100 avsnitt • Längd: 65 min • Månadsvis
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.
The podcast Many Minds is created by Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
You've probably come across the "free energy principle." It's become one of the most influential ideas in the broader cognitive sciences. Since the neuroscientist Karl Friston first introduced it in 2005, the theory has been fleshed out, extended, generalized, criticized, and cited thousands and thousands of times. But what is this idea, exactly? What does it say about the nature of brains and minds? What does it say about the phenomenon of life itself? And is anything that it says really that new?
My guest today is Dr. Kate Nave. Kate is a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the new book, A Drive to Survive: The Free Energy Principle and the Meaning of Life. In the book, Kate offers an extended critical analysis of the free energy principle and situates it in a broader landscape of ideas about the nature of life and mind.
In this conversation, Kate and I talk about how the free energy principle has changed over time, from its beginnings as a theory of cortical responses in the brain to its eventual status as a theory of... well, a lot. We discuss why this theory has had such an enormous influence, and we talk about how many of the key ideas behind it actually have a long history. We consider some kindred spirits of the free energy framework— approaches like cybernetics, enactivism, predictive processing, and autopoiesis. We walk through a series of questions that all these approaches have long grappled with. Questions like: What does it mean to be alive? What is the relationship between being alive and being cognitive? What are the roles of prediction and representation in cognition? And we ask how—if it all—the free energy principle gives us new answers to these old questions. Along the way, Kate and I touch on: surprisal, visual phenomenology, vitalism, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Maturana and Varela, pendulums and bacteria, computation and models, primordial purposiveness, pancakes, and whether we'll ever be able to create artificial life.
As you might be able to tell from the description I just gave, this conversation goes pretty deep—and it does get a bit technical. It dives down into the history and philosophy around some of the most foundational questions we can ask about minds. If that sounds like your cup of tea, enjoy.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Kate Nave!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – The 2005 paper in which Karl Friston proposed the principle of free energy minimization. Friston later generalized the ideas here and here.
14:00 – For influential philosophical work on action in perception, see Alva Nöe’s book, Action in Perception.
17:00 – One of the classic works in the “enactivist” tradition is Evan Thompson’s book, Mind in Life.
18:00 – The actual quip, credited to Carl Sagan, is about “apple pie” not pancakes: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
20:00 – The notion of “autopoiesis” (or “self-creation”) was introduced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in their book, Autopoiesis and Cognition.
24:00 – A classic paper of cybernetics from 1943, ‘Behavior, purpose, and teleology.’
37:00 – For more on the idea of “predictive processing,” see our earlier episode with Dr. Mark Miller.
43:00 – For a discussion of the idea of “representation” in the philosophy of cognitive science, see here. For a discussion of “anti-representationalism,” see here.
Recommendations
‘Organisms, Machines, and Thunderstorms: A History of Self-Organization,’ (part 1) (part 2), Evelyn Fox Keller
The Mechanization of the Mind, Jean-Pierre Dupuy
‘The Reflex Machine and the Cybernetic Brain,’ M. Chirimuuta
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Are human emotions universal? Or do they vary from one place to the next and from one time period to the next? It's a big question, an old question. And every discipline that's grappled with it brings its own take, its own framings and forms of evidence. Some researchers appeal to cross-cultural experiments; others turn to neuroimaging studies or conceptual analysis. Some even look to fiction.
My guest today is Dr. Bradley Irish, an Associate Professor of English Literature at Arizona State University. Brad is the author of a new book, The Universality of Emotion: Perspectives from the Sciences and Humanities; in it he maps the landscape of debate around this long-contested topic. Brad is also the author of numerous articles and books on the emotions in Shakespeare's plays, as well as in the work of other early modern authors.
Here, Brad and I talk about both sides of his work—his writing as an observer of cross-disciplinary debates about the universality of emotion and his writing as a scholar of literature. We sketch four prominent theories of emotions—basic emotions theory, appraisal theories, psychological construction theories, and social construction theories. We weigh the idea that some emotions are more universal than others. We talk about the role that language might play in our emotional experience. And we consider why many literary scholars tend to be deeply suspicious of claims about human universality. Along the way, Brad and I also touch on: the theory of ur-emotions, the aims of literary analysis; disgust, anger, schadenfreude, anxiety; frogs and public dissections; Shakespeare as a supposedly universal poet; and Brad's latest project on neurodiversity in literature.
If you're enjoying the show, we would be most grateful if you could give us a rating or review, maybe even a shout-out on your social media platform of choice. For those who listen on Spotify, you can also now leave comments on individual episodes—which is a great way to let us know what you think.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Brad Irish. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
7:00 – For an example of an anti-universalist treatment from a literary scholar, see here. See also Dr. Irish’s brief essay on the idea of universality in literary studies.
12:00 – For Dr. Irish’s first book—on emotions in the early modern period—see here.
15:00 – For a recent review/update of the “basic emotions theory” tradition, see here.
21:00 – An influential early paper on facial expressions of emotion across cultures. A more recent, critical perspective on the relationship between facial expressions and emotions.
23:00 – For a review of social constructionist approaches to emotion, see here.
24:00 – A recent review of the “appraisal theories” of emotion.
26:00 – Psychological constructionist theories of emotion are most strongly associated with the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues. For an articulation of these views, see here.
33:00 – For more on the relationship between language and emotion, see influential recent studies here, here, and here.
39:00 – The paper introducing the concept of “ur-emotions.”
44:00 – Dr. Patrick Colm Hogan’s book, What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion.
49:00 – Dr. Irish’s book, Shakespeare & Disgust: The History and Science of Early Modern Revulsion.
58:00 – For an influential paper on disgust in general, see here. For more on moral disgust in particular, see here.
1:07:00 – For the idea that disgust evolved to help us avoid disease, see here.
1:15:00 – For more on the idea that fictions can be thought of as simulations of psychology and the social world, see our earlier episode on stories.
1:16:00 – For more about Dr. Irish’s latest research project, see his new book, Literary Neurodiversity Studies.
Recommendations
Emotion Theory: The Routledge Comprehensive Guide, edited by Andrea Scarantino
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Hi friends,
We're taking care of some spring cleaning this week. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives!
- The Many Minds team
–––––––––
[originally aired February 22, 2024]
Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky.
My guests today are Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper 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 DISI.org. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread.
6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places.
11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees.
12:30 – A recent article 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 here and here.
15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.”
22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire.
26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago.
31:30 – A paper 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 this article.
44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq.
45:00 – The article 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 previous episode about intoxication.
1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark.
Recommendations
The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz
Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz
“How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
The tree of life is a noisy place. From one branch come hoots and howls, from another come clicks and buzzes and whines. And coming from all over you hear the swell of song. But what is all this ruckus about? Why do so many animals communicate with sound? What kinds of meaning do these sounds convey? And—beyond the case of human speech—do any of these sounds merit the label of “language”?
My guest today is Dr. Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Cambridge University. Arik is an expert on vocal communication across the animal kingdom and the author of the recent book Why animals talk: The new science of animal communication.
Here, Arik and I talk about why the acoustic medium is a popular choice for complex communication. We sketch a key difference between forms of communication that are purely expressive and forms that are also referential. We discuss, in turn, Arik's field research on wolves, hyraxes, and gibbons—and talk about what makes each of these animals such a revealing case study. We evaluate our prospects for quote unquote "translating" different kinds of animal communication, and we speculate about what communication systems could look like on other planets. Along the way, Arik and I touch on: noisy versus tonal sounds; short-range versus long-range communication; chorusing and duetting; simplicity and complexity; syntax and meaning; entropy; alarm calls; dolphins, orcas, and cuttlefish; and how you can tell that wolves take a certain pleasure in howling.
Without further ado, here’s my chat with Dr. Arik Kershenbaum.
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
6:30 – In the human case, of course, our most elaborated form of communication—language—comes in both spoken and signed forms. For more on the different modalities of human language, see, e.g., our earlier episode with Dr. Neil Cohn.
7:30 – The distinction between expressive and referential communication is perhaps most strongly associated with the linguist Roman Jakobson—see, for instance, this essay. For more on the question of whether animal communication systems involve reference, see this recent (philosophical) discussion.
9:00 – For a classic example of work on predator alarm calls in vervet monkeys, see here.
13:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on wolf (and other canid) howls, see here. The study provides evidence for howling “dialects.”
24:30 – An example of coyote chorusing can be heard here.
27:00 – A study showing that human listeners overestimate the size of a coyote group.
29:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on hyrax song, see here. An example of hyrax song can be heard here.
34:00 – For a primer on syntax in animal acoustic communication, see here.
40:00 – Examples of gibbon song can be heard here and here.
45:00 – For a paper on the syntax and complexity of gibbon songs, see here.
48:30 – A paper by Dr. Kershenbaum and colleagues on entropy and Zipf’s law in animal communication.
57:30 – A paper on Darwin’s theory of “musical protolanguage.”
59:30 – An example of research on orca communication.
1:00:00 – For more about Project CETI, see here.
1:07:00 – See Dr. Kershenbaum’s other book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Recommendations
The Reign of Wolf 21, by Rick McIntyre
Through a window, by Jane Goodall
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Evolution is not what it used to be. A lot has changed since Darwin's day. In the first half of the 20th century, evolutionary theory was integrated with an emerging understanding of genetics. Late in the 20th century, biologists started taking seriously the idea that organisms don't just adapt to their environments, they change them. Recently, researchers have started to acknowledge the role of culture in evolutionary processes. And so slowly our understanding of evolution has been reconsidered, updated, expanded. And more updates are underway. But it's not just our understanding of evolution that has changed over time. Evolution itself has changed, too.
My guest today is Dr. Kevin Lala. Kevin is an evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Over his long career, Kevin has been at the forefront of key debates about—and updates to—evolutionary theory. He's known, for instance, for his pioneering work on niche construction as well as for his work on gene-culture co-evolution. In a new book titled Evolution Evolving, Kevin and his four co-authors present a new synthesis of evolution, one that places developmental processes front and center.
Here, Kevin and I sketch the notion of a "developmental bias" and why it's central to this new understanding of evolution. We talk about the orthodox gene-centric way of thinking about development—and what it gets wrong. We discuss so-called exploratory processes in development. We dig into the increasingly popular, but much debated construct of "evolvability." And we consider what this newest update to evolutionary theory might tell us about the origins of human cognition. Along the way, Kevin and I talk about floppy ears in mammals and fragmented faces in fish; symbionts and soft inheritance; Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Richard Lewontin, and August Weismann; development as an artist and evolution as curator; maps; plants; manual dexterity; brain size; and why evolution is a bit like walking on a trampoline.
A final reminder about the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. DISI is a three-week long summer institute held in St Andrews, Scotland; it's a place for the wide-ranging, transdisciplinary exploration of ideas about mind, cognition, and intelligence. It's a place where early career scholars get to hobnob with thinkers like Kevin Lala, who was a faculty member with us in 2019. There's still time to apply, but do act fast—review of applications begins March 1st.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Kevin Lala. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A paper describing so-called domestication syndrome. For more on domestication (and self-domestication), see our earlier episode with Dr. Brian Hare.
11:00 – A paper describing cavefish as a new model organism in the study of evolution and development.
15:00 – An influential 2015 paper, led by Dr. Lala, describing the “extended evolutionary synthesis.”
22:00 – A 2016 overview of niche construction theory, led by Dr. Lala.
27:00 – An early report on “lobtail feeding” in humpback whales.
33:00 – A paper describing “gaping behavior” in cichlid fishes.
35:00 – A review of “soft inheritance.” The study showing that mice pass on learned associations to offspring.
41:00 – A study on the gut microbes that allow woodrats to digest toxic creosote.
44:00 – See our earlier episode with Dr. Eric Turkheimer.
50:00 – See Winther’s book, When Maps Become the World.
56:00 – A paper reviewing the idea of “exploratory mechanisms” in development, as well as other ideas associated with the concept of “plasticity-led evolution.”
1:05:00 – A classic paper on the notion of “evolvability.”
1:13:00 – For one example of a “major transitions” framework, see our earlier episode with Dr. Andrew Barron.
1:17:00 – A news article about how dogs developed the ability to digest starch, initially by acquiring symbionts.
1:20:00 – For discussion of the evolution of human brain size, see our earlier episode ‘Fermentation, fire, and our big brains.’
1:28:00 – A recent review of the idea that humans are “self-domesticated.”
Recommendations
Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, by Mary Jane West-Eberhard
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Where would our species be without string? It's one of our most basic technologies—so basic that it's easy to overlook. But humans have used string—and its cousins rope, yarn, cordage, thread, etc.—for all kinds of purposes, stretching back tens of thousands of years. We've used it for knots and textiles and fishing nets and carrier bags and bow-strings and record-keeping devices. It's one of the most ubiquitous, flexible, and useful technologies we have. But we haven't only put string to practical purposes. We've also long used it to tickle our minds.
My guest today is Dr. Roope Kaaronen. Roope is a cognitive anthropologist and postdoc at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Along with an interdisciplinary team, Roope recently conducted two studies that showcase the centrality of string in human culture. One is on the history and diversity of "string figures” (which are visual designs made with a loop of string held between the hands, often known to English speakers as “Cat's Cradle”). The other study is on the history and diversity of knots.
Here Roope and I discuss the deep history of string in human culture. We talk about the seemingly universal spread of string figures across the globe. We zoom in on one string figure in particular—the Jacob's ladder—which seems to be the most widespread string figure of all, despite its complexity. We talk about how both knots and string figures are related to the branch of mathematics known as “topology," and about how knots and string figures have evolved under different constraints. Finally, we discuss what our fascination with string designs might tell us about the human mind. And we lament the fact that much of our string-based cultural heritage is headed—quite rapidly—for extinction.
Just a reminder that applications are now open for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute or DISI. If you are an early career researcher and you like this show, you would probably like DISI. Actually, fun fact: our guest today, Roope, is a DISI alum. We met at the Institute a couple years ago and I've followed his work ever since. That should give you some flavor for the people who attend. In any case, for more info, check out disi.org—that’s d-i-s-i. org.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Roope Kaaronen. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – The 2020 paper reporting the use of string by Neanderthals.
8:00 – A paper describing the Antrea Net and its discovery.
10:00 – On the issue of gender bias in the study of textiles, see Virginia Postrel’s book, The Fabric of Civilization.
12:00 – Dr. Kaaronen’s other ethnomathematical projects include work on measurement across cultures.
16:30 – The website of the International String Figure Association.
19:30 – The 1969 paper first introducing the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.
22:20 – A step-by-step explanation for how to make Jacob’s Ladder.
30:30 – A step-by-step explanation for how to make the Swan.
38:00 – An example of a string figure that uses the Caroline Extension.
40:35 – A video demonstrating the string figure game of Cat’s Cradle, which is played with a partner.
44:30 – A preprint of the knot study by Dr. Kaaronen and colleagues.
45:00 – The website of HRAF—the Human Relations Area Files—is here.
49:00 – A step-by-step explanation for how to make the knot known as the “sheet bend.”
55:00 – An interactive article about what is known about Incan khipus.
59:30 – The “bible of knots” is the Ashley Book of Knots.
1:08:30 – An illustrated article on the so-called Austronesian expansion.
1:16:00 – An image of the ochre stone from 70,000 years ago, found at Blombos cave, featuring net-like imagery. A study finding sensitivity to abstract shapes in humans but not baboons.
Recommendations
The Fabric of Civilization, by Virginia Postrel
String Figures: A Study of Cat’s Cradle in Many Lands, by Caroline Furness Jayne
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Neurons have long enjoyed a kind of rock star status. We think of them as the most fundamental units of the brain—the active cells at the heart of brain function and, ultimately, at the heart of behavior, learning, and more. But neurons are only part of the story—about half the story, it turns out. The other half of the brain is made up of cells called glia. Glia were long thought to be important structurally but not particularly exciting—basically stage-hands there to support the work of the neurons. But in recent decades, at least among neuroscientists, that view has faded. In our understanding of the brain, glia have gone from stage-hands to co-stars.
My guest today is Dr. Nicola Allen. Nicola is a molecular neuroscientist and Associate Professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. She and her lab study the role of glial cells—especially astrocytes—in brain function and dysfunction.
Here, Nicola and I talk about how our understanding and appreciation of glial cells has changed. We do a bit of Brain Cells 101, reviewing the main division between neurons and glia and then sketching the subtypes within each category. We discuss the different shapes and sizes of glial cells, as well as the different functions. Glia are an industrious bunch. They’re involved in synapse formation and pruning, the production of myelin, the repair of injuries, and more. We also talk about how glial cells have been implicated in various forms of brain dysfunction, from neurodegeneration to neurodevelopmental syndromes. And how, as a result, these cells are attracting serious attention as a site for therapeutic intervention.
Well, it's that time of year again folks. Applications are now open for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. This is an intense program—highly interdisciplinary, highly international—for scholars and storytellers interested in all forms and facets of intelligence. If you like thinking about minds, if you like thinking about humans and animals and plants and AIs and collectives and ways they’re alike and different—you would probably like DISI. For more info, check out disi.org—that's D-I-S-I dot org. Review of applications begins March 1st, so don't dally too too long.
Alright friends—on to my conversation with Dr. Nicola Allen. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – Correction: “glia” actually comes from the Greek—not the Latin—for “glue.”
3:30 – See this short primer on glia by Dr. Allen and Dr. Ben Barres. For a bit of the history of how glial cells were originally conceived, see this article on Ramón y Cajal’s contributions to glia research.
10:00 – On the nascent field of “neuroimmunology,” see here.
14:00 – On the idea that “90% of brain cells are glia” see this article by (former guest) Suzana Herculano-Houzel.
18:00 – The root “oligo” in “oligodendrocyte” means “few” (and is thus the same as the “olig” in, e.g., “oligarