s Cradle, which is played with a partner. 44:30 – A of the knot study by Dr. Kaaronen and colleagues. 45:00 – The website of HRAF—the Human Relations Area Files—is . 49:00 – A for how to make the knot known as the “sheet bend.” 55:00 – An interactive about what is known about Incan khipus. 59:30 – The “bible of knots” is the . 1:08:30 – An on the so-called Austronesian expansion. 1:16:00 – An of the ochre stone from 70,000 years ago, found at Blombos cave, featuring net-like imagery. A finding sensitivity to abstract shapes in humans but not baboons. Recommendations , by Virginia Postrel , by Caroline Furness Jayne Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/35172235

The other half of the brain 01/23/2025

The other half of the brain Neurons have long enjoyed a kind of rock star status. We think of them as the most fundamental units of the brain—the active cells at the heart of brain function and, ultimately, at the heart of behavior, learning, and more. But neurons are only part of the story—about half the story, it turns out. The other half of the brain is made up of cells called glia. Glia were long thought to be important structurally but not particularly exciting—basically stage-hands there to support the work of the neurons. But in recent decades, at least among neuroscientists, that view has faded. In our understanding of the brain, glia have gone from stage-hands to co-stars. My guest today is . Nicola is a molecular neuroscientist and Associate Professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. She and her lab study the role of glial cells—especially astrocytes—in brain function and dysfunction. Here, Nicola and I talk about how our understanding and appreciation of glial cells has changed. We do a bit of Brain Cells 101, reviewing the main division between neurons and glia and then sketching the subtypes within each category. We discuss the different shapes and sizes of glial cells, as well as the different functions. Glia are an industrious bunch. They’re involved in synapse formation and pruning, the production of myelin, the repair of injuries, and more. We also talk about how glial cells have been implicated in various forms of brain dysfunction, from neurodegeneration to neurodevelopmental syndromes. And how, as a result, these cells are attracting serious attention as a site for therapeutic intervention. Well, it's that time of year again folks. Applications are now open for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. This is an intense program—highly interdisciplinary, highly international—for scholars and storytellers interested in all forms and facets of intelligence. If you like thinking about minds, if you like thinking about humans and animals and plants and AIs and collectives and ways they’re alike and different—you would probably like DISI. For more info, check out —that's D-I-S-I dot org. Review of applications begins March 1st, so don't dally too too long. Alright friends—on to my conversation with Dr. Nicola Allen. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – Correction: “glia” actually comes from the Greek—not the Latin—for “glue.” 3:30 – See this short on glia by Dr. Allen and Dr. Ben Barres. For a bit of the history of how glial cells were originally conceived, see on Ramón y Cajal’s contributions to glia research. 10:00 – On the nascent field of “neuroimmunology,” see . 14:00 – On the idea that “90% of brain cells are glia” see by (former ) Suzana Herculano-Houzel. 18:00 – The root “oligo” in “oligodendrocyte” means “few” (and is thus the same as the “olig” in, e.g., “oligarchy"). It is not related to the “liga-” in “ligament.” 28:00 – On the idea that the glia-neuron ratio changes as brains grow more complex, see again the by Dr. Herculano-Houzel. 30:00 – See Dr. Allen’s on the idea of glia as “architects.” See also Dr. Allen’s on the idea of glia as “sculptors.” 33:00 – See Dr. Allen’s on the idea of the “tripartite synapse.” 42:00 – A recent reviewing the phenomenon of adult neurogenesis. 48:00 – See Dr. Allen’s of the role of astrocytes in neurodegeneration. 51:30 – A on the roles of APOE in Alzheimer’s. Recommendations , edited by Beth Stevens, Kelly R. Monk, and Marc R. Freeman Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/34964975

A paradox of learning 01/09/2025

A paradox of learning How do we learn? Usually from experience, of course. Maybe we visit some new place, or encounter a new tool or trick. Or perhaps we learn from someone else—from a teacher or friend or YouTube star who relays some shiny new fact or explanation. These are the kinds of experiences you probably first think of when you think of learning. But we can also learn in another way: simply by thinking. Sometimes we can just set our minds to work—just let the ideas already in our heads tumble around and spark off each other—and, as if by magic, come away with a new understanding of the world. But how does this happen exactly? And does it only happen in humans? My guest today is . Tania is a Professor of Psychology at Princeton University; she and her research group study learning, reasoning, explanation, belief, and more. In a , Tania outlines this puzzling alternative form of learning—learning by thinking, as it’s known—and presents evidence that it happens in both humans and AIs. In this conversation, Tania and I talk about her longstanding work on explanation, and how it led her to study this less-obvious form of learning. We zoom in on four flavors of learning by thinking—learning through explanation, through simulation, through analogy, and through reasoning. We talk about the evidence that machines also learn in this way, and we consider whether animals could, too. We discuss how to resolve the paradox at the heart of "learning by thinking": how it could be that reshuffling old bits of knowledge can actually lead to new understanding. Along the way, Tania and I touch on: chain-of-thought prompting in LLMs, the Reddit community 'Explain Like I'm Five,’ the illusion of explanatory depth, the power of thought experiments, Darwin and Galileo, imagination and rationalization, how psychology and philosophy complement each other, and whether we can also learn—not just by thinking in our proverbial armchairs—but also by writing and talking. So, happy 2025, friends! We've got some great stuff lined up for the coming year. If you like what we're doing with the show, we would—as ever—appreciate your support. And the main way you can support us is just by helping us get the word out—by telling a friend about us, or a colleague, or a student, or your thousands of social media followers. Alright, without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Tania Lombrozo. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – An influential early on “chain-of-thought prompting” in Large Language Models. A by a team, including Dr. Lombrozo, exploring the cases where “chain-of-thought prompting” actually impairs performance in LLMs. 8:00 – For some of Dr. Lombrozo’s important earlier work on explanation, see and . 11:15 – The Reddit community ‘.’ 13:00 – An on the “curse of knowledge”—the difficulty of ignoring what you know. 19:00 – Dr. Lombrozo’s recent review article on “learning by thinking” is . Another article of hers on the same topic is . 20:00 – The of the “self-explanation” effect. The of the “illusion of explanatory depth.” 30:00 – For a basic description of Galileo’s falling bodies thought experiment, see . A of this thought experiment by philosopher Tamar Gendler. 38:00 – For analysis of Darwin’s analogy between artificial and natural selection, see and . 42:00 – A on rationalization by Fiery Cushman. 48:00 – A from Dr. Lombrozo’s lab on “need for explanation.” The describing the construct of “need for cognition.” 52:00 – The of “framing effects” by Tversky and Kahneman. 54:00 – A by Annette Karmiloff-Smith discussing “representational redescription.” 1:02:00 – A of issues surrounding “explainable” AI. Recommendations Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, & Patricia Kuhl, Frank Keil, Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/34781015

