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.

Rehabilitating placebo 05/02/2024

Rehabilitating placebo Welcome back friends! Today we've got a first for you: our very first audio essay by... not me. I would call it a guest essay, but it's by our longtime Assistant Producer, . If you're a regular listener of the show, you've been indirectly hearing her work across dozens and dozens of episodes, but this is the first time you will be actually hearing her voice. Urte is a philosopher. She works primarily in the philosophy of psychiatry, but also in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and neighboring fields. She's particularly interested in a colorful constellation of psychiatric phenomena—phenomena like hypnosis, mass hysteria, psychogenic conditions, and (the topic of today's essay) the placebo effect. There's almost certainly more to placebo than you realize—it's a surprisingly many-layered phenomenon. Here, Urte pulls apart those layers. She talks about what placebo can and cannot do, the mechanisms by which it operates, the ethical dimensions of its use, its evil twin nocebo, how it is woven through the history of medicine, and a lot more. She argues that, though we've learned a lot about the placebo in recent decades, we have not yet harnessed its full potential. As always, we eagerly welcome your comments about the show. Feel free to find us on social media, or send us a note at . We would love to hear your suggestions for future episodes, your constructive criticisms, really your feedback of whatever kind. Alright friends, now on to our audio essay—'Rehabilitating placebo’—written and read by Urte Laukaityte. Enjoy! A text version of this episode will be available soon. Notes and links 3:30 – A describing the FIDELITY trial. 8:00 – For a neuroscientific overview of placebo research, see this . The landmark 1978 study is . 9:00 – The using naloxone in rats. 10:30 – A of placebo effects in Parkinson’s disease. 13:00 – The showing placebo effects in allergy sufferers. For more on placebo and conditioning in the immune system, see . 13:30 – An of the results on whether placebo “can replace oxygen.” 16:00 – For the “milkshake” study, see . 20:00 – A on open-label placebos. A of the efficacy of open-label placebos. 22:00 – A of nocebo-induced side effects within the placebo groups of trials. 24:00 – On the idea of “good placebo responders,” see . 27:30 – The book , by Jacob Stegenga. 28:00 – A of the use of placebo by clinicians. 29:30 – A on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and placebo. 30:30 – A of factors modulating placebo effects. 34:00 – For the “signaling theory of symptoms,” see . 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/31082628

Cosmopolitan carnivores 04/18/2024

Cosmopolitan carnivores They tend to move under the cover of darkness. As night descends, they come for your gardens and compost piles, for your trash cans and attic spaces. They are raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. And if you live in urban North America, they are a growing presence. Whether you consider them menacing, cute, fascinating, or all of the above, you have to grant that they are quite a clever crew. After all, they've figured out how to adapt to human-dominated spaces. But how have they done this? What traits and talents have allowed them to evolve into this brave new niche? And are they still evolving into it? My guest today is . Sarah is Assistant Professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences and Zoology at the University of British Columbia; she also directs the at UBC. Sarah's research group focuses on the behavioral and cognitive ecology of urban wildlife. They ask what urban wildlife can teach us about animal cognition more generally and try to understand ways to smooth human-wildlife interactions. Here, Sarah and I talk about her work on that trio I mentioned before: raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. These three species are all members of the mammalian order of carnivora, a clade of animals that Sarah has focused on throughout her career and one that has been underrepresented in studies of animal cognition. We discuss the traits that have allowed these species—and certain members of these species—to thrive in dynamic, daunting urban spaces. We also talk about the big picture of the evolution of intelligence—and how urban adapter species might shed light on what is known as the cognitive buffer hypothesis. Along the way, we touch on: the neophilia of raccoons and the neophobia of coyotes, puzzle boxes, the Aesop's fable task, hyenas and elephants, brain size, individual differences, human-wildlife conflict, comparative gastronomy, and the cognitive arms race that might be unfolding in our cities. If you have any feedback for us, we would love to hear from you. Guest suggestions? Topics or formats you'd like to see? Blistering critiques? Effusive compliments? We're open to all of it. You can email us at manymindspodcast at gmail dot com. That's manymindspodcast at gmail. Though, honestly, if it's really an effusive compliment, feel free to just post that publicly somewhere. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Sarah Benson-Amram. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 8:50 – A of manual dexterity in raccoons. 11:30 – A featuring raccoon chittering, among other vocalizations. 12:00 – A on the categorization of wildlife responses to urbanization—avoider, adapter, exploiter—with some critical discussion. 14:00 – A of how animals are becoming more nocturnal in response to humans. 18:00 – An on the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, by one of its originators, Richard Byrne. A of how the hypothesis has fared across different taxa. 18:30 – A recent by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues surveying carnivore cognition. 25:00 – On the question of urban vs rural animals, see the popular article, ‘?’ 28:00 – A by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues using puzzle boxes to study behavioral flexibility in captive raccoons. See also her , conducted with a large team of neuroscience collaborators, examining the brains of raccoons who successfully solved the puzzle boxes. 34:30 – An by Dr. Benson-Amram on innovative problem solving in hyenas. 36:30 – Our on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski. 39:00 – A by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues exploring raccoons’ ability to solve the Aesop’s Fable task. She has also used this task . 44:00 – A by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues examining reversal learning in raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. 49:00 – An articulating the “cognitive buffer hypothesis.” 51:00 – A discussing—and “reviving”—the so-called ecological intelligence hypothesis. 53:00 – A by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues comparing brain size and problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores. 56:00 – A by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues on cognition in so-called nuisance species, in which they discuss the idea of a "cognitive arms race." 57:30 – A on bin-opening in cockatoos and how it might be leading to an “innovation arms race.” Recommendations , Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth by Frans De Waal , by Ed Yong (featured in a !) , by Stanley D. Gehrt, Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher 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/30879328

From the archive: Myths, robots, and the origins of AI 04/04/2024

From the archive: Myths, robots, and the origins of AI Hi friends, we're busy with some spring cleaning this week. We'll have a new episode for you in two weeks. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! _____ [originally aired Nov 30, 2022] When we talk about AI, we usually fixate on the future. What’s coming next? Where is the technology going? How will artificial intelligences reshape our lives and worlds? But it's also worth looking to the past. When did the prospect of manufactured minds first enter the human imagination? When did we start building robots, and what did those early robots do? What are the deeper origins, in other words, not only of artificial intelligences themselves, but of our ideas about those intelligences? For this episode, we have two guests who've spent a lot of time delving into the deeper history of AI. One is ; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, . Our second guest is ; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, . In this conversation, we draw on Adrienne's expertise in the classical era and Elly's expertise in the medieval period to dig into the surprisingly long and rich history of AI. We discuss some of the very first imaginings of artificial beings in Greek mythology, including Talos, the giant robot guarding the island of Crete. We talk about some of the very first historical examples of automata, or self-moving devices; these included statues that spoke, mechanical birds that flew, thrones that rose, and clocks that showed the movements of the heavens. We also discuss the long-standing and tangled relationships between AI and power, exoticism, slavery, prediction, and justice. And, finally, we consider some of the most prominent ideas we have about AI today and whether they had precedents in earlier times. This is an episode we've been hoping to do for some time now, to try to step back and put AI in a much broader context. It turns out the debates we're having now, the anxieties and narratives that swirl around AI today, are not so new. In some cases, they're millennia old. Alright friends, now to my conversation with Elly Truitt and Adrienne Mayor. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – See Adrienne’s , the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s for the Long Now Foundation. 7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in by Edward Poynter. 12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her ; for more on Elly’s research program, see her . 18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see . 23:00 – A recent about Aristotle’s writings on slavery. 26:00 – An about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today. 30:00 – A about the Antikythera mechanism. 34:00 – See Adrienne’s about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha. 38:45 – See Elly’s about how automata figured prominently in tombs. 47:00 – See Elly’s about mechanical clocks and the “invention of time.” For more on the rise of mechanistic thinking—and clocks as important metaphors in that rise—see Jessica Riskin’s book, . 50:00 – An about a “torture robot” of ancient Sparta. 58:00 – A of the “Iron Knight” in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Adrienne Mayor recommends: , by Armand D’Angour , edited by Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens , by George Zarkadakis , by Peter James and Nick Thorpe Elly Truitt recommends: , edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon , by Aifric Campbell You can read more about Adrienne’s work on her and follow her on . You can read more about Elly’s work on her and follow her 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/30674293

The borderlands of perception 03/21/2024

The borderlands of perception We've all seen those illusions. The dots seem to dance, when in fact they're completely still. The lines look like they bend, but in reality they're perfectly straight. Here's the thing: It doesn't matter that you know the ground truth of these illusions—the dancing and bending won't stop. And that we see the world one way, even though we know it's actually another way, is a fascinating quirk of our minds—and maybe a telling one. It suggests that there's a chasm between perceiving and thinking, that these may be two independent provinces of the mind. But, if so, we're faced with another question: Where does perception end and thinking begin? My guest today is . Chaz is an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the lab there. He and his research group study perceiving, thinking, and the interface between the two. Here, Chaz and I talk about his background in philosophy and how it continues to animate his research. We sketch the differences between perception and cognition and why the two are best considered separate faculties. We consider the idea of so-called "top-down" effects on perception. We discuss the fact that, even if perception and cognition are separate, there's much more to perception than meets the eye. We seem to see things like causes and social interactions; we perceive things like silences and absences. Along the way, Chaz and I touch on the modular view mind, skeletal shapes, the El Greco fallacy, stubborn epistemology, birders and radiologists, retinotopy and visual adaptation, adversarial images, human-machine comparisons, and the case of the blue banana. This is a fun one, friends. But before we get to it, one humble request. If you've been enjoying Many Minds, now would be a great time to leave us a rating or review. You can do this on or on . It would really help us grow and get the word out! It actually looks like our last review on Apple Podcasts is about 10 months old—so, if you have a minute, that could really use some freshening up. Alright folks, on to my conversation with Chaz Firestone. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – Dr. Firestone’s early reporting the Times Square experiment and the “skeletal shape” phenomenon. 8:00 – A of the “missing bullet holes” graphic. 13:00 – Dr. Firestone has collaborated intensively with the philosopher . 15:00 – A recent book by Ned Block, . 24:00 – Visual illusions are legion, as are inventories of them. See, for instance, on Wikipedia or this . 25:00 – An for Jerry Fodor, who died in 2017. The classic book by Zenon Pylyshyn, . 28:00 – A by Dr. Firestone about the history of the El Greco fallacy. An by Dr. Firestone and Brian Scholl showing the El Greco fallacy at work in perception research. 35:00 – A (with commentaries) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Dr. Firestone and Dr. Scholl about claims of “top-down” effects on perception. Dr. Firestone has published other work on this theme, e.g., , , & . 41:00 – A with discussion (and illustration) of the classic Dalmation Mooney image. 45:00 – A of rapid visual pattern recognition in expert chess players. 50:30 – A by J.J. Valenti and Dr. Firestone about the case of the blue banana. 54:00 – A by Alon Hafri and Dr. Firestone reviewing evidence that people actually perceive high-level relations like causality, support, and social interaction. 56:00 – A by Martin Rolfs and colleagues about the perception of causality. 1:02:00 – A by Liuba Papeo and colleagues about the perception of social interactions. A related showing an inversion effect. 1:04:00 – A by Alon Hafri and colleagues on the perception of roles in an interaction. 1:06:00 – A widely cited by J. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues on the recognition of social interactions in preverbal infants. 1:06:30 – A on reading in the brain. 1:10:00 – A by Rui Goh, Dr. Phillips, and Dr. Firestone on the perception of silence. 1:18:00 – A recent by Jorge Morales and Dr. Firestone about the dialogue between philosophy of perception and psychology, which discusses the perception of absence (among other case studies). 1:22:00 – A recent by Dr. Firestone about human-machine comparisons. 1:25:00 - by Zhenglong Zhou and Dr. Firestone on the deciphering of adversarial images by humans. 1:28:00 – For a review of the mirror self-recognition test, see our earlier . 1:35:00 – Other interesting work going on in Dr. Firestone’s research group has investigated , , and , among other topics. Recommendations , by Jerry Fodor , by Susanna Siegel , by Paul Bloom 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/30468963

Social memory in our closest cousins 03/07/2024

Social memory in our closest cousins If you want to have a rich social life, you're going to need to know who's who. You'll need to distinguish friend from foe, sister from stranger. And you're going to need to hold those distinctions in your head— for at least a little while. This is true not just for humans but—we have to assume—for other social species as well. But which species? And for how long can other creatures hold on to these kinds of social memories? My guests today are and . Laura is a biological anthropologist and postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley; Chris is a comparative psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins. Along with a larger team, Laura and Chris recently authored a on memory for familiar faces in chimpanzees and bonobos. In it, they show that our closest cousins remember their groupmates for decades. Here, we chat about the paper and the backstory behind it. We consider the anecdotes about long-term memory in great apes—and how Laura and Chris decided to go beyond those anecdotes. We talk about the evidence for complex social memory across the animal kingdom. We discuss the use of eye-tracking with primates and its advantages over earlier methods. We also talk about why long-term social memory might have evolved. Along the way, we touch on dolphins, ravens, and lemurs; voices, gaits, and names; the different gradations of recognition; and how memory serves as a critical foundation for social life more generally. Alright friends, without further ado, here's my conversation with Laura Lewis and Chris Krupenye. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:30 – Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye worked together in the lab of Dr. Brian Hare, a on the podcast. 8:30 – The of Mama and the primatologist Jan van Hooff. 12:00 – For research on the remarkably long social memories of dolphins, see . 14:00 – For research on long-term voice recognition in bonobos, see . 19:30 – Another collaborator on the paper we’re discussing was , affiliated with the . 29:30 – For more on the use of eye-tracking with primates, see a by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye. 34:00 – For the previous study by Dr. Lewis, Dr. Krupenye, and colleagues about how bonobos and chimpanzees attend to current groupmates, see . 41:00 – A reviewing bonobo social behavior. 54:30 – A on individual recognition by scent in chimpanzees. 55:30 – A on individual recognition by butt in chimpanzees. Recommendations 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/30266883

Fermentation, fire, and our big brains 02/22/2024

Fermentation, fire, and our big brains 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 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/30060663

Of molecules and memories 02/08/2024

Of molecules and memories Where do memories live in the brain? If you've ever taken a neuroscience class, you probably learned that they're stored in our synapses, in the connections between our neurons. The basic idea is that, whenever we have an experience, the neurons involved fire together in time, and the synaptic connections between them get stronger. In this way, our memories for those experiences become minutely etched into our brains. This is what might be called the synaptic view of memory—it's the story you'll find in textbooks, and it's often treated as settled fact. But some reject this account entirely. The real storehouses of memory, they argue, lie elsewhere. My guest today is Dr. Sam Gershman. Sam is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and the director of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab there. In a recent paper, he marshals a wide-ranging critique of the synaptic view. He makes a compelling case that synapses can't be the whole story—that we also have to look inside the neurons themselves. Here, Sam and I first discuss the synaptic view and the evidence that seems to support it. We then talk about some of the problems with this classic picture. We consider, for example, cases where memories survive the radical destruction of synapses; and, more provocatively, cases where memories are formed in single-celled organisms that lack synapses altogether. We talk about the dissenting view, long lurking in the margins, that intracellular molecules like RNA could be the real storage sites of memory. Finally, we talk about Sam's new account—a synthesis that posits a role for both synapses and molecules. Along the way we touch on planaria and paramecia; spike-timing dependent plasticity; the patient H.M.; metamorphosis, hibernation, and memory transfer; the pioneering work of Beatrice Gelber; unfairly maligned ideas; and much, much more. Before we get to it, one important announcement: Applications are now open for the 2024 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (or DISI)! The event will be held in beautiful, seaside St Andrews, Scotland, from June 30 to July 20. If you like this show—if you like the conversations we have and the questions we ask—it's a safe bet that you'd like DISI. You can find more info at —that's . Review of applications will begin on Mar 1, so don't delay. Alright friends, on to my conversation about the biological basis of memory with Dr. Sam Gershman. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 - A on planarian memory transfer experiments and the scientist who conducted them, James V. McConnell. 8:00 - For more on Dr. Gershman’s research and general approach, see his and the on his lab website. 9:30 - A explaining long-term potentiation. An of “Hebbian Learning.” The phrase “neurons that fire together wire together” was, contrary to widespread misattribution, coined by Dr. Carla Shatz . 12:30 - The of Dr. Jeremy Gunawardena, Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard University. A from Dr. Gunawardena’s lab on the avoidance behaviors exhibited by the single-celled organism Stentor (which vindicates some disputed, century-old findings). 14:00 - A by C. R. Gallistel describing some of his views on the biological basis of memory. 19:00 - The term “engram” refers to the physical trace of a memory. See recent reviews about the so-called search for the engram , , and . 20:00 - An on the importance of H.M. in neuroscience. 28:00 - A about the phenomenon of spike-timing dependent plasticity. 33:00 - An , co-authored by former guest , on the evidence for memory persistence despite radical remodeling of brain structures. See our episode with Dr. Levin . 35:00 - A reporting the persistence of memories in decapitated planarians. A about these findings. 36:30 - An reviewing one chapter in the memory transfer history. Another reviewing evidence for “vertical” memory transfer (between generations). 39:00 - For more recent demonstrations of memory transfer, see and . 40:00 - A by Dr. Gershman, Dr. Gunawardena, and colleagues reconsidering the evidence for learning in single cells and describing the contributions of Dr. Beatrice Gelber. A about Gelber following the publication of the paper by Dr. Gershman and colleagues. 45:00 – A arguing for the need to understand computation in single-celled organisms to understand how computation evolved more generally. 46:30 – of classical conditioning in paramecia, led by Dr. Todd Hennessey. 49:00 – For more on plant signaling, see with Dr. Paco Calvo and Dr. Natalie Lawrence. 56:00 – A on “serial reversal learning” and its neuroscientific basis. 1:07:00 – A demonstrating a role for methylation in memory. Recommendations , by Herbert Spencer Jennings , by C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King , by Dennis Bray 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/29853098

Energy, cooperation, and our species' future 01/25/2024

Energy, cooperation, and our species' future Welcome back folks! The new season of Many Minds is quickly ramping up. On today’s episode we’re thrilled to be rejoined by . Michael is Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics. He’s an unusually wide-ranging and rigorous thinker; though still early in his career, Michael has already made key contributions to our understanding of culture, intelligence, evolution, innovation, cooperation and corruption, cross-cultural variation, and a bunch of other areas as well. We wanted to have Michael back on—not just because he was an audience favorite—but because he’s got a new book out. It’s titled . In this conversation, Michael and I talk about the book and lay out that grand theory mentioned in the title. We discuss energy and how—since the very origins of life—it’s proven to be a fundamental, unshakeable constraint. We talk about the nature of human intelligence and consider the dynamics of human cooperation and innovation. We also delve into a few of the implications that Michael’s “theory of everyone” has for the future of our species. Along the way, we touch on carrying capacity, nuclear fusion, inclusive fitness, religion, the number line, multiculturalism, AI, the Flynn effect, and chaos in the brickyard. If you enjoy this one, you may want to go back to listen to our as well. But more importantly, you may want to get your hands on Michael’s book. It’s ambitious and inspiring and we were barely able to graze it here. Alright friends, without further ado, on to my second conversation with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 8:30 – Dr. Muthukrishna completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia, where he was advised by . He also worked with , , and others. 9:30 – Previous books on dual-inheritance theory and cultural evolution mentioned here include by Joseph Henrich, by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, and by Kevin Lala. 16:30 – Dr. Muthukrishna’s in psychology, drawn from his dissertation. 17:10 – The classic paper ‘,’ about the need for theory-building in science. 22:00 – For a brief overview of Dr. Muthukrishna’s understanding of human intelligence and human uniqueness, see . For an overview of cumulative culture in comparative perspective, see . 23:00 – For the 2005 issue of Science magazine showcasing 25 big unanswered questions, see . 23:30 – For the review paper on cooperation by Dr. Muthukrishna and Dr. Henrich, see . 26:00 – For Dr. Muthukrishna’s empirical work that attempts to induce corruption in the lab, see . 28:00 – The scholar , mentioned here, is well-known for his research on corruption. 29:00 – See the preprint by Dr. Muthukrishna and colleagues titled ‘.’ 33:30 – A laying out the RNA world hypothesis. 45:00 – For more on the evolution of human brain size, see our with Dr. Muthukrishna, as well as with Jeremy DeSilva. 47:00 – For the metric known as Energy Return on Investment (EROI), see . 54:00 – For more on the cross-cultural variation in numeracy, see . 55:20 – To correct the record, according to of rare numeral systems, there is only a single known base 8 system in the world’s languages. 57:15 – In our (around 42:00), we discussed the work by Luria on ‘If P, then Q’ reasoning. 57:30 – For more on the so-called WEIRD problem, see our . 1:00:30 – For some experimental evidence consistent with the idea that language improves the transmission of cultural information, see . 1:07:00 – For data on the acceleration of urbanization, see . 1:16:00 – For a brief primer on land value taxes, see . 1:18:30 – For the idea that Machiavelli’s The Prince was satire, see . 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/29640388

Dawn of the smile 01/11/2024

Dawn of the smile And we’re back! It’s been a while, friends. Hope you enjoyed your fall and your holidays. Thanks so much for re-joining us—we’re super excited to be kicking off a brand-new season of the Many Minds podcast. We thought we’d get things started this year with an audio essay, one partly inspired by some musings and mullings from my parental leave. Hope you enjoy it folks—and we’ll see you again in a couple weeks with our first interview of 2024. Now on to ‘Dawn of the smile.’ Enjoy! A text version of this episode will be available soon. Notes and links 3:00 – Darwin describes his children’s first smiles in his 1872 book, 4:10 – On so-called Duchenne smiles, see this . 5:00 – For a summary of “basic emotions” theory, see any number of Paul Ekman’s writing (e.g., , ). For a recent articulation of the “social tools” theory, see writings by Alan J. Fridlund (e.g., ). For another influential recent critique of “basic emotions” theory, see . 6:00 – For the classic bowling study, see . 7:00 – For a recent review of facial expressions in blind people, see . 7:45 – For a review of smiling and gender (and the importance of “rules and roles”), see . For one of the studies linking smiliness to historical migration patterns, see . 8:30 – For the historical shift in smiling—and its possible relation to the Kodak company—see . For the yearbook photo analysis, see . 9:30 – See Darwin’s discussion of infant laughter in 10:30 – For Darwin’s observations of laughter and smiles in primates, again, See Jan van Hooff’s classic study . 11:30 – For the study comparing laughter across the Great Apes, see . For the study of an “ape-like” stage in human laughter, see . 12:30 – For a review of play vocalizations and laughter across species, see . 13:20 – For the Marina Davila-Ross’s suggestion that laughter and smiles share a common evolutionary source, see . 13:30 – For research on human infants’ open-mouthed smiles, see . 14:00 – For the idea of the “acoustic origin” of the smile, see . 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/29437888

From the archive: The point of (animal) personality 12/27/2023

From the archive: The point of (animal) personality Hi friends! We've been on hiatus for the fall, but we'll be back with new episodes in January 2024. In the meanwhile, enjoy another favorite from our archives! ---- [originally aired November 2, 2022] Some of us are a little shy; others are sociable. There are those that love to explore the new, and those happy to stick to the familiar. We’re all a bit different, in other words—and when I say “we” I don’t just mean humans. Over the last couple of decades there's been an explosion of research on personality differences in animals too—in birds, in dogs, in fish, all across the animal kingdom. This research is addressing questions like: What are the ways that individuals of the same species differ from each other? What drives these differences? And is this variation just randomness, some kind of inevitable biological noise, or could it have an evolved function? My guest today is . Kate is an Assistant Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Her lab focuses on fish. They use fish, and especially one species of fish—the Amazon molly—as a model system for understanding animal personality (or as she sometimes calls it “consistent individual behavioral variation”). In this episode, Kate and I discuss she recently published with colleagues that reviews this booming subfield. We talk about how personality manifests in animals and how it may differ from human personality. We zoom in on what is perhaps the most puzzling question in this whole research area: Why do creatures have personality differences to begin with? Is there a point to all this individual variation, evolutionarily speaking? We discuss two leading frameworks that have tried to answer the question, and then consider some recent studies of Kate’s that have added an unexpected twist. On the way, we touch on Darwinian demons, combative anemones, and a research method Kate calls "fish Big Brother." Alright friends, I had fun with this one, and I think you’ll enjoy it, too. On to my conversation with Kate Laskowski! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A by Dr. Laskowski and a colleague on strong personalities in sticklebacks. 5:30 – The for the lab that Dr. Laskowski directs at UC-Davis. 7:00 – The paper we focus on—‘Consistent Individual Behavioral Variation: What do we know and where are we going?’—is available . 11:00 – A on sticklebacks. 13:00 – A of two sea anemones fighting. A about fighting (and personality) in sea anemones. 15:00 – A classic the “Big 5” model in human personality research. 17:00 – The proposing five personality factors in animals. 22:30 – A on the “Pace-of-Life syndromes” framework. 27:00 – A on evidence for the “fluctuating selection” idea in great tits. 29:00 – A by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues on “behavioral individuality” in clonal fish raised in near-identical environments. 32:10 – A by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues extending their earlier findings on clonal fish. 39:30 – The of the Many Birds project. The for the project. Dr. Laskowski recommends: , by Kevin Mitchell , by Lulu Miller , by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie 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/29249408

From the archive: A smorgasbord of senses 12/13/2023

From the archive: A smorgasbord of senses Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired July 20, 2022] The world is bigger than you think. I don’t mean geographically, though maybe that too. I mean in terms of its textures and sounds and smells; I mean in terms of its hues and vibrations. There are depths and layers to the world that we don’t usually experience, that we might actually never be able to experience. Our senses just aren’t wired to take it all in. We’re simply not tuned to all the dimensions of reality’s rich splendor. But there is a way we can appreciate these hidden dimensions: with a flex of the imagination, we can step into the worlds of other creatures; we can try out different eyes and noses; we can voyage into different perceptual universes. Or at least we can try. My guest today is Ed Yong, author of the new book . Ed is a science writer for The Atlantic and the author of an exceptional earlier book on the microbiome called . This new book tours the wide diversity of animal senses. It asks what it’s like to be a bat, sure, but also what it’s like to be a star-nosed mole, a manatee, or a mantis shrimp. Informed by some truly extraordinary science, the book considers how it might feel to electrolocate around the ocean, to hear through the threads of a web, or to be tugged by the earth's magnetic field. There’s a lot of praise I could lavish on this book, but I’ll just say this: it really makes you feel more alive. Reading it makes everything, in fact, seem more alive. It makes the world seem richer, more vivid, somehow more technicolor and finely textured. It makes you realize that every organism, all the creatures we share this planet with, possesses a kind of vibrant genius all their own. After this episode we will be on a short holiday, and then we’ll be gearing up for Season 4. If you have guests or topics you want us to cover, please send us a note. And, of course: if you’ve enjoyed the show so far, we would be most grateful if you would leave us a rating or a review. I know I say this all the time, and it’s probably a bit annoying: but it really, truly helps, and I would personally, very much appreciate it! Alright friends, now to my conversation with Ed Yong. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – One of our earlier audio essays——profiled von Uexküll and his concept of an Umwelt. 6:00 – The classic Nagel article ‘?’; Mike Tomasello’s recent variant, ‘?’, which we discussed just . 10:00 – of many articles by Ed about COVID-19. He was awarded a for his coverage of the pandemic. 14:30 – A on proprioception. 19:00 – A on the evolution of opsin proteins. 20:00 – A on echolocation. 25:00 – A on heat-sensitive pits in snakes. 26:30 – An academic about the “star” of the star-nosed mole. A showing the star-nosed mole in action. 31:00 – A about the eyes of starfish. 32:00 – A of research articles about the Ampullae of Lorenzini. 35:00 – A very about spider webs as “outsourced” hearing. 38:00 – A about aspects of bird song that humans can’t hear. 40:00 – A by Lucy Bates and colleagues about how elephants operate with a spatial model of where their kin are. You can read more about Ed’s work at , catch up on his stories in , or follow him 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/29061748

From the archive: Children in the deep past 11/29/2023

From the archive: Children in the deep past Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired May 25, 2022] When we think about ancient humans, we often imagine them doing certain kinds of things. Usually very serious things like hunting game and making tools, foraging for food and building fires, maybe performing the occasional intricate ritual. But there was definitely more to the deep past than all this adulting. There were children around, too—lots of them—no doubt running around and wreaking havoc, much as they do today. But what were the kids up to, exactly? What games were they playing? What toys did they have? What were their lives like? My guest today is Dr. Michelle Langley, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Michelle grapples with questions about children, play, and childhood in the deep past. In recent work, she draws on ethnographic reports to assemble a picture of what children have in common all across the globe. She then uses that understanding to cast new light on the archaeological record, to make fresh inferences about what kids must have been doing, making, and leaving behind. In this conversation, Michelle and I talk about the kinds of basic activities that have long been a mainstay of childhood everywhere—activities like playing with dolls, keeping pets, collecting shells, and building forts. We discuss how archaeologists often assume that hard-to-interpret objects have ritual purpose, when, in fact, those objects could just as easily be toys. We talk about how children seek out and engineer “secret spaces”. We also touch on how a male-centric bias has distorted archaeological discussions; how the baby sling may have been the primordial container; and how otters stash their favorite tools in their armpits. This is a super fun one, folks. But first a tiny bit of housekeeping: in case you missed the news, we have new newsletter. Seriously, who wouldn’t want a monthly dose of Many Minds right in their inbox? You can find a in the show notes. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Michelle Langley. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 2:30 – A from Les Espélugues cave in France. 6:00 – A classic by Conkey & Spector that helped initiate a wave of feminist archaeology. 7:30 – Dr. Langley’s to examine children’s leavings in the archaeological record. 8:30 – See for discussion and examples of perforated batons or bâton percés. 9:30 – Dr. Langley’s paper, co-authored with Mirani Litster, ‘’ 14:00 – An of ethnographic analogies in archaeology. 18:30 – A on the interpretation of Dorset miniature harpoon heads. 23:30 – An on the Neanderthal ornamental use of raptor feathers. 29:00 - Dr. Langley’s on identifying children’s secret spaces in the archaeological record. 30:30 – A by David Sobel on children’s special spaces. 34:00 – A about the site of Étiolles. 40:00 – A showing the layout of the Bruniquel Cave, including the secondary structures. 41:00 – More about the mammoth bone huts of Ukraine. 44:00 – A by Dr. Langley and Thomas Suddendorf on bags and other “mobile containers” in human evolution. 47:00 – A showing a sea otter using their underarm “pocket” to store objects. 50:00 – The “carrier bag theory of evolution” was proposed by Elizabeth Fisher in . This later inspired Ursula Le Guin to propose the “.” 51:30 – An by Dr. Langley and colleagues on children’s emerging intuitions about the use of containers and bags. 55:30 – A by Dr. Langley and colleagues on early symbolic behavior in Indonesia. Dr. Langley recommends: , by April Nowell You can read more about Dr. Langley’s work at and follow her 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/28846698

From the archive: The puzzle of piloerection 11/15/2023

From the archive: The puzzle of piloerection Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. This week's episode is in our audio essay format. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired May 26, 2021] Welcome back folks! We’ve got an audio essay for you this week. It touches on art, music, the skin, the spine, individual differences, vestigial responses, tiny muscles. There’s even some Darwin thrown in there. It’s a fun one. Hope you enjoy it! A text version of this essay is available on . Notes and links 1:30 – The that very recently gave me goosebumps. 2:00 – A of Nabokov and his ideas about the tell-tale tingle. 2:45 – Some for goosebumps in other languages. 3:00 – A on skin anatomy. 4:00 – A on the thermoregulatory function of piloerection in primates and other animals. 4:25 – Read Darwin’s Expression . 5:00 – A about “nails on chalkboard chills.” A that discusses claims that piloerection attends awe (but which fails to find evidence for this association in a lab setting). A on goosebumps in religious experiences. A that references mathematicians getting goosebumps when seeing proofs. 5:30 – The 1980 by Goldstein on “thrills.” 6:45 – The Darwin passage is quoted in . 7:00 – A 1995 by Panskepp, as well as his 2002 with a co-author. 7:40 – A recent on chills in response to films; on poetry. 9:15 – The by McCrae reporting the association between “openness to experience” and chills. 10:00 – A by Fiske and colleagues on kama muta, the “sudden devotion emotion.” 11:10 – Panskepp’s “separation call” hypothesis is perhaps best described in his 2002 . 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/28645448

From the archive: The scents of language 11/01/2023

From the archive: The scents of language Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired June 23, 2021] You’ve no doubt heard that—as humans—our sense of smell is, well, kind of pathetic. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, that we have advanced senses—especially sight and hearing—and then lowly, underdeveloped ones—taste and smell. It’s an idea that has been repeated and elaborated over and over, throughout Western intellectual history. Along with it comes a related notion: that smells are nearly impossible to talk about, that odors simply can’t be captured in words. These ideas may be old, but are they actually true? A number of researchers would say they're ripe for reconsideration. And my guest is one such researcher, Asifa Majid. She’s Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of York in the UK. For a decade now, Asifa’s been pioneering a new wave of research on human olfaction, especially how it interfaces with language, thought, and culture. In this conversation we talk about the general notion that some kinds of experience are harder to put into words than others. We discuss Asifa’s fieldwork with hunter-gatherer groups in the Malay peninsula, as well as her studies with wine experts in the west. We talk about whether learning special smell terms seems to sharpen one’s ability to discriminate odors. And we venture beyond Asifa’s own work, to touch on a bunch of recent highlights from the broader science of olfaction. This was such a fun conversation, folks! I’ve admired Asifa’s work on this topic since her very first paper. She’s a truly interdisciplinary thinker and, as you’ll hear, she’s got a nose for fun examples and deep questions. Without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Asifa Majid! Enjoy. A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:40 – A on the 19th century rise of the myth that humans are poor smellers. 6:00 – A estimating that humans can discriminate possibly a trillion different odors. 7:30 – A theoretical by Dr. Majid and a collaborator on “differential ineffability” and the senses. 9:20 – Dr. Majid’s collaborator in her work on Jahai, a Malaysian language, was . 11:00 – A on the idea of “basic terms” in the domain of color, which provide an analogy for basic terms in the domain of smell. 12:30 – A first by Dr. Majid and Niclas Burenhult describing the language of olfaction in Jahai. 14:45 – Dr. Majid’s comparing odor naming (and color naming) in Jahai and English. 20:00 – Dr. Majid has also examined smell lexicons in several other languages, including , , , and . 25:40 – A follow-up by Dr. Majid and a collaborator on two groups within Malaysia who contrast in subsistence mode. 29:30 – A detailing cultural practices surrounding smell among the Jahai. 31:00 – Dr. Majid discusses the factors shaping cultural variation in olfaction (as well as a number of other interesting issues) in her most recent review . 39:00 – The “deodorization” hypothesis was discussed in a on the cultural history of aroma. 39:40 – In a recent , Dr. Majid and collaborators failed to find evidence that the frequency of smell language has fallen off since industrialization. 45:50 – Dr. Majid led a comparing 20 languages across the world in terms of how expressible their speakers found different sensory experiences. 53:00 – Some possible reasons for the general trend toward the ineffability of smell are considered in Dr. Majid’s recent review . 57:00 – Along with her collaborators, Dr. Majid has examined the smell-naming abilities of wine experts. See one paper . 1:02:45 – A recent by Dr. Majid and colleagues showing that wine experts’ smell-naming abilities are not dependent on “thinking in” language. 1:05:35 –Some from “verbal interference” tasks suggests that, when carrying out color discrimination tasks, people rely on language in the moment. 1:09:00 – The . 1:10:20 – The of Noam Sobel’s lab. Dr. Majid’s end of show recommendations: , by Avery Gilbert , by Andreas Keller , by Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synott , by Gordon Shepard , by Bianca Bosker You can keep up with Dr. Majid on Twitter (@asifa_majid). 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/28481495

From the archive: Aligning AI with our values 10/18/2023

From the archive: Aligning AI with our values Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired February 17, 2021] Guess what folks: we are celebrating a birthday this week. That’s right, Many Minds has reached the ripe age of one year old. Not sure how old that is in podcast years, exactly, but it’s definitely a landmark that we’re proud of. Please no gifts, but, as always, you’re encouraged to share the show with a friend, write a review, or give us a shout out on social. To help mark this milestone we’ve got a great episode for you. My guest is the writer, Brian Christian. Brian is a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley and the author of three widely acclaimed books: , published in 2011; , co-authored with Tom Griffiths and published in 2016; and most recently, . It was published this past fall and it’s the focus of our conversation in this episode. The alignment problem, put simply, is the problem of building artificial intelligences—machine learning systems, for instance—that do what we want them to do, that both reflect and further our values. This is harder to do than you might think, and it’s more important than ever. As Brian and I discuss, machine learning is becoming increasingly pervasive in everyday life—though it’s sometimes invisible. It’s working in the background every time we snap a photo or hop on Facebook. Companies are using it to sift resumes; courts are using it to make parole decisions. We are already trusting these systems with a bunch of important tasks, in other words. And as we rely on them in more and more domains, the alignment problem will only become that much more pressing. In the course of laying out this problem, Brian’s book also offers a captivating history of machine learning and AI. Since their very beginnings, these fields have been formed through interaction with philosophy, psychology, mathematics, and neuroscience. Brian traces these interactions in fascinating detail—and brings them right up to the present moment. As he describes, machine learning today is not only informed by the latest advances in the cognitive sciences, it’s also propelling those advances. This is a wide-ranging and illuminating conversation folks. And, if I may say so, it’s also an important one. Brian makes a compelling case, I think, that the alignment problem is one of the defining issues of our age. And he writes about it—and talks about it here—with such clarity and insight. I hope you enjoy this one. And, if you do, be sure to check out Brian’s book. Happy birthday to us—and on to my conversation with Brian Christian. Enjoy! A transcript of this show is available . Notes and links 7:26 - Norbert Wiener’s article from 1960, ‘’. 8:35 - ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is from the animated film, Fantasia (1940). Before that, it was by Goethe. 13:00 - A well-known in which Google’s nascent auto-tagging function went terribly awry. 13:30 - The ‘Labeled Faces in the Wild’ database can be viewed . 18:35 - A in ProPublica on the biases inherent in the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS) tool. 25:00 – The website of the Future of Humanity Institute, mentioned in several places, is . 25:55 - For an account of the collaboration between Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch, see . 29:35- An about the racial biases built into photographic film technology in the 20th century. 31:45 - The much-investigated involving a driverless car and a pedestrian: 37:17 - The psychologist developed the “law of effect.” Here is of his papers on the law. 44:40 - A highly influential in Nature in which a deep-Q network was able to surpass human performance on a number of classic Atari games, and yet not score a single point on ‘Montezuma’s Revenge.’ 47:38 - A on the classic “preferential looking” paradigm in developmental psychology: 53:40 - A discussing the relationship between dopamine in the brain and temporal difference learning. Here is the paper in in which this relationship was first articulated. 1:00:00 - A on the concept of “coherent extrapolated volition.” 1:01:40 - An on the notion of “iterated distillation and amplification.” 1:10:15 - The fourth edition of a seminal textbook by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, AI a Modern approach, is available here: 1:13:00 - An on Warren McCulloch’s poetry. 1:17:45 - The concept of “” is central in computer science and mathematics. Brian Christian’s end-of-show reading recommendations: , written by Rohin Shah , by Caroline Criado Perez: , Alison Gopnik: You can keep up with Brian at his or 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/28350920

From the archive: Intoxication 10/04/2023

From the archive: Intoxication Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! --- A pharmacologist and a philosopher walk into a bar... This is not the start of a joke—it’s the start of our 2021 finale and our first ever theme episode. The idea with these theme episodes is that we have not one but two guests, from different fields, coming together to discuss a topic of mutual interest. Our theme for this first one—in the spirit of the holiday season—is intoxication and our guests are and . Oné is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University and our pharmacologist in residence for this episode. He just published Ted is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and our resident philosopher. He is the author of the recent book . We range over a lot of ground in this conversation. We talk about alcohol as a kind of pharmacological “hand grenade”—whereas other substances are more like “scalpels”. We touch on catnip, cannabis, psychedelic fungi, and poison toads. We discuss Asian flushing genes and what they might suggest about the functions of alcohol. We talk about self-medication in the animal kingdom and in Neanderthals. We size up the "drunken monkey”, "stoned ape”, and "beer before bread" hypotheses. And though we mostly keep things light and festive here, we also do delve into the dark side of intoxication—which may have gotten that much darker with the advent of distilled liquor. Whether you're a tippler or a teetotaler, I’m guessing you’ll find this to be a heady conversation. Did you really think I was going to make it to the end of this intro without a single intoxication-related pun? You know me better. Alright friends—be well, be merry, and be safe this holiday season. We’ll be back in mid-January after a not so long winter’s nap. Now on to my conversation with Dr. Oné Pagán and Ted Slingerland. Cheers! A transcript of this episode is . Notes and links 4:00 – The “write drunk, edit sober” idea is to Ernest Hemingway. 8:00 – Dr. Pagán wrote an about his favored model organism, the planaria (or flatworms). You may recall we discussed planaria in with Dr. Michael Levin. 10:10 – Dr. Slingerland wrote an about the Chinese ideal of wu-wei. See this of his ideas in The Marginalian. 13:00 – The idea of alcohol as pharmacological “hand grenade” is a metaphor due to . 19:30 – An in Science about “why cats are crazy for catnip.” 21:20 – A in The Conversation about Asian flushing genes. 26:00 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, who won the , pioneered the use of drosophila as an animal model. 28:20 – An article on the (with an accompanying illustration). 33:00 – The biologist Robert Dudley the “drunken monkey” hypothesis. A recent by Dudley. 38:00 – Not to be confused with the “stoned ape” hypothesis, which was introduced by . A on the hypothesis. 41:00 – The idea of psychedelics as introducing “mutagens” into culture comes from , by Michael Pollan. 44:00 – A recent on the “beer before bread” hypothesis. The idea was originally proposed . 48:50 – Pharmaceutical practices of non-human animals are called “.” A of findings about animal self-medication. 53:00 – The in Science on the “flower burial” in Shanidar cave. 56:20 – The appears to be drinking (alcohol?) from a horn. 59:20 – An article describing case of Tusko the elephant. 1:03:50 – One example of practices that moderate alcohol’s dangerous effect is the . 1:08:00 – A brief , which is a relatively recent invention. 1:11:00 – Planaria are widely used as an animal model for , among other intoxicating substances. Dr. Slingerland recommends the following books: , by Steven Braun , by Iain Gately , by Mark Forsyth Dr. Pagán recommends the following book: , by Ronald Siegel You can find Dr. Slingerland on Twitter () and follow him at ; you can find Dr. Pagán on Twitter (), follow him at , and listen to . 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/28216694

From the archive: A hidden world of sound 09/20/2023

From the archive: A hidden world of sound Hi friends, we will be on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Sadly, the guest featured in this week's archive pick—Karen Bakker—passed way last month. Her colleagues at UBC posted a rememberance . ——— Consider the peacock. Its plumage is legendary—those shimmering, iridescent colors, and those eerie, enchanting eyespots. But what often goes less appreciated (at least by us humans) is that this chromatic extravaganza is also a sonic extravaganza. The peacock's display operates in infrasound, an acoustic dimension that we simply can't hear without assistance. Which raises a question: If we're oblivious to the full vibrancy of the peacock's display, what other sounds might we be missing out on? My guest today is . Karen is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia and author of the new book, . In the book, Karen dives into rich realms of sound that, for one reason or another, humans have tended to ignore. In this conversation, Karen and I discuss the twin fields of "bioacoustics" and "ecoacoustics." We talk about "deep listening" and "digital listening", "infrasound" and "ultrasound." We discuss why sound is such a ubiquitous signaling medium across the tree of life. We consider the fact that scientific discoveries about sound have often been resisted. We touch on debates about whether animal communication systems constitute languages, and discuss new efforts to decode those systems using AI. We also talk about turtles, bats, plants, coral, bees, and—yes—peacocks. If you enjoy our conversation, I strongly recommend Karen's book. It’s really bursting with insight, science, and stories—all presented with unusual clarity. Another year of Many Minds is drawing to a close and we're about to go on a brief holiday hiatus. But first a little end-of-year ask: What topics or thinkers would you like to see us feature in 2023? If you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them. You can email us at: . Alright friends, I hope you enjoy the holidays. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Karen Bakker. A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – A range of bat sounds are available on the of Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild (who was on the show!). 4:30 – The of the 2014 ‘Most Beautiful Sound in the World’ contest was a recording of a froggy swamp in Malaysia. 10:30 – A profiling the relatively young field of “bioacoustics.” A by Dr. Bakker and a colleague about “conservation acoustics” in particular. 11:30 – A about the use of acoustic technologies to discover and monitor whale populations. 17:00 – A about the involvement of infrasound in peacock mating displays. 23:30 – A showing that coral larvae move toward reef sounds. 28:00 – A by Camila Ferrara and colleagues about sound communication in Amazonian river turtles. 31:00 – A by Heidi Appel and a colleague about plants responding to the sounds of leaf-chewing. 35:00 – A of Karl von Frisch and his work with honey bees. A suggesting the possibility of play in bumble bees (not honey bees). 42:00 – A profiling the field of “biosemiotics.” 48:00 – An by Dr. Bakker about honeybee communication and how technologies may be helping us understand it. 53:00 – Dr. Bakker recommends books by Indigenous scholars Robin Wall-Kimmerer (), Dylan Robinson (), and . Dr. Bakker recommends: A number of examples of the “sounds of life” are collected at Dr. Bakker’s website, . The same site also includes recommendations for in citizen science. In addition to the books by Indigenous scholars listed above, Dr. Bakker recommends work by . You can read more about Karen’s work on her and follow her 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/27821559

From the archive: Why did our brains shrink 3000 years ago? 09/06/2023

From the archive: Why did our brains shrink 3000 years ago? Hi friends, we will be on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. You may not be surprised to hear that the featured in this archive pick attracted a lot of attention. In the time since we first aired this episode, it prompted at least one direct , which then occasioned a by the authors. Enjoy! ——— You have a big brain. I have a big brain. We, as a species, have pretty big brains. But this wasn't always the case. Way back when, our brains were much smaller; then they went through a bit of growth spurt, one that lasted for a couple million years. This steady ballooning of brain size is one of the key themes of the human story. But then there's a late-breaking twist in that story—a kind of unexpected epilogue. You see, after our brains grew, they shrank. But when this shrinkage happened and—of course, why—have remained mysterious. My guest today is , a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth College. He’s an expert on the evolution of the foot and ankle. But, it turns out the body is all connected, so he also thinks about brains and heads. In a recent paper, Jerry and his colleagues took up the mystery of human brain shrinkage. They first set out to establish more precisely when in our past this occurred. Using a large database of crania, spanning few million years, Jerry’s team was able to establish that this shrinkage event happened much more recently than previously thought—a mere 3000 years ago. Naturally, the next question was why? What happened around that time that could have possibly caused our brains to deflate? To answer this, Jerry and his collaborators turned to an unexpected source of insight: Ants. That’s right, ants. They argue that these ultrasocial critters may offer clues to why we might have suddenly dispensed with a chunk of brain about the size of a lemon. This is a really juicy paper and a super fun conversation, so we should just get to it. But I did want to mention: Jerry has a recent book from 2021 called that I whole-heartedly recommend. It’s about origins of upright walking in humans—which it turns out, is bound up with all kinds of other important aspects of being human. So definitely check that out! Thanks folks—on to my chat with Dr. Jerry DeSilva. Enjoy! The paper we discuss is available . A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – A from the Leakey Foundation about the so-called “obstetrical dilemma.” 5:40 – A refresher for those who have trouble keeping their ‘cenes’ straight: the Pleistocene refers to the period from 2.58 million years ago to 11,700 years ago; immediately after that came the Holocene, which we are still in today. 7:00 – An discussing the issue of unethical collections of human remains. 10:30 – The key figure form Dr. DeSilva’s paper—showing the changing “slopes” of brain size over time—is available . 19:30 – The by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” A more recent on the hypothesis. 20:45 – An by a major proponent of the social intelligence hypothesis, Dr. Robin Dunbar. A more of the social intelligence hypothesis. 23:00 – A by Jeff Stibel and an by John Hawks evaluating the “body size” explanation of recent brain shrinkage. 24:00 – See our on human self-domestication with Brian Hare. 29:00 – One of Dr. DeSilva’s collaborators on this research is , who specializes in ants. 34:45 – An of the earliest history of writing. 37:20 – Dr. DeSilva’s book, , came out in 2021. 39:00 – A discussing the evolution of rotational birth in humans. Dr. DeSilva recommends: , by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (featured in an !) , by Jennifer Raff You can find Dr. DeSilva 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/27821427

From the archive: Happiness and the predictive mind 08/23/2023

From the archive: Happiness and the predictive mind Hi friends, we will be on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ——— There's an old view of the mind that goes something like this: The world is flooding in, and we're sitting back, just trying to process it all. Our minds are basically passive and reactive, always a step behind. Contrast that view with a new one that’s quickly gaining ground. According to this alternative, we don't just react to the world, we anticipate it. We’re not leaning back but trying to stay a step ahead—our minds are fundamentally active and predictive. And our predictions aren't just idle guesses, either—they're shaping how we experience the world. This new view is known as the “predictive processing framework”, and it has implications, not just for how we perceive, but also for how we act and how we feel, for our happiness and our well-being. My guest today is . Mark is a philosopher of cognition and senior research fellow at the Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies at Monash University. He's part of a new wave of intensely interdisciplinary scholars who are working at the intersections of philosophy, neuroscience, and psychiatry. Here, Mark and I sketch the predictive processing framework and unpack some of its key pillars. We discuss how this approach can inform our understanding of depression, addiction, and PTSD. We sketch out notions of loops and slopes, stickiness and rigidity, wobble and volatility, edges and grip. And, on the way, we will have a bit to say about video games, play, horror, psychedelics, and meditation. This was all pretty new terrain for me, but Mark proved an affable and capable guide. If you enjoy this episode and want to explore some of these topics further, definitely check out the , which Mark co-hosts. Alright friends, on to my chat with Mark Miller. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:15 – The of the Hokkaido University Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN). The of the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS). 6:00 – Dr. Miller co-hosts the , a project of M3CS. 7:30 – For one introduction to the predictive processing framework, see this by Dr. Miller and colleagues. 11:00 – See Dr. Miller’s in Aeon on social media, co-authored with Ben White, as well as this more for an academic audience. 12:00 – See a by Dr. Miller and colleagues on depression. 14:00 – An to the subfield of “computational psychiatry.” 17:00 – Andy Clark’s on the predictive processing framework. 18:00 – A on “active inference” (which is largely synonymous with the predictive processing approach). 22:00 – A on the idea of the “body as the first prior.” 24:30 – A of the “hollow face” illusion. 29:00 – On the potential value of psychedelics in jarring people out of trenches and ruts, see also our with Alison Gopnik. 31:00 – See with Dimitris Xygalatas. 34:30 – A on children wanting to hear the same stories over and over. 38:00 – A by and colleagues on horror fans and psychological resilience during COVD-19. 42:30 – A by Dr. Miller and colleagues about the “predictive dynamics of happiness and well-being,” which covers much of the same terrain as this episode. 46:00 – A by Dr. Miller and colleagues on the evocative notion of “grip.” 50:00 – A by Dr. Miller and colleagues about video games and predictive processing. 57:00 – A by Dr. Miller and colleagues in which they discuss meditation in the context of the prediction processing approach. Dr. Miller recommends books by the philosopher , including: You can read more about Dr. Miller’s 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/27821166

The five portals of cognitive evolution 08/10/2023

The five portals of cognitive evolution Welcome back all! So, this episode is a first for us. Two firsts, actually. For one, it features our first-ever repeat guest: , a neuroscientist at Macquarie University. If you're a long-time listener, you might remember that Andy was actually the guest on our very first episode, ,' in February 2020. And, second, this episode is our first-ever "live show." We recorded this interview in July at the in St Andrews, Scotland. Andy and his colleagues—the philosophers and —just released an ambitious paper titled '.' In it, they take a wide-angle view of mind; they zoom out to try to tell an overarching story of how brains and cognition evolved across the tree of life. The story, as they tell it, is not about a smoothly gradual evolution of cognitive sophistication. Rather, it's a story built around five major transitions—fundamental changes, that is, to how organisms process information. In this conversation, Andy and I discuss their framework and how it takes inspiration from other transitional accounts of life and mind. We lay out each of the five stages—or portals, as we refer to them—and talk about the organisms that we find on either side of these portals. We discuss what propels organisms to make these radical changes, especially considering that evolution is not prospective. It doesn't look ahead—it can't see what abilities might be possible down the road. We talk about how this framework got its start, particularly in some of Andy's thinking about insect brains and how they differ from vertebrate brains. And, as a bit of a bonus, we left in some of the live Q & A with the audience. In it we touch on octopuses, eusocial insects, oysters, and a bunch else. Speaking of major transitions, I will be going on parental leave for much of the fall. So this is, in fact, the final episode of Season 4 and then the podcast will go on a brief hiatus. Before we get started on Season 5, we'll be putting up some of our favorite episodes from the archive. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Andrew Barron, recorded live at DISI 2023. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – For further information about the “major transitions” project, see the project’s web page . 7:00 – Many transitional accounts of evolution draw inspiration from the classic book . 8:00 – One influential previous transitional account of the evolution of cognition was put forward by Dennett in . Another was put forward by Ginsburg and Jablonka in . 12:45 – A to cnidaria. 18:00 – The idea of cellular memory has been garnering more and more attention—see, e.g., this . 21:00 – The idea of is also used in computer science. 26:00 – The scala naturae, or , was the notion that organisms could be arranged on a scale of sophistication, with humans on the top of the scale. 30:00 – The “teleological fallacy” as Dr. Barron and colleagues describe it in their paper is the fallacy of “appeal[ing] to later benefits to explain earlier changes.” 34:00 – A to the phylum gastropoda. 37:00 – For an overview of Dr. Barron’s work on the neuroscience of honey bees, see our . 48:30 – It’s commonly observed in popular coverage of octopuses that their brains are “decentralized” (e.g., , , and ). 55:00 – In discussions of human brain evolution, it has been argued that certain kinds of cognitive offloading (e.g., writing) have allowed our brains to actually shrink in recent history. See our with Jeremy DeSilva. 58:00 – On the notion of “Turing completeness,” see . The idea of an “” comes (apparently) from . 1:00:06 – For a discussion of eusociality and individuality in the context of “major transitions” ideas, see . 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/27708357

Matrescence and the brain 07/26/2023

Matrescence and the brain Scientists who study the mind and brain have always been drawn to periods of intense change—to those life stages marked by rapid transformation. Infancy is one of those periods, of course. Adolescence is another. But there's a less-discussed time of life when our brains and minds have to reconfigure: the window surrounding when we become parents. My guests today are and . Winnie is a cognitive neuroscientist and postdoctoral scholar at the Yale Child Study Center. Jodi is a neuroscientist, author, and podcaster affiliated with the University of Rennes in France. Both are experts in the neural and cognitive changes that surround pregnancy, motherhood, and parenthood more generally. Here, we talk about the idea of "matrescence" as a distinctive developmental stage. We discuss the research around memory loss in early motherhood, as well as findings that certain brain areas get fine-tuned during this period. We talk about postpartum anxiety, depression, and psychosis, and what may be causing them. We consider the finding that having children—and, in fact, having more children—seems to confer a protective effect on the aging brain. Throughout we talk about which of these changes also occur in fathers and other non-birthing parents. And we consider the difficulty of scientifically studying a period of life—parenthood—that is not only rife with social and psychological changes, but also fraught with expectations and narratives. Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. As you'll hear, this research area is very much still in its infancy. There are definitely some provocative findings. But maybe more exciting are all the questions that remain. Without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 2:45 – For more on the relationship between adolescence and “matrescence,” see this by Winnie and colleagues in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 6:00 – For discussions surrounding the idea of “mommy brain,” see Jodi’s podcast, ‘.’ See also this by Jodi and colleagues in JAMA Neurology. 17:00 – A on cognitive impairment during pregnancy. 25:00 – A by Winnie and colleagues showing subjective—but not objective—memory deficits in mothers one year after giving birth. 26:45 – An showing structural changes in the brain following pregnancy. The same study also found that some of these changes correlated with measures of maternal attachment. 28:00 – A recent by Jodi and colleagues on the idea of neural fine-tuning in early motherhood. 41:45 – A recent by Jodi and colleagues about the neural underpinnings of postpartum depression and anxiety. 44:00 – A about postpartum psychosis. 51:00 – A the prevalence of postpartum depression across cultures. 58:00 – A of research on mother-child synchrony. 1:00:00 – A by Winnie and colleagues looking at how having children affects later life brain function. by Winnie and colleagues on the same topic. 1:13:00 – Several studies have documented general changes in “Big 5” personality factors as people age. A study examining this in both American and Japanese participants is . 1:18:00 – Since we recorded this interview, the publication date for the English version of Jodi’s book has been scheduled. It comes out in September 2023—more info . Recommendations Dr. Orchard recommends: , Sarah McKay , Chelsea Conaboy Dr. Pawluski recommends: , by Lucy Jones , by Emma Jane Unsworth 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/27577608

From the archive: Bat signals 07/12/2023

From the archive: Bat signals We're still on summer break, but we wanted to share a favorite interview from our archives. Enjoy! ---- We’ve got something special for you today folks: bats. That’s right: bats. Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote on what it’s like to be a bat, these flying, furry, nocturnal, shrieky mammals have taken up roost in our scientific imaginations. They’ve become a kind of poster child—or poster creature?—for the idea that our world is full of truly alien minds, inhabiting otherworldly lifeworlds. On today’s show, we dive deep into these other minds—and into some of their less appreciated capacities. Bats don’t just echolocate, they also sing. And, as we’ll see, they sing with gusto. My guest today is Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild. She directs the Behavioral Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. She and her team study bat communication, cognition, and social life; they focus in particular on bat social vocalizations—what we might call bat signals. Here, we do a bit of Bats 101. We talk about how bats form a spectacularly diverse group, or taxon. We talk about the mechanics of echolocation. We talk about the mind-bogglingly boisterous acoustic world of bats and how they’re able to navigate it. We discuss Mirjam and her team's recent paper in Science magazine, showing that baby bat pups babble much like human infants. And, last but not least, we talk about what it's like to be a bat. As I say in this conversation, I've always been a bit unnerved by bats, but part of me also knew they were seriously cool. But really, I didn't know the half of it. There's so much more to these creatures than meets the casual eye. One last thing before we jump in: as a little bonus, for this episode Mirjam was kind enough to share some examples of the bat calls we discuss in the episode. So there’s a bit of an audio appendix at the end where you can hear slowed-down versions. On to my chat with Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 7:20 – Meet the , which Knörnschild likens to a “fluffy little white ping pong ball.” 13:50 – Austin, Texas is home to , which harbors more than 15 million bats. 16:30 – Much of Dr. Knörnschild’s work focuses on the bat, which is a member of the . 18:00 – See the audio appendix for an example of a Greater Sac-winged bat’s echolocation calls. See also examples on . 21:10 – A by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues about how echolocation calls serve social functions in addition to navigational functions. 24:00 – A by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the origin and diversity of bat songs. 30:00 – A recent by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the correlation between social complexity and vocal complexity across bat species. 37:30 – A brand new on vocal learning in humans and animals, including a of vocal learning in mammals by Dr. Vincent Janik and Dr. Knörnschild. 40:35 – Dr. Knörnschild’s , in 2006, reported the observation that Greater Sac-winged bats seemed to babble like infants. 47:20 – A by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on territorial songs in male Greater Sac-winged bats. 53:45 – A very recently in Science by Ahana Fernandez, Dr. Knörnschild, and collaborators; see also this and a about the findings. 1:05:30 – A by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on bat “motherese.” 1:12:00 – For a concise narrative summary of Dr. Knörnschild’s research, including some of the future directions she is planning to pursue, see the article ‘.’ 1:14:00 – The philosopher Thomas Nagel that we can’t really know what it’s like to be a bat. Dr. Knörnschild recommends two books by Merlin Tuttle: You can find Dr. Knörnschild on Twitter (@MKnornschild) and follow her research at . 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/27445560

From the archive: The eye's mind 06/28/2023

From the archive: The eye's mind We're taking a little summer break right now, but we wanted to share a favorite essay from our archives. Enjoy! --- Welcome back folks! Today, we’ve got an audio essay for you. I won’t say too too much—don’t want to spoil it—but it’s about pupils. Not as in students, but as in the dark cores of our eyes. This one of those that’s been in the works for a little while. About a year ago I started collecting all the cool new pupil-related stuff coming out. Then at some point this summer some extra cool stuff came out and I said, “That’s it—time to do it, time to pull this material together into some kind of episode.” So that’s what we have for you today. And I hope you find it eye-opening. Quick reminder before we get to it: As always, we could really use your help in getting the word out about the show. That might mean subscribing, if you don’t already. It might mean rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts. It might mean sending the show to a friend or two. I mean honestly it could mean knitting a Many Minds cardigan for the cold months ahead and sporting it around town. Ceaselessly. Alright all, on to this week’s essay ‘The eye’s mind.’ Enjoy! A text version of this episode (enriched with images!) is readable on . Notes 2:00 – The eye of the giant squid was described in detail for the first time in 2012, in this . 3:10 – On diversity in animal pupils, see this . 4:40 – Pupil changes to imagined and linguistically encoded light can be read about and . 5:30 – Eckherd Hess’s early research on pupils is summarized in his 1965 Scientific American article, ‘’. 6:45 – The 1966 paper by Kahneman and Beatty is . Or see a of more recent research on pupils and cognitive effort. 8:10 – Hess’s studies on the social functions of pupils are recounted in his 1975 Scientific American article, ‘’. Several of his classic studies have been replicated (with good but not perfect success). 8:50 – Mariska Kret’s suggestion about how pupils fit the baby schema can be found . 9:45 – Kret’s studies of pupil mimicry include , , and , among others. 10:15 – The 2021 paper by Wohltjen & Wheatley on “pupillary synchrony” is available . 12:00 – The 1974 Nature article titled ‘Pupils of a talking parrot’ is available . Correction: The audio version of this essay misstated the size of the pupil changes in Daniel Kahneman's classic studies. These changes were roughly .2 to .5 mm, not 2 to 5 mm. /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/27316932

The octopus and the android 06/14/2023

The octopus and the android 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/27154347

Revisiting the dawn of human cognition 06/01/2023

Revisiting the dawn of human cognition There's a common story about the human past that goes something like this. For a few hundred thousand years during the Stone Age we were kind of limping along as a species, in a bit of a cognitive rut, let’s say. But then, quite suddenly, around 30 or 40 thousand years ago in Europe, we really started to come into our own. All of a sudden we became masters of art and ornament, of symbolism and abstract thinking. This story of a kind of "cognitive revolution" in the Upper Paleolithic has been a mainstay of popular discourse for decades. I’m guessing you’re familiar with it. It's been discussed in influential books by Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari; you can read about it on Wikipedia. What you may not know is that this story, compelling as it may be, is almost certainly wrong. My first guest today is , an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, where she heads the Pan-African Evolution research group. My second guest is , an archaeologist and Lecturer at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Together, Eleanor and Manuel are authors of a new paper titled In the paper, they pull together a wealth of evidence showing that there really was no cognitive revolution—no one watershed moment in time and space. Rather, the origins of modern human cognition and culture are to be found not in one part of Europe but across Africa. And they’re also to be found much earlier than that classic picture suggests. Here, we talk about the “cognitive revolution" model and why it has endured. We discuss a seminal paper from the year 2000 that first influentially challenged the revolution model. We talk about the latest evidence of complex cognition from the Middle Stone Age in Africa—including the perforation of marine shells to make necklaces; and the use of ochre for engraving, painting, and even sunblock. We discuss how, though the same complex cognitive abilities were likely in place for the last few hundred thousand years, those abilities were often expressed patchily in different parts of the world at different times. And we consider the factors that led to this patchy expression, especially changes in population size. I confess I was always a bit taken with this whole "cognitive revolution" idea. It had a certain mystery and allure. This new picture that’s taking its place is certainly a bit messier, but no less fascinating. And, more importantly, it’s truer to the complexities of the human saga. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Eleanor Scerri & Manuel Will. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:30 – The paper by Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will we discuss in this episode is . Their paper updates and pays tribute to a classic by McBrearty and Brooks, published in 2000. 6:00 – The classic “cognitive revolution” model sometimes discussed under the banner of “” or the “Great Leap Forward.” It has been recently featured, for instance, in Harari’s . 11:00 – Dr. Scerri has written extensively on debates about where humans evolved within Africa—see, e.g., this . 18:00 – A of perforated marine shells in North Africa during the Middle Stone Age. A by Dr. Will and colleagues about the use of various marine resources during this period. 23:00 – A describing the uses of ochre across Africa during the Middle Stone Age. Another describing evidence for ochre processing 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave in South Africa. At the same site, have been found. 27:00 – A examining the evidence that ochre was used as an adhesive. 30:00 – For a recent review of the concept of “cumulative culture,” see . We discussed the concept of “cumulative culture” in our with Dr. Cristine Legare. 37:00 – For an overview of the career of the human brain and the timing of various changes, see our with Dr. Jeremy DeSilva. 38:00 – An on the role of demography in the emergence of complex human behavior. 41:00 – On the idea that distinctive human intelligence is due in large part to culture and our abilities to acquire cultural knowledge, see Henrich’s . See also our with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna. 45:00 – For discussion of the Neanderthals and why they may have died out, see our with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Recommendations Dr. Scerri recommends research on the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, found in Morocco and described , and new research on the evidence for the widespread burning of landscapes in Malawi, described . Dr. Will recommends the forthcoming update of Peter Mitchell’s book, . See Twitter for more updates from and . 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/27008496

Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering 05/17/2023

Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering 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/26874771

Species of conversation 05/03/2023

Species of conversation We humans are social animals—and that takes work. As we move through the world, we have to navigate around other people's desires, needs, and beliefs. Much of this work happens in conversation—through our words, our glances, our gestures. It happens in countless different situations, according to different norms and systems. Human social interaction is, in short, a multi-layered, delicate dance. But it’s also not the only kind of social interaction out there. Apes, dogs, and other social species also have to negotiate with others and sometimes with humans. There's not just one species of conversation, in other words—there are many. My guest today is , Associate Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Throughout his career, Federico has studied social interaction from a number of different angles, in a range of different settings, and across different species—including humans, bonobos, orangutans, and most recently dogs. Here, we discuss the field of conversation analysis and how Federico got started in it. We talk about his early work on how people use gaze in conversation, and how the use of gaze differs across cultures. We discuss how Federico ported some of the tools of conversation analysis over to study social interaction in apes. We also talk about his new line of research on how dogs use soundboards to communicate with their human caretakers. This work has been attracting a lot of buzz and also a bit of pushback, so we dig into the controversy. Along the way, we touch on: Umberto Eco; platypuses; how much work it takes to simply come across as ordinary; the concept of the human interaction engine; the Clever Hans effect; the impossible task; and why many scientists are so skittish about animal language research. This episode is not just about different forms of conversation. It is itself a different form of conversation—at least for us. This was our first ever in-person interview, something we expect to do a bit more of going forward. Alright friends, on to my real-life, 3d, face-to-face chat with Dr. Federico Rossano. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:00 – The classic 1964 paper, ‘,’ by Erving Goffman. 6:00 – An for the novelist and semiotician, Umberto Eco, who died in 2016. His best-loved novel, perhaps, is . He’s also the author of a book of essays called, . 17:30 – The classic paper, , by Harvey Sacks. 20:00 – A to Conversation Analysis. 32:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on gaze is summarized in his 2012 chapter, ‘.’ His work on questions in Italian is . 35:30 – The quote from Georg Simmel is as follows: “[T]he totality of social relations of human beings, their self-assertions and self-abnegation, their intimacies and estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred no glance of eye to eye.” 39:50 – Dr. Rossano’s work on gaze across cultures is described . 43:00 – Dr. Rossano did his postdoctoral work with Michael Tomasello, who joined us for a . 47:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on bonobo interaction is and . 56:00 – Dr. Rossano’s original work on food sharing in orangutans is . A more recent paper on food sharing is . 1:05:00 – The idea of the “human interaction engine” was first proposed by Stephen Levinson in . 1:10:30 – See the recent theme issue on ‘”’. Dr. Rossano’s contributions to the issue are and . 1:18:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on dogs has been done in coordination with the company . FluentPet makes the pet-friendly buttons (aka soundboards) made famous by Bunny, the “.” 1:23:30 – For an insider’s view of what happened in the original “animal language” studies, see a paper by Irene Pepperberg . 1:27:30 – A by Dr. Rossano and colleagues about the use of “augmented interspecies communication devices” like the soundboards he and colleagues are currently studying. 1:38:30 – The “impossible task,” a widely used task in comparative psychology, was first described in . 1:44:45 – A discussed the “animal language” debates in detail. Dr. Rossano was featured on the show. 1:57:30 – A paper in which Charles Goodwin discussed the case of his father, Chil, is . Dr. Rossano recommends: , by Emanuel Schegloff , by Harvey Sacks , edited by Stephen Levison and Nick Enfield , by Michael Tomasello 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/26738997

Minding plants 04/19/2023

Minding plants Let’s start with a little riddle: What kind of organism has no eyes, no mouth, and no brain, but—arguably—has a mind? Most of the work on non-human minds has, naturally, focused on animals—apes, dogs, whales, bats. Some have considered other branches of the tree of life, too—cephalopods, say, or insects. But, just over the past few decades, some brave scientists and philosophers have begun to look even further. They’re starting to ask whether concepts like planning, memory, and awareness may also extend beyond animals, into an entirely different kingdom of life. They’re starting to take seriously the minds of plants. My guests today are and . Paco is director of the at the University of Murcia in Spain and one of the leading figures in the new science of plant intelligence. Natalie is a writer, illustrator, and historian of science based in London. Paco and Natalie are the authors a new book, . In it, they make the case that plants—though so often treated as an inert backdrop—are, in fact, cognitive creatures. Albeit creatures of a very different sort. In this conversation, we talk about the fact that plants are so often ignored, by both lay people and scientists alike, and consider some of the reasons why this may be. We discuss some spectacular phenomena that have recently come to light about plants—how they respond to anesthesia, how they mimic other plants’ leaves, how they seem to be able to “see” their surroundings. We talk about the question of whether certain plants have evolved to be more cognitively sophisticated than others. We consider the fact that plants and animals rely on the very same neurotransmitters and traffic in the same sort of electrical signaling. We also touch on wild versus domesticated plants, Charles Darwin’s root-brain hypothesis, plant sensing as akin to echolocation, the power and dangers of time-lapse photography, and the question of whether plants have inner experience. Plants are super cool in themselves. Honestly, some of the stuff we discuss in this episode—if you’ve never heard it before—will kind of blow your mind. But plants are also more than that: they're a prism through which to examine some of the biggest questions about intelligence and cognition. Questions like: What are the minimal requirements for conscious experience? Are brains necessary for thinking? Can we truly compare the cognitive abilities of very different species? And should we? One quick announcement: for those who may be new to the show, don’t forget to check out our monthly newsletter. In it, we share recaps of our latest episodes and links to a bunch of other stuff that caught our eye. You can find the sign-up link down in the show notes. Alright friends, without further ado, on to my conversation with Paco Calvo and Natalie Lawrence. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 3:00 – For a popular overview of research on the mimicking plant, Boquila trifoliata, see . The recent study testing whether this plant can also mimic unfamiliar (plastic!) plants, see . 20:00 – The focus on climbing plants began at least as early as Charles Darwin—see his 1875 book, . 24:30 – For discussion of domestication and how it affects the behavior, physiology, and cognition of animals, see our with Brian Hare. 25:00 – Darwin introduced the term “circumnutation” in his 1880 book, . 28:00 – The in which the idea of “plant blindness” was introduced. Since this term was coined, a wealth of research has looked at the underpinnings and consequences of “plant blindness,” and has tested interventions that might mitigate it (e.g., ). 39:00 – A investigating the effects of anesthetic drugs on several plants, including Venus Fly Traps. 44:00 – A reviewing what we know about neurotransmitters in plants. 51:00 – A very of the vascular system of plants. 53:00 – Our on Darwin’s “root-brain hypothesis” (or read ). 57:00 – A on peas reaching toward support poles, suggesting they are able to “see” those supports. 1:00:00 – A examining “skototropic” behavior in a tropical vine. 1:03:00 – A by Dr. Calvo and a colleague on the question of plant sentience. Skeptical discussions of the idea of plant sentience can be found and . Paco Calvo recommends: The Sentient Cell (forthcoming), by František Baluška and colleagues , by Carlo Rivelli Natalie Lawrence recommends: , by 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 . 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 or follow us on Twitter: . /episode/index/show/manyminds/id/26595741

From the archive: Animal minds and animal morality 04/05/2023

From the archive: Animal minds and animal morality Taking care of some spring cleaning this week, but we're excited to resurface this conversation with Kristin Andrews and Susana Monsó. We'll be back with a fresh episode in two weeks. In the meanwhile, enjoy! - The Many Minds team --- Your friend is in a bit of distress. They’ve just been dunked in a pool, and they can’t pull themselves out. You’re looking on as they’re paddling furiously, trying to hold onto the pool’s ledge. Fortunately, there’s a way to save your friend, to give them an escape route. The thing is, there’s also something else vying for your attention at the moment: a chunk of chocolate. So what do you do? Do you first nab the chocolate and then free your friend? Turns out that most rats in this position—that’s right, rats—will first free their friend and then go for the chocolate. of many studies that have raised profound questions about whether animals are moral beings, about whether they are capable of things like care and empathy. Such studies are doing more than raising questions about animal morality, though; they’re also reshaping our understanding of what animal minds are capable of. My guests today are not one but two philosophers: Dr. Kristin Andrews, Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto and Dr. Susana Monsó, Assistant Professor in the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science at UNED in Spain. Both Susana and Kristin have emerged as central figures in the new conversations and debates that springing about animal minds and animal morality. We cover a lot of ground in this episode. We talk about rats and empathy. We discuss the role of philosophy in the crossdisciplinary study of animal cognition. We talk about Kristin’s most recent book, which is a critical consideration of how scientists are trained to study animals, and Susana’s book, which is an extended investigation into animals’ understandings of death. We zoom in on the “animal morality debate”—about whether animals should be considered moral beings. We consider how touch might inform the debate and social norms and morality are deeply enmeshed than you may realize. As we navigate these lofty ideas, we also touch on the use of thermography to study emotions in marmosets, planning in orangutans, tongue-biting in orcas, and playing dead in possums. This is basically a double episode. It features two amazing guests. It takes on two big topics—the study of animal minds in general and the animal morality debate in particular. It’s also a tad longer than our usual fare, but I promised its packed with useful frameworks, provocative findings, and a bunch of open questions. I think it also picks up steam as we go—so be sure to stick with it, through to the second half. Alright folks, as always, thanks so much for listening. And be sure to send us your guest and topic ideas, your glowing reviews, and your crotchety comments. You can reach us on Twitter or by email at [email protected]. Now for my conversation with Dr. Susana Monsó and Dr. Kristin Andrews. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 5:00 – An by Dr. Andrews & Dr. Monsó in Aeon magazine, about how rats deserve ethical protections. 7:30 – A about findings that vervet monkeys socially learn food preferences. The original research paper is . 9:10 – A on the findings that rats can learn to play hide-and-seek. 22:00 – Dr. Andrews’ most recent book is . Her earlier book, , is now out in a second edition. 24:00 – Morgan’s Canon has been widely discussed and criticized in recent decades (see , , and ). 27:00 – A by Dr. Andrews on the role of folk psychology in animal cognition research. 33:00 – A by Dr. Andrews discussing the idea of “anthropectomy.” 34:00 – The by Dan Dennett that makes the distinction between “romantics” and “killjoys.” 35:20 – Dr. Monsó’s recent book (in Spanish) translates as . See also: her in Aeon about the phenomenon of “playing dead” and what it tells us about predator cognition; and her recent philosophical papers on the same topic (, ). 49:30 – See the recent by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews on “animal moral psychologies.” See also a paper by Dr. Monsó and colleagues, ‘.’ 51:30 – A classic article by Frans de Waal, ‘.’ 53:40 – An “” to Tinbergen’s four questions. 58:00 – For a review of some of the “rat empathy” studies, see the “animal moral psychologies” by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews. This line of work began with by Bartal and colleagues in 2011. A skeptical take can be found . 1:01 – A on how chimpanzees pass the “marshmallow test.” 1:04:00 – A on (the apparent absence of) “third-party punishment” in chimpanzees. 1:06:00 – A recent using thermography to gauge whether marmosets understand each other’s “conversations.” 1:08:00 – of the now-famous “ape suit” studies by Chris Krupenye and colleagues. 1:11:30 – A recent by Dr. Andrews on the possibility of animal social norms. 1:17:00 – A recent by Dr. Monsó on “how the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate.” 1:21:00 – A recent by Filip Mattens on touch—and the “vigilance” function of touch in particular. 1:25:20 – A of “eye-poking” in capuchins, which Susan Perry has studied. 1:28:00 – On the WEIRD issue, see on first decade of the acronym. Dr. Andrews recommends: , edited by Dr. Andrews & Jacob Beck ‘,’ by Richard Moore , edited by Stephen Ross* & Lydia Hopper Dr. Monsó recommends: The entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Lars Chittka (forthcoming) , Ed Yong (forthcoming) You can read more about Dr. Andrews’ work at and follow her on . You can read more about Dr. Monsó’s work at and follow her on . * Sadly, shortly after this episode was recorded, Stephen Ross died unexpectedly. Read an obituary . 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 . 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/26458512

The "I" of the beholder 03/22/2023

The "I" of the beholder Let’s face it, we're all a little bit self-involved. It’s not just that we spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves. There’s another layer to it: we spend a lot of time thinking about what other people think about us. We take pains to present ourselves in the best possible light; we fret over whether we made a good impression; and we do our best to shape and manage our reputations. It’s honestly hard to imagine not doing any of this—seeing ourselves from the outside can feel like pure reflex. But what are the deeper origins of this tendency? When does it arise in childhood? What are the underpinnings and consequences of reputational thinking? My guests today are , a postdoc in the Psychology Department at Yale University, and , Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Together, Mika and Hyo recently published about reputational thinking in young children. In this conversation, we talk about the broader context of this research and lay out some concepts central to it, like “self-presentational behavior" and "theory of mind." We walk through four experiments in which 3- and 4-year-old children showed a clear interest in their reputations. They strategically communicated to certain people—or about certain events—to make sure they came across well. We then consider the provocative possibility that humans are especially motivated to think about others’ minds when those other minds are thinking about us. We discuss whether similar reputation-related behaviors might be present in other species, and how reputational thinking might vary across cultures. Finally, we touch on a few ways Hyo and Mika are hoping to extend this work into new terrain. Honestly I got excited about this paper just by reading the first few sentences of the abstract. It takes on such an obviously big and rich and fascinating research question. That basic reflex—to see ourselves through the eyes of others—feels so elemental and so critical to understanding the human mind. Alright friends, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Dr. Mika Asaba & Dr. Hyo Gweon. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available . Notes and links 4:30 – Both Dr. Asaba and Dr. Gweon spent time in at MIT. 7:00 – The for Dr. Gweon’s ‘Social Learning Lab’ at Stanford. A recent by Dr. Gweon describing her lab’s research program. 9:30 – A by Dr. Asaba and Dr. Gweon about how children learn about themselves through praise. 13:00 – In a recent to the main paper discussed in this episode, Dr. Asaba, Dr. Gweon, and colleagues examined whether children would demonstrate their competence to a puppet. 15:00 – One of the most influential studies of “theory of mind” capacities in young children, which pioneered the “false belief” paradigm, is . A of some of the early work on theory of mind; a more recent . We discussed “theory of mind” at some length in our on stories. 19:00 – The paper by Dr. Asaba and Dr. Gweon reporting the four experiments we discuss appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It is available . 36:00 – See our with Michael Tomasello. 40:00 – A on the personality dimension of “conscientiousness.” Recommendations ‘,’ by Kayla Good and Alex Shaw ‘,’ by Mark Ho, Rebecca Saxe, and Fiery Cushman 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 . 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/26308689

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