From the archive: The octopus and the android 12/25/2024

From the archive: The octopus and the android Happy holidays, friends! We will be back with a new episode in January 2025. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired Jun 14, 2023] Have you heard of Octopolis? It’s a site off the coast of Australia where octopuses come together. It’s been described as a kind of underwater "settlement" or "city." Now, smart as octopuses are, they are not really known for being particularly sociable. But it seems that, given the right conditions, they can shift in that direction. So it's not a huge leap to wonder whether these kinds of cephalopod congregations could eventually give rise to something else—a culture, a language, maybe something like a civilization. This is the idea at the center of new book, . It's both a thriller of sorts and a novel of ideas; it’s set in the near future, in the Con Dao archipelago of Vietnam. It grapples with the nature of intelligence and meaning, with the challenges of interspecies communication and companionship, and ultimately with what it means to be human. Here, Ray and I talk about how he got interested in cephalopods and how he came to know the Con Dao archipelago. We discuss some of the choices he made as an author—choices about what drives the octopuses in his book to develop symbols and about what those symbols are like. We consider the major human characters in his book, in particular two ambitious researchers who embody very different approaches to understanding minds. We also talk a fair bit about AI—another central character in the book, after all, is a super-intelligent android. Along the way, Ray and I touch on Arrival, biosemiotics, the nature of symbols, memory and storytelling, embodiment, epigenetics, cephalopod camouflage, exaptation, and the sandbox that is speculative fiction. This episode is obviously something a little different for us. Ray is a novelist, after all, but he’s also an intellectual omnivore, and this conversation, maybe more than any other we’ve had on the show, spans three major branches of mind—human, animal, and machine. If you enjoy this episode, note that just came out in paperback, with a jaw-droppingly cool cover, I’ll add. I highly recommend that you check it out. One more thing, while I have you: If you're enjoying Many Minds, we would be most grateful for your help in getting the word out. You might consider sharing the show with a friend or a colleague, writing us a review on , or leaving us a rating on Spotify or Apple. All this would really help us grow our audience. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Ray Nayler. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 8:30 – For the review of The Mountain in the Sea in question, see . 14:00 – Con Dao is a in Vietnam. 17:00 – For our previous episode about cephalopods, see . 19:00 – For a book-length introduction to biosemiotics, see . 24:00 – A of Japanese macaques washing sweet potatoes. 26:30 – For discussion of the human case, in which environmental pressures of some kind may have propelled cooperation, see with Michael Tomasello. 29:00 – A about RNA editing in cephalopods. 35:00 – A of the “passing cloud” phenomenon in cuttlefish. A about the phenomenon. A showing other forms of camouflage in octopuses. 41:00 – An of the movement from “iconic” to “symbolic” communication in humans. 44:00 – A about the communication system used in the movie Arrival. 49:00 – One source of inspiration for Ray’s book was Eduardo Kohn’s . 1:00:00 – An on the idea of “architects” and “gardeners” among writers. 1:05:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Disintegration Loops’ is available . 1:11:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Summer Castle’ is available . 1:13:00 – A about the phenomenon of highly superior autobiographical memory. An about the idea that faulty memory is a feature rather than a bug. 1:18:00 – Ray’s story ‘Muallim’ is available . Recommendations , by James Bridle , by Jer Thorp Follow Ray on . Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/34614505

Your brain on language 12/12/2024

Your brain on language Using language is a complex business. Let's say you want to understand a sentence. You first need to parse a sequence of sounds—if the sentence is spoken—or images—if it's signed or written. You need to figure out the meanings of the individual words and then you need to put those meanings together to form a bigger whole. Of course, you also need to think about the larger context—the conversation, the person you're talking to, the kind of situation you're in. So how does the brain do all of this? Is there just one neural system that deals with language or several? Do different parts of the brain care about different aspects of language? And, more basically: What scientific tools and techniques should we be using to try to figure this all out? My guest today is . Ev is a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT, where she and her study how the brains supports language and complex thought. Ev and her colleagues recently wrote of their work on the language network—the specialized system in our brain that underlies our ability to use language. This network has some features you might have expected, and—as we’ll see—other features you probably didn't. Here, Ev and I talk about the history of our effort to understand the neurobiology of language. We lay out the current understanding of the language network, and its relationship to the brain areas historically associated with language abilities—especially Broca's area and Wernicke's area. We talk about whether the language network can be partitioned according to the subfields of linguistics, such as syntax and semantics. We discuss the power and limitations of fMRI, and the advantages of the single-subject analyses that Ev and her lab primarily use. We consider how the language network interfaces with other major neural networks—for instance, the theory of mind network and the so-called default network. And we discuss what this all tells us about the longstanding controversial claim that language is primarily for thinking rather than communicating. Along the way, Ev and I touch on: some especially interesting brains; plasticity and redundancy; the puzzle of lateralization; polyglots; aphasia; the localizer method; the decline of certain Chomskyan perspectives; the idea that brain networks are "natural kinds"; the heart of the language network; and the question of what the brain may tell us—if anything—about how language evolved. Alright friends, this is a fun one. On to my conversation with Dr. Ev Fedorenko. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – The by a New York Times reporter who is missing a portion of her temporal lobe. The website for the project. 5:30 – A from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the brains of three siblings, two of whom were missing portions of their brains. 13:00 – Broca’s report. 18:00 – Many of Noam Chomsky’s ideas about the innateness of language and the centrality of syntax are covered in his book , among other publications. 19:30 – For an influential critique of the tradition of localizing functions in the brain, see William R. Uttal’s . 23:00 – The new by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues on the language network. 26:00 – For more discussion of the different formats or modalities of language, see our with Dr. Neil Cohn. 30:00 – A by Herbert Simon on the “architecture of complexity.” 31:00 – For one example of a naturalistic, “task-free” study that reveals the brain’s language network, see . 33:30 – See the arguing “against cortical reorganization.” 33:00 – For more on the concept of “natural kind” in philosophy, see . 38:00 – On the “multiple-demand network,” see a by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues. 41:00 – For a study from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab finding that syntax and semantics are distributed throughout the language network, see . For an example of work in linguistics that does not make a tidy distinction between syntax and semantics, see . 53:30 – See Dr. Fedorenko’s on the history of individual-subject analyses in neuroscience. 1:01:00 – For an in-depth treatment of one localizer used in Dr. Fedorenko’s research, see . 1:03:30 – A by Dr. Stephen Wilson and colleagues, describing recovery of language ability following stroke as a function of the location of the lesion within the language network. 1:04:20 – A from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the small language networks of polyglots. 1:09:00 – For more on the Visual Word Form Area (or VWFA), see . For discussion of Exner’s Area, see . 1:14:30 – For a discussion of the brain’s so-called default network, see . 1:17:00 – See here for Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues’ on the function of language. For more on the question of what language is for, see our with Dr. Nick Enfield. 1:19:00 – A by Dr. Fedorenko and Dr. Rosemary Varley arguing for intact thinking ability in patients with aphasia. 1:22:00 – A on individual differences in the experience of inner speech. Recommendations Dr. Ted Gibson’s book on syntax (forthcoming with MIT press) Nancy Kanwisher, ‘’ Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/34408475

Nestcraft 11/27/2024

Nestcraft How do birds build their nests? By instinct, of course—at least that's what the conventional wisdom tells us. A swallow builds a swallow's nest; a robin builds a robin's nest. Every bird just follows the rigid template set down in its genes. But over the course of the last couple of decades, scientists have begun to take a closer look at nests—they've weighed and measured them, they've filmed the building process. And the conventional wisdom just doesn't hold up. These structures vary in all kinds of ways, even within a species. They're shaped by experience, by learning, by cultural tradition. When we look at a bird's nest, we're looking at the product of a flexible mind. My guest today is . Sue is a Professor in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews and an expert in birds—their behavior, their cognition, and their evolution. For more than a decade now, Sue has been pioneering a new chapter in the study of birds' nests. Here, Sue and I talk about some of the most impressive nests (as well as some of the least impressive). We do a bit of Birds' Nests 101—the different forms they take, the functions they serve, which sex does the building, how these structures evolved, and more. We dig into the mounting evidence that birds are in fact quite flexible in their building practices, that they learn from others and from their own experience. We discuss recent evidence from Sue's team that cultural traditions shape the weaver nests of the Kalahari. And we talk about what nests might have in common with songs and tools. Along the way, we touch on: pigeon nests and hummingbird nests, dinosaur nests and chimpanzee nests; Alfred Russel Wallace; commonalities in the techniques of human weavers and weaver birds; whether bird personality might be reflected in nest style; the brain basis of nest-building; and a whole lot else. Hope you enjoy this one, friends. On to my conversation with Dr. Sue Healy. A transcript of this episode is availalble . Notes and links 2:30 – An example of a on the (seemingly inadequate) nests of pigeons. 7:30 – An featuring a variety of weaverbird nests. 10:30 – Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on birds' nests is available . 15:00 – A from another branch of Dr. Healy’s work, on hummingbirds. 16:00 – The by Charles Dixon on the science of “caliology.” 17:00 – An of research done by the Colliases on weavers. 19:00 – For an up-to-date primer on birds’ nests—covering a number of the questions we discuss here—see Dr. Healy’s recent . 22:30 – An about hummingbird eggs. 28:30 – A by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the use of human materials in birds’ nests. Our episode on animal medication is . 31:30 – An about bowerbirds and how they decorate their bowers. 35:00 – An on the evolution of birds’ nests, covering the question of what dinosaur nests were like. 43:00 – A by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the impact of temperature and earlier breeding success on nest size. 51:00 – For more discussion of personality in animals, including in clonal fish, see with Kate Laskowski. 55:00 – A by Dr. Healy and colleagues showing that zebra finches build nests that match the color of the walls. 58:00 – A by Dr. Healy and colleagues looking at how zebra finches learn aspects of nest-building from familiar individuals. 59:00 – A by Dr. Healy and colleagues, led by Maria Tello-Ramos, about architectural traditions in an African sociable weaver species. 1:07:00 – An by Michael Arbib, Dr. Healy, and colleagues on connections between tool use, language, and nest-building. 1:11:00 – An on the brain basis of nest-building in zebra finches. A on the same topic. 1:12:30 – A by Hopi E. Hoekstra and colleagues on the genetics of burrow-building in deer mice. 1:14:00 – An of the idea that humans initially learned their weaving skills from weaver birds. Recommendations Books by Mike Hansell (see , , and ) , Charles Dixon , Peter Goodfellow , James Gould & Carol Gould Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/34187200

Animal, heal thyself 11/14/2024

Animal, heal thyself What happens to animals when they get sick? If they’re pets or livestock, we probably call the vet. And the vet may give them drugs or perform a procedure. But what about wild animals? Do they just languish in misery? Well, not so much. It turns out that animals—from bees to butterflies, porcupines to primates—medicate themselves. They seek out bitter plants, they treat wounds, they amputate limbs, they eat clay—the list goes on. This all raises an obvious question: How do they know to do this? How do they know what they know about healing and medicine? It also invites a related question: How do we humans know what we know? My guests today are and . Jaap is a biologist at Emory University, and has studied animal medication in insects; he’s also the author of a about animal medication across the tree of life. Mike is a primatologist at the University of Nagasaki, and made some of the very first observations about animal self-medication in chimpanzees in the 1980s. Here, Jaap, Mike, and I talk about how they found their way into this field, in both cases kind of by accident. We discuss what defines animal medication generally as well as what defines its more specific subtypes—social medication, allomedication, prophylactic medication, and others. We consider how animals know what they know about healing—whether these medicinal behaviors are mostly driven by innate tendencies, by individual experimentation, by social learning, or by some combination. We talk about the evidence that many of the medical insights that humans have had over the years actually began with observations of animals. Along the way, we touch on medicinal amputation and medicinal cannibalism, geophagy, leaf-folding in primates, animal quackery, bear medicine, why lemurs rub themselves with millipedes, and the anti-parasitic power of cigarette butts. Alright, friends, this is a fun one. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A describing how birds in Mexico City line their nests with cigarette butts. A showing that they do so in response to increased presence of parasites. 7:30 – Dr. Huffman’s of self-medication by a chimpanzee, using Vernonia amygdalina in Tanzania. 15:00 – Dr. de Roode’s on “transgenerational medicine” in monarch butterflies. 20:00 – For an overview of animal medication, including definitions and examples of its subtypes, see by Dr. de Roode and Dr. Huffman. 25:00 – The on “medicinal amputation” in ants. The on “medicinal cannibalism” in ants. 30:00 – For an overview of medication in insects, see this by Dr. de Roode and colleagues. 34:00 – The by Mascaro and colleagues showing that chimpanzees treat wounds (to the self and others) by applying insects. 38:00 – A recent of geophagy—soil eating—in primates by Paula Pebsworth, Dr. Huffman, and colleagues. 43:00 – A paper by and colleagues on chimpanzee leaf-swallowing in the wild. Dr. Huffman later did a series of experimental studies on this behavior, investigating the role of social learning—see and . 46:00 – An on how goats learn to eat what they eat. 52:00 – An describing the medicinal properties of Vernonia amygdalina. 54:00 – A showing that lemurs rub each other with millipedes in a possible case of animal medication. 57:00 – A by Dr. Huffman in which he describes the use of mulengelele by a sick porcupine. A by Dr. Huffman of what traditional healers have learned from observations of animal medication. 1:01:00 – An about propolis and its medicinal use in bees; an about its medicinal potential in humans. Recommendations , Jaap de Roode (forthcoming) , Cindy Engel , Fred Provenza ‘ Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/33925022

The rise of machine culture 10/31/2024

The rise of machine culture The machines are coming. Scratch that—they're already here: AIs that propose new combinations of ideas; chatbots that help us summarize texts or write code; algorithms that tell us who to friend or follow, what to watch or read. For a while the reach of intelligent machines may have seemed somewhat limited. But not anymore—or, at least, not for much longer. The presence of AI is growing, accelerating, and, for better or worse, human culture may never be the same. My guest today is . Iyad directs the at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Iyad is a bit hard to categorize. He's equal parts computer scientist and artist; one magazine profile described him as "." Labels aside, his work explores the emerging relationships between AI, human behavior, and society. In a , Iyad and colleagues introduced a framework for understanding what they call "machine culture." The framework offers a way of thinking about the different routes through which AI may transform—is transforming—human culture. Here, Iyad and I talk about his work as a painter and how he brings AI into the artistic process. We discuss whether AIs can make art by themselves and whether they may eventually develop good taste. We talk about how AIphaGoZero upended the world of Go and about how LLMs might be changing how we speak. We consider what AIs might do to cultural diversity. We discuss the field of cultural evolution and how it provides tools for thinking about this brave new age of machine culture. Finally, we discuss whether any spheres of human endeavor will remain untouched by AI influence. Before we get to it, a humble request: If you're enjoying the show—and it seems that many of you are—we would be ever grateful if you could let the world know. You might do this by leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, or maybe a comment on Spotify. You might do this by giving us a shout-out on the social media platform of your choice. Or, if you prefer less algorithmically mediated avenues, you might do this just by telling a friend about us face-to-face. We're hoping to grow the show and the best way to do that is through listener endorsements and word-of-mouth. Thanks in advance, friends. Alright, on to my conversation with Dr. Iyad Rahwan. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – from Dr. Rahwan's ‘Faces of Machine’ portrait series. One of the portraits from the series serves as our tile art for this episode. 11:30 – The “stochastic parrots” term comes from an by Emily Bender and colleagues. 18:30 – A popular about DALL-E and the “avocado armchair.” 21:30 – Ted Chiang’s essay, “.” 24:00 – An with Boris Eldagsen, who won the Sony World Photography Awards in March 2023 with an image that was later revealed to be AI-generated. 28:30 – A description of the concept of “.” 29:00 – Though widely attributed to different sources, to have developed the idea that good science fiction predicts not the automobile, but the traffic jam. 30:00 – The academic describing the Moral Machine experiment. You can judge the scenarios for yourself (or design your own scenarios) . 30:30 – An about the Nightmare Machine project; an about the Deep Empathy project. 37:30 – An by Cesar Hidalgo and colleagues about the relationship between television/radio and global celebrity. 41:30 – An by Melanie Mitchell (!) on AI and analogy. A about that work. 42:00 – A describing the study of whether AIs can generate original research ideas. The preprint is . 46:30 – For more on AlphaGo (and its successors, AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero), see . 48:30 – The finding that the novelty of human Go playing increased due to the influence of AlphaGo. 51:00 – A delving into the idea that ChatGPT overuses certain words, including “delve.” A by Dr. Rahwan and colleagues, presenting evidence that “delve” (and other words overused by ChatGPT) are now being used more in human spoken communication. 55:00 – A using simulations to show how LLMs can “collapse” when trained on data that they themselves generated. 1:01:30 – A of the literature on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and polarization. 1:02:00 – An influential by Dr. Chris Bail and colleagues suggesting that exposure to opposing views might actually increase polarization. 1:04:30 – A by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen, who are often credited with developing the idea of “generalized Darwinism” in the social sciences. 1:12:00 – An about Google’s NotebookLM podcast-like audio summaries. 1:17:3 0 – An by Ursula LeGuin on children’s literature and the Jungian “shadow.” Recommendations , Joseph Henrich “,” Iyad Rahwan et al. Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/33699777

How should we think about IQ? 10/17/2024

How should we think about IQ? IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for “general cognitive ability”—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they’ve learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ? My guest today is . Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of “behavior genetics.” Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled . In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured. In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric doubts that we are anywhere close to an account of the biology of IQ. We discuss what makes intelligence such a formidable construct in psychology and why essentialist understandings of it are so intuitive. We talk about Francis Galton and the long shadow he’s cast on the study of human behavior. We discuss the classic era of Twin Studies—an era in which researchers started to derive quantitative estimates of the heritability of complex traits. We talk about how the main takeaway from that era was that genes are quite important indeed, and about how more recent genetic techniques suggest that takeaway may have been a bit simplistic. Along the way, Eric and I touch on spelling ability, child prodigies, the chemical composition of money, the shared quirks of twins reared apart, the Flynn Effect, the Reverse Flynn Effect, birth order, the genetics of height, the problem of missing heritability, whether we should still be using IQ scores, and the role of behavior genetics in the broader social sciences. Alright folks, lots in here—let's just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – The 1994 book The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein a Charles Murray, dealt largely with the putative social implications of IQ research. It was extremely controversial and widely discussed. For an overview of the book and controversy, see the Wikipedia article . 6:00 – For discussion of the “all parents are environmentalists…” quip, see . 12:00 – The notion of “multiple intelligences” was popularized by the psychologist Howard Gardner—see for an overview. See for an attempt to test the claims of the “multiple intelligences” framework using some of the methods of traditional IQ research. For work on EQ (or Emotional Intelligence) see . 19:00 – Dr. Turkheimer has also laid out his spelling test analogy in . 22:30 – Dr. Turkheimer’s 1998 paper, “.” 24:30 – For an in-passing treatment of the processing efficiency idea, see p. 195 of Daniel Nettle’s book . See also Richard Haier’s book, . 26:00 – The on the relationship between pupil size and intelligence. A more recent study that those findings. 31:00 – For an argument that child prodigies constitute an argument for “nature,” see . For a memorable narrative account of one child prodigy, see . 32:00 – A of the Flynn effect. We have previously discussed the Flynn Effect in an with Michael Muthukrishna. 37:00 – James Flynn’s book, On the reversal of the Flynn Effect, see . 40:00 – The phrase “nature-nurture” originally comes from Shakespeare and was picked up by Francis Galton. In The Tempest, Prospero describes Caliban as “a born devil on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick.” 41:00 – For a biography of Galton, see . For an article-length account of Galton’s role in the birth of eugenics, see . 50:00 – For an account of R.A. Fisher’s 1918 paper and its continuing influence, see . 55:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s on the “nonshared environment”—E in the ACE model. 57:00 – A coming out of the Minnesota Study of Twins reared apart. A New York Times recounting some of the interesting anecdata in the Minnesota Study. 1:00:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s 2000 on the “three laws of behavior genetics.” Note that this is not, in fact, Dr. Turkheimer’s most cited paper (though it is very well cited). 1:03:00 – For another view of the state of behavior genetics in the postgenomic era, see . 1:11:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer’s work on poverty, heritability, and IQ, see . 1:13:00 – A recent of birth order effects on personality. 1:16:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer’s take on the missing heritability problem, see and . 1:19:00 – A recent on the missing heritability problem in the case of height. 1:30:00 – On the dark side of IQ, see Chapter 9 of Dr. Turkheimer’s book. See also Radiolab’s . 1:31:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s Substack, . Recommendations , Kathryn Paige Harden , Stuart Ritchie , Richard Nisbett (Ted talk), James Flynn Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: . For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/33495702

Rethinking the "wood wide web" 10/03/2024

Rethinking the "wood wide web" Forests have always been magical places. But in the last couple decades, they seem to have gotten a little more magical. We've learned that trees are connected to each other through a vast underground network—an internet of roots and fungi often called the "wood wide web". We've learned that, through this network, trees share resources with each other. And we've learned that so-called mother trees look out for their own offspring, preferentially sharing resources with them. There's no question that this is all utterly fascinating. But what if it's also partly a fantasy? My guest today is . Justine is a forest ecologist at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on mycorrhizas—these are the symbioses formed between fungi and plant roots that are thought to be the basis of the "wood wide web." Last year, Justine and colleagues published in which they argued that some of the claims around the wood wide web have gotten out of hand. These new ideas about forests, they argued, have gotten decoupled from the actual on-the-ground—or under-the-ground—science. In reality, it’s a field still riddled with unknowns and mixed findings. Here, Justine and I do a bit of mycorrhiza 101—we talk about what mycorrhizas are, how they evolved, and what the structures actually look like. We discuss the original 1997 study that inspired the term "wood wide web." We consider why it's so hard to figure out what's actually going on, mechanistically, under the forest floor. We discuss the increasingly popular notion of plant intelligence and what it means to empirical researchers in this area like Justine. We talk about why people—both members of the public and scientists themselves—have found wood wide web ideas so charming. And, finally, we discuss the question of whether a little bit of hype is really so bad—particularly if it gets people excited about forests, about science, and about conservation. I got as excited about the "wood wide web" as anyone. The idea totally captured my imagination a couple of years ago. So I was intrigued—if also a little dismayed—to learn recently that these ideas were getting some pushback. And I knew immediately we should talk to one of the researchers leading that pushback. Alright friends, let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Justine Karst. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 5:00 – Popular treatments sometimes mentioned as over-hyping the wood wide web (and associated ideas) include , , and the novel . 9:30 – The landmark by Simard et al. that kicked off interest in the so-called wood wide web. 11:00 – A showing that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. 11:30 – For more on the new interest in “plant intelligence” see our previous episodes and . On the notion of “fungal intelligence,” see . 18:00 – A presenting a hypothesis about the origins of land plants. 20:00 – The California “” mentioned. 23:00 – A on the differences between arbuscular mycorrhizas and ectomycorrhizas. 23:30 – Richard Powers’ influential novel, . Note that the novel doesn’t exclusively focus on the wood wide web; it covers ideas and findings about trees and forests, many of which are uncontroversial. 36:00 – Dr. Karst co-authored her perspective piece in Nature Ecology & Evolution with and . 50:00 – For more on aspens and how they constitute clonal organisms, see . 52:00 – The “mother tree” idea was popularized in Dr. Suzanne Simard’s book, . 1:04:00 – Another recent critique of the wood wide web and mother tree idea is . In it the authors write: “Reaching out to the general public to make people care about forests is certainly a praiseworthy goal, but not when it involves the dissemination of a distorted view of the plant world. In other words: the end does not justify the means.” 1:05:30 – Others influenced by The Overstory include and . 1:09:00 – A on myco-heterotrophic plants. 1:13:00 – See a recent presentation by Dr. Jared Farmer on trees and “chronodiversity” . Recommendations ‘,’ Stella Stanford ‘’, Daniel Immerwahr Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/33309952

Electric ecology 09/19/2024

Electric ecology 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 is . Sam is a sensory ecologist at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and one of a handful of scientists uncovering some shocking things about the role of electricity in the natural world. Here, Sam and I have a wide-ranging conversation about electroreception—which is the perception of electrical stimuli—and electric ecology—which is the study of the ecological roles of electricity. We talk about how an interest in electroreception first got started, and why it's recently resurged. We discuss aquatic electroreception versus aerial electroreception, active electroreception versus passive electroreception. We talk about how electroreception is actually kind of easy to evolve. Along the way, we consider electrolocation and, its analog in sound, echolocation. We touch on dolphins, sharks, echidnas, ticks, caterpillars, bees, and spiders. We zoom in on electrostatic pollination, and what is inarguably the coolest sounding anatomical structure known to biology: the ampullae of Lorenzini. I think you'll enjoy this one, friends. As Sam describes here, electroreception is one of those "alien senses"—it really challenges the imagination. And electric ecology is one of those frontiers in our understanding of the natural world. So without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Sam England. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – For many of the topics discussed in this episode, see this comprehensive of electroreception and electric ecology by Dr. England and a colleague. 7:30 – A the (contested) phenomenon of electromagnetic hypersensitivity in humans. 9:30 – An on electroreception in monotremes. 13:00 – An of electrolocation in “weakly electric” fish. 17:00 – A popular about the discovery of electroreception in sharks. 20:30 – A showing that bumblebees detect the electric fields around flowers. 23:30 – A recent of electroreception and its evolution in fish. 25:00 – A demonstrating electroreception in the Guiana dolphin. 34:00 – A recent by Dr. England and colleagues showing that static electricity pulls ticks onto hosts. 43:00 – For more on echolocation, see our on bats. 47:00 – A by Dr. Ryan Palmer, examining the theoretical possibilities of electroreception in air. 52:30 – A (controversial) on possibly language-like communication in fungi via electricity. 55:00 – Another on electroreception in bees, this one in honeybees. 56:30 – An a describing the role that electricity plays in spider ballooning. 1:00:00 – Dr. England’s showing that caterpillars can detect the electric fields around wasps. 1:03:00 – A of triboelectric effects. 1:11:00 – Dr. England’s of electrostatic pollination in butterflies and moths. 1:19:00 – A arguing that the sexual organs of flowers may have evolved to take advantage of electrostatic pollination. 1:25:00 – For more on spider eyes, see our all about spiders. Recommendations ‘’ William Crampton , Ed Yong (a !) Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/33119452

The nature of nurture 09/05/2024

The nature of nurture The idea of a "maternal instinct"—the notion that mothers are wired for nurturing and care—is a familiar one in our culture. And it has a flipside, a corollary—what you might call “paternal aloofness.” It's the idea that men just aren't meant to care for babies, that we have more, you know, manly things to do. But when you actually look at the biology of caretaking, the truth is more complicated and much more interesting. My guest today is . She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and the author of the new book, . In it, she examines paternal care, the biology that supports it, and the norms and practices that sometimes suppress it. In this conversation, Sarah and I set her new book, Father Time, in the context of her four previous books. We discuss the surprising prevalence of male care in fish and amphibians. We talk about how Charles Darwin noted the plasticity of caretaking in animals, only to ignore that plasticity when talking about humans. We consider how time in intimate proximity with babies activates capacities for nurturing—not just in fathers, but in caretakers of all kinds. Along the way, we touch on langurs and owl monkeys; emus and cassowaries; cichlid fish and fairy shrimp; prolactin and oxytocin; patriarchy and patriarchal notions. We talk about what seems to be distinctive about the human capacity for care; and about what happens when males spend too much time competing for status, and not enough time snuggling babies. You'll probably get a sense for this from our conversation, but there are very few researchers who take both biology and culture as seriously as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy does. She does not shy away from digging deep into either domain. And she does not shy away from trying to trace the tangled links between the two. Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A on male parental care in fishes. 7:00 – Dr. Hrdy’s previous books include , , , and . 13:00 – A on “cooperative breeding” in birds. 16:30 – The full text of Charles Darwin’s book, . 21:00 – Read about Caroline Kennard and her correspondence with Darwin . 23:30 – A of a recent book on Nancy Hopkins and her (quantitative) efforts to expose sexism at MIT. 26:00 – The on the brains of fathers in different caretaking roles. 37:00 – A by Larry Young and a colleague on the role of ancient peptides (like oxytocin) in sociality. 40:00 – The of Dr. Lauren O’Connell, who studies physiology and social behavior in poison dart frogs. 42:00 – A of paternal care in primates. 47:00 – For more on Michael Tomasello’s “mutualism hypothesis”—and a lot else—see our with Dr. Tomasello. 49:00 – For more on the costliness of the human brain, see our earlier episodes and . 58:00 – The by Esther Herrmann, Michael Tomasello, and colleagues on the human specialization for social cognition. 59:00 – A of children’s early “ostensive gestures” of showing and offering. 1:02:00 – An for the ethnographer Lorna Marshall. 1:09:00 – An of ostracods and the traces they leave in the fossil record. Recommendations , Michael Numan , George Eliot , Sean Carroll , Neil Shubin , Sean Carroll Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/32904992

The space of (possibly) sentient beings 08/22/2024

The space of (possibly) sentient beings We may not know what it's like to be a bat, but we're pretty confident that it's like something—that bats (and other mammals) are sentient creatures. They feel pleasure and pain, cold and warmth, agitation and comfort. But when it comes to other creatures, the case is less clear. Is a crab sentient? What about a termite, or a tree? The honest answer is we just don't know—and yet, despite that uncertainty, practical questions arise. How should we treat these beings? What do we owe them? My guest today is . Jonathan is a Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and the author of the new book . In it, he presents a framework for thinking about which beings might be sentient and about how our policies should account for this. Here, we talk about Jonathan's work at the nexus of philosophy, science, and policy—in particular, his role in advising the UK government on the welfare of cephalopods and decapods. We discuss what it means to be sentient and what the brain basis of sentience might be. We sketch his precautionary framework for dealing with the wide-ranging debates and rampant uncertainty around these issues. We talk about several prominent edge cases in the natural world. And, finally, we consider whether AI might become sentient and, if so, by what route. Along the way, Jonathan and I touch on: plants, crayfish, bees, larvae, and LLMs. We talk about "sentience candidates" and the "zone of reasonable disagreement"; about Jonathan's stances on octopus farming and live-boiling of crabs; about the “run-ahead principle” and the “gaming problem”; and about the question of whether all conscious experience has a valence. Jonathan's book is a remarkably clear and compelling read—if you find yourself intrigued by our conversation, I definitely recommend that you check out The Edge of Sentience as well. Alright friends, without further ado, on to our sixth season of Many Minds and on to my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Birch. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – The full report prepared by Dr. Birch and colleagues for the UK government is available . 4:30 – Listen to our earlier episode with Dr. Alex Schnell . 7:00 – Dr. Birch’s 2017 , from an earlier chapter of his career during which he focused on kin selection and social behavior. 11:00 – A by Dr. Birch on the UK government’s response to the pandemic. 16:00 – A classic 1958 on sentience by the philosopher Herbert Feigl. 20:30 – Read Dr. Birch’s general audience on the case of live-boiling crabs. 28:30 – Advocates of the idea that regions of the midbrain support sentience include Antonio Damasio, Jaak Panskepp (whose work we discussed in this ), and Bjorn Merker (whose work we discussed in this ). 31:30 – A of the possibility of sentience in plants, with Paco Calvo. 34:30 – Peter Godfrey Smith’s recent book, . 35:30 – A paper by Dr. Birch and colleagues titled ‘.’ 39:30 – A reporting conditioned place avoidance in octopuses. 40:30 – A reporting anxiety-like states in crayfish. 42:00 – A on "nociception" (which Kensy mispronounces in this segment). 44:00 – A by Dr. Birch and colleagues arguing against octopus farming. 47:00 – A about welfare concerns in farmed insects. 49:00 – A showing that bees will selectively groom an antenna that was touched with a heat probe. 51:00 – The . 1:02:00 – A by Dr. Birch and Kristin Andrews about developing better markers for understanding AI sentience. The question of defining “markers” of conscious experience was also a central topic of with Tim Bayne. Recommendations , Peter Godfrey-Smith , Lars Chittka , Martha Nussbaum Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter () or Bluesky (). /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/32687757

From the archive: Cities, cells, and the neuroscience of navigation 08/07/2024

From the archive: Cities, cells, and the neuroscience of navigation Hi friends, we're still on a brief summer break. We'll have a new episode for you later in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! ---- [originally aired September 21, 2022] If your podcast listening habits are anything like mine, you might be out for a walk right now. Maybe you’re wandering the neighborhood, just blocks from home, or maybe you’re further afield. In either case, I’m guessing you’re finding your way without too much trouble—you’re letting some intuitive sense steer you, track how far you’ve gone, tell you where to go next. This inner navigator of yours is doing all in the background, as your mind wanders elsewhere, and magically it gets it all right. Most of the time, anyway. But how is it doing it? What allows us to pull this off? My guest today is , Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His lab studies how our brains "remember the past, navigate the present, and imagine the future.” In recent years Hugo and his group have used a wide variety of methods—and some astonishingly large datasets—to shed light on central questions about human spatial abilities. Here, Hugo and I do a quick tour of the neuroscience of navigation—including the main brain structures involved and how they were discovered. We talk about research on a very peculiar population, the London taxi driver. We discuss the game Sea Hero Quest and what it's teaching us about navigation abilities around the world. We also touch on what GPS might be doing to us; whether the hippocampus actually resembles a seahorse; the ingenious layout of our brain's inner grids; navigation ability as an early sign of Alzheimer's; how “place cells” actually map more than just place; and how the monarch butterfly finds its way. Super excited to share this one folks—this is an episode that's been on our wish list for some time. For mobile organisms like us, navigation is life or death—it’s as basic as eating or breathing. So when we dig into the foundations of these spatial abilities, we’re really digging into some of the most basic foundations of mind. So let’s get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Hugo Spiers. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – A brief about a person with developmental topographical disorder. 8:00 – There have been a slew of popular articles about the question of whether GPS is undermining our navigation abilities—see and . 12:00 – A classic about path integration in mammals. 14:00 – The classic by Edward Tolman on the idea of “cognitive maps.” 16:00 – A of a human hippocampus and seahorse. The resemblance is indeed striking. 18:00 – A reporting “place cells” in rats. 21:00 – A on seasonal changes in hippocampus size across different species. 22:00 – A on interactions between the hippocampus and the striatum in navigation. 23:30 – An reviewing the first decade of research on “grid cells.” A showing the activity of grid cells in a rat. 26:00 – The long struggle to calculate longitude is subject of a by Dava Sobel. 27:00 – The announcing the Nobel prize for the discovery of grid cells and place cells. 31:00 – A about ‘The Knowledge’—a famed test for London taxi drivers. 33:30 – The celebrated by Eleanor Maquire and colleagues on structural changes in the brains of London taxi drivers. The (also-celebrated) follow-up that Dr. Spiers was part of, comparing London taxi and bus drivers. 37:00 – More about the Taxi Brains project can be found . 41:00 – A by Dr. Spiers’ team, led by Eva-Maria Griesbauer, reviews the cognitive neuroscience studies on London taxi drivers and dives deep into the learning techniques the drivers use. 44:30 – A by Dr. Spiers and team providing an overview of Sea Hero Quest and the studies it has been used for to date. A demo of the game, and a describing its motivation. Dr. Spiers developed the idea for the game in collaboration with . 50:00 – A looking at the value of Sea Hero Quest in detecting those at risk for Alzheimers. 53:00 – One of the by Dr. Spiers and colleagues using Sea Hero Quest to test a vast sample and examine effects of variables like age, gender, and nationality. 54:30 – A more by Dr. Spiers and colleagues examining the effect of growing up in cities that are more or less “griddy.” 57:00 – A by Dr. Spiers and colleagues showing a relationship between real-world navigation ability and navigation performance in Sea Hero Quest. 1:04:00 – The of the International Orienteering Foundation. A showing the sport. 1:06:00 – A review by Dr. Spiers and colleagues about the potential roles of cognitive maps in navigation and beyond. 1:07:00 – A of “concept cells”, aka “Halle Berre cells.” 1:08:00 – by Dr. Spiers on the question of how many maps—and of what kind—the hippocampus implements. 1:10:30 – A on “time cells” in the hippocampus. 1:14:30 – A about monarch butterfly navigation. Dr. Spiers recommends: , by Ekstrom, Spiers, Bohbot, and Rosenbaum ‘,’ by Epstein, Patai, Julian, and Spiers You can read more about Dr. Spiers work on his and follow him on . Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , 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 (). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter !** 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 Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/32460767

From the archive: What does ChatGPT really know? 07/24/2024

From the archive: What does ChatGPT really know? Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! ---- [originally aired January 25, 2023] By now you’ve probably heard about the new chatbot called . There’s no question it’s something of a marvel. It distills complex information into clear prose; it offers instructions and suggestions; it reasons its way through problems. With the right prompting, it can even mimic famous writers. And it does all this with an air of cool competence, of intelligence. But, if you're like me, you’ve probably also been wondering: What’s really going on here? What are ChatGPT—and other large language models like it—actually doing? How much of their apparent competence is just smoke and mirrors? In what sense, if any, do they have human-like capacities? My guest today is . Murray is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind. He's the author of numerous articles and several books at the lively intersections of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy. Very recently, Murray put out a paper titled ’, and it’s the focus of our conversation today. In the paper, Murray argues that—tempting as may be—it's not appropriate to talk about large language models in anthropomorphic terms. Not yet, anyway. Here, we chat about the rapid rise of large language models and the basics of how they work. We discuss how a model that—at its base—simply does “next-word prediction" can be engineered into a savvy chatbot like ChatGPT. We talk about why ChatGPT lacks genuine “knowledge” and “understanding”—at least as we currently use those terms. And we discuss what it might take for these models to eventually possess richer, more human-like capacities. Along the way, we touch on: emergence, prompt engineering, embodiment and grounding, image generation models, Wittgenstein, the intentional stance, soft robots, and "exotic mind-like entities." Before we get to it, just a friendly reminder: applications are now open for the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (or DISI). DISI will be held this June/July in St Andrews Scotland—the program consists of three weeks of intense interdisciplinary engagement with exactly the kinds of ideas and questions we like to wrestle with here on this show. If you're intrigued—and I hope you are!—check out for more info. Alright friends, on to my decidedly human chat, with Dr. Murray Shanahan. Enjoy! The paper we discuss is . A transcript of this episode is . Notes and links 6:30 – The by Vaswani and colleagues. 8:00 – A about GPT-3. 10:00 – A about some of the impressive—and not so impressive—behaviors of ChatGPT. For more discussion of ChatGPT and other large language models, see another with Dr. Shanahan, as well as interviews with , , and (CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT). 14:00 – A widely discussed by Emily Bender and colleagues on the “dangers of stochastic parrots.” 19:00 – A about “prompt engineering”. Another about the concept of Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback, in the context of ChatGPT. 30:00 – One of Dr. Shanahan’s books is titled, . 39:00 – An example of a robotic agent, , which is connected to a language model. 40:30 – On the notion of embodiment in the cognitive sciences, see the classic book by Francisco Varela and colleagues, . 44:00 – For a detailed primer on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, see . 45:00 – See Dr. Shanahan’s on “conscious exotica" and the space of possible minds. 49:00 – See Dennett’s book, . Dr. Shanahan recommends: , by Melanie Mitchell (see also our earlier episode with Dr. Mitchell) , by M. Shanahan and M. Mitchell You can read more about Murray’s work on and follow him on . Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , 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 (). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter !** 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 Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/32271942

From the archive: Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering 07/10/2024

From the archive: Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! _____ [originally aired May 17, 2023] You know the feeling. You're trying to read or write or think through a project, maybe even just respond to an email, when your attention starts to drift. You may not even notice it until you've already picked up your phone or jumped tabs, until your mind has already wandered way off-piste. This problem of distraction has become a bit of a modern-day obsession. We now fret about how to stay focused, how to avoid time-sucks, how to use our attention wisely. But it turns out this fixation of ours—contemporary as it may seem—is really not so new. My guest today is , Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Jamie is the author of a new book titled . In the book, Jamie shows that Christian monks in late antiquity and the early middle ages were—like us—a bit obsessed with attention. And their understanding of attention fit within a broad and often remarkably detailed understanding of the mind. In this conversation, Jamie and I talk about why monks in this era cared so much about distraction. We discuss how they understood the relationship between mind and body; how they conceptualized memory, meditation, and mind-wandering. We discuss some of the mnemonic techniques they used, some of the graphical and textual devices that helped keep them focused, and some of the metaphors and visualization techniques they innovated. Along the way we also touch on fasting, sleep, demons and angels, the problem of discernment, the state of pure prayer, the Six Wings mnemonic device, metacognitive maneuvering, and much more. I’ll just say I really enjoyed The Wandering Mind. As Jamie and I chat about here, the book illuminates an earlier understanding of human psychology that feels deeply familiar in some ways, and delightfully strange in others. I think you definitely get a sense of that in this conversation. Alright friends, on to my chat with Dr. Jamie Kreiner. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – A devoted to the Ark of Hugh of Saint Victor. 6:30 – For a detailed (and positive) review essay about The Wandering Mind, see . 11:30 – The books, by Brian Jacques, are well known for featuring elaborate feasts. An about some of the best of these. 18:30 – For more on how the body was understood in the early Christian world, see . 26:30 – Text written continuously is known as . 27:30 – Articles that celebrate medieval marginalia can be found , , and . 40:00 – An about the Six Wings mnemonic. For more on mnemonic techniques in the medieval world, see Mary Carruthers’ . 53:00 – On the idea of “pure prayer,” see the book, . 57:30 – Dr. Kreiner’s , which comes out in January 2024, is a translation of some of John Cassian’s work on distraction. Dr. Kreiner’s book recommendations can be found in a recent article . Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/32066337

A new picture of language 06/26/2024

A new picture of language If you've taken Linguistics 101, you know what language is. It's a system for conveying meaning through speech. We build words out of sounds, and then complex ideas out of those words. Remarkably, the relationship between the sounds and the meanings they convey is purely arbitrary. Human language consists, in other words, of abstract symbols. Now, of course, there are also sign languages, but these operate in the same way, just in a different medium. This, anyway, is the view of language that has dominated and defined linguistics for many decades. But some think it gets some pretty fundamental things pretty wrong. Some think we need a new picture of language altogether. My guest today is . Neil is Associate Professor at the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication, in the Netherlands; he is also the director of the at Tilburg. For about two decades, Neil has been studying the rich properties of graphic systems—especially comics—and has built an argument that some constitute full-blown languages. His latest book, co-authored with, Joost Schilperoord, is titled . It challenges that longstanding, deeply held view of what language is. Instead, the book argues that the human language capacity combines three different modalities—the vocal modality (as in speech), the bodily modality (as in gesture), and the graphic modality (as in comics and other visual narratives). And each of these modalities is naturally able to support full-blown languages. Here, Neil and I talk about the basic assumptions of modern linguistics and where those assumptions come from. We discuss the idea that there are three expressive modalities that come naturally to humans, with each modality optimized for certain kinds of meaning. We talk about Neil's career, not only as an academic, but as an illustrator. We discuss cross-cultural differences and similarities in comics, and how comics have changed over the last century. And, finally, we consider how Neil's framework challenges current theorizing about the evolution of language. Along the way, Neil and I touch on sign languages and homesign systems, visual style vs visual language, Peircean semiotics, animal tracks, cave art, emoji, upfixes, sand drawing, Manga, the refrain "I can't draw," and the idea that the graphic modality is the only one that's truly unique to our species. After this episode we'll be taking a bit of a summer break, but we'll be posting some old favorites to tide you over. Alright friends, hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Neil Cohn. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – An earlier by Dr. Cohn on the well-worn refrain “I can’t draw.” His more recent covering the topic. 9:00 – An of research on homesign systems. For a broader discussion of differences between gesture, homesign systems, and established sign languages, see . 15:00 – A , ‘Chinese Room,’ commissioned by the philosopher Dan Dennett and drawn by Dr. Cohn. 19:30 – The of Dr. Cohn’s graduate mentor, Ray Jackendoff. 25:00 – A brief by Dr. Cohn and Dr. Schilperoord on the need to “reimagine language.” 25:30 – The , based on lecture notes, by Ferdinand de Saussure, ‘Course in General Linguistics.' 44:00 – For an overview of “bimodal bilingualism,” see . 50:00 – A by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on the processing of emoji substituted for words. 56:00 – A by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on anaphora in visual narratives. 58:30 – For our previous audio essay on animal (and human) tracks, see . 1:01:30 – For examples of scholarship on non-Western methods of visual storytelling, including Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see Dr. Cohn’s earlier edited volume . For a deeper dive into sand drawing, see the monograph by Jenny Green . 1:03:00 – Dr. Cohn also recently published a book on cross-cultural aspects of comics, . The book is the fruit of his lab’s . 1:11:00 – For a video of Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see . 1:13:00 – See Dr. Cohn’s earlier book, 1:15:00 – A on “upfixes” by Dr. Cohn and a colleague. 1:22:00 – A by Dr. Cohn on the linguistic status of emoji. 1:31:00 – For a deep dive into Peircean semiotics, see . 1:36:00 – For my own general-audience treatment of “gesture first” theories of language evolution and the “modality transition” problem, see . 1:37:00 – A by Dr. Jackendoff and Eva Wittenberg outlining their “complexity hierarchy.” 1:50:00 – For the Getty museum exhibit associated with Dr. Cohn’s lecture, see . Recommendations , by Jenny Audring and Ray Jackendoff , by John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks , hosted by James McElvenny Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/31899397

Climate, risk, and the rise of agriculture 06/12/2024

Climate, risk, and the rise of agriculture It's an enduring puzzle. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors were nomadic, ranging over large territories, hunting and gathering for sustenance. Then, beginning roughly 12,000 years ago, we pivoted. Within a short timeframe—in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas—humans suddenly decided to settle down. We started to store our food. We domesticated plants. We set off, in other words, down a path that would reshape our cultures, our technologies, our social structures, even our minds. Yet no one has yet been able to account for this shift. No one has been able to fully explain why agriculture happened when it happened and where it happened. Unless, that is, someone just did. My guest today is . Andrea is an economist at the University of Torino, in Italy, with a focus on economic history. In a , he puts forward an ambitious, unifying theory of the rise of agriculture in our species. He argues that the key trigger was a spike in seasonality—with certain parts of the world, particularly parts of the northern hemisphere, suddenly experiencing warmer summers and colder winters. This led risk-averse humans in these places to start to store food and, eventually, to experiment with farming. In this conversation, Andrea and I talk about how he developed his theory, in steps, over the course of almost 20 years. We consider the weaknesses of earlier explanations of agriculture, including explanations that focused on climate. We discuss how he wrangled vast historical datasets to test his theory. And we talk about some of the downstream effects that agriculture seems to have had. Along the way we touch on: salmon, wheat, taro, and milk; agriculture as a franchise model; Milankovitch Cycles; risk-aversion and consumption-smoothing; interloping in the debates of other disciplines; the possibility of a fig-based civilization; and how we inevitably project our own concerns onto the past. Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. As I said at the top, the origins of agriculture is just one of those irresistible, perennial puzzles—one that cuts across the human sciences. And, I have to say, I find Andrea's solution to this puzzle quite compelling. I'll be curious to hear if you agree. Without further ado, on to my conversation with Andrea Matranga. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 8:00 – Various versions of the fable ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ are compiled . 13:00 – One of the last remaining ziggurat complexes is . 16:00 – The by anthropologist Alain Testart on food storage among hunter-gatherers. 19:30 – An emphasizing that agriculture occurred after the Ice Age due to warming conditions. Other studies have posited that other features of climate may have led to the rise in agriculture (e.g., ). 21:00 – An (illustrated) explanation of . 27:00 – For Marshall Sahlins’ discussion of ‘The Original Affluent Society,’ see . 32:00 – Jared Diamond’s popular article, ‘.’ 33:00 – A criticizing the particularistic focus of many archaeological treatments of the origins of agriculture. 36:30 – Dr. Matranga used a variety of data sources to test his theory, including a compiling dates of agricultural adoption. 42:00 – A detailing evidence of agriculture in Kuk Swamp in New Guinea. 43:00 – The book , by Rachel Laudan. 44:00 – A by Luigi Pascali and collaborators on the rise of states and the “appropriability” of cereals. 1:01:00 – A about the Natufian culture, which is considered to occupy an intermediate step on the road to agriculture. Recommendations What We Did to Father (republished as ), by Roy Lewis , by Jack Harlan , by Richard Lee and Irven Devore Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/31708627

Consider the spider 05/30/2024

Consider the spider Maybe your idea of spiders is a bit like mine was. You probably know that they have eight legs, that some are hairy. Perhaps you imagine them spending most of their time sitting in their webs—those classic-looking ones, of course—waiting for snacks to arrive. Maybe you consider them vaguely menacing, or even dangerous. Now this is not all completely inaccurate—spiders do have eight legs, after all—but it's a woefully incomplete and drab caricature. Your idea of spiders, in other words, may be due for a refresh. My guest today is , Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Ximena is the author of the new book, . It’s an accessible and stunningly illustrated survey of spider behavior, ecology, and cognition. In this conversation, Ximena and I do a bit of ‘Spiders 101’. We talk about spider senses—especially how spiders use hairs to detect the minutest of vibrations and how they see, usually, with four pairs of eyes. We talk about web-making—which, by the way, the majority of spiders don't do—and silk-making—which all do, but for more reasons than you may realize. We talk about how spiders hunt, jump, dance, pounce, plan, decorate, cache, balloon, and possibly count. We talk about why so many spiders mimic ants. We take up the puzzle of “stabilimenta”. We talk about whether webs constitute an extended sensory apparatus—like a gigantic ear—and why spiders are an under-appreciated group of animals for thinking about the evolution of mind, brain, and behavior. Alright friends, this one is an absolute feast. So let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Ximena Nelson. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A about our “collective arachnid aversion” to spiders. 8:00 – An by Dr. Nelson about jumping spider behavior. 8:30 – In addition to spiders, Dr. Nelson also studies kea parrots (e.g., ). 12:00 – A about the thousands of spider species known to science—and the thousands that remain unknown. 16:30 – A about a mostly vegetarian spider, Bagheera kiplingi. 18:00 – For the mating dance of the peacock spider, see . 20:00 – A on spider “hearing” via their webs. 24:00 – The iNaturalist profile of the . 29:30 – A of extended sensing in humans during tool use. 33:00 – A of vision (and other senses) in jumping spiders. 40:00 – An earlier of spider webs and silk. 45:00 – For a primer on bird’s nests, see . 48:00 – An describing the original work on how various drugs alter spiders’ webs. 49:00 – A in the long-standing stabilimenta debate. 54:00 – A about “ballooning” in spiders. 57:00 – An by Dr. Nelson and a colleague about jumping spiders as an important group for studies in comparative cognition. 1:01:00 – A of reversal learning in jumping spiders, which found large individual differences. 1:07:00 – A of larder monitoring in orb weaver spiders. 1:10:00 – A by Dr. Nelson and a colleague on numerical competence in Portia spiders. 1:16:00 – An on the so-called insect apocalypse. Recommendations , by M. Herberstein ‘,’ by F. Barth ‘’, by H. Japyassú and K. Lala Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/31525447

Can we measure consciousness? 05/16/2024

Can we measure consciousness? A cluster of brain cells in a dish, pulsing with electrical activity. A bee buzzing its way through a garden in bloom. A newborn baby staring up into his mother's eyes. What all these entities have in common is that we don't quite know what it’s like to be them—or, really, whether it's like anything at all. We don't really know, in other words, whether they’re conscious. But maybe we could know—if only we developed the right test. My guest today is . Tim is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He’s a philosopher of mind and cognitive science, with a particular interest in the nature of consciousness. Along with a large team of co-authors, Tim recently published an article titled .' In it, they review the current landscape of consciousness tests—or “C-tests”, as they call them—and outline strategies for building more and better tests down the road. Here, Tim and I discuss what consciousness is and why theories of it seem to be proliferating. We consider several of the boundary cases that are most hotly debated right now in the field—cases like brain organoids, neonates, and split-brain patients. We sketch a few of the most prominent current consciousness tests: the command following test, the sniff test, the unlimited associative learning test, and the test for AI consciousness. We talk about how we might be able to inch our way, slowly, toward something like a thermometer for consciousness: a universal test that tells us whether an entity is conscious, or to what degree, or even what kind of conscious it is. Along the way, Tim and I talk about zombies, chatbots, brains in vats, and islands of awareness. And we muse about how, in certain respects, consciousness is like temperature, or perhaps more like happiness or wealth or intelligence, and maybe even a bit like fire. I think you'll enjoy this one, friends—it's a thought-provoking conversation on a foundational topic, and one that takes us far and wide. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dr. Tim Bayne. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:45 – The philosopher Dan Dennett, who passed away in April, was known for his writings on consciousness—among them his 1991 book, . 7:00 – The on the neural correlates of consciousness, by Francis Crick and Christof Koch. 9:00 – A of theories of consciousness by Anil Seth and Dr. Bayne. 10:00 – David Chalmers’ on the “hard problem” of consciousness. 13:00 – Thomas Nagel’s on what it’s like to be a bat. 20:00 – A by James Croxford and Dr. Bayne arguing against consciousness in brain organoids. 23:00 – A by Dr. Bayne and colleagues about the emergence of consciousness in infants. 27:00 – A by Dr. Bayne and colleagues about consciousness in split-brain patients. An by Dr. Bayne on the same topic. 30:00 – A by Dr. Bayne, Dr. Seth, and Marcello Massimini on the notion of “islands of awareness.” 35:00 – The using the “(covert) command following test” in a patient in a so-called vegetative state. 38:00 – A introducing the “sniff test.” 40:00 – A on the “unlimited associative learning” test. 43:00 – An (preview only), by the philosopher Susan Schneider, proposing the AI consciousness test. 50:00 – The history of the scientific understanding of temperature is detailed in Hasok Chang’s book, . 53:30 – Different markers of consciousness in infants are reviewed in Dr. Bayne and colleagues’ . 1:03:00 – The ‘New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness’ was announced in April. Read about it . Recommendations , Anil Seth , Adrian Owen , Peter Godfrey-Smith Many Minds is a project of the , which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by , with help from Assistant Producer and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by . Our transcripts are created by . 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 ! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/31331697

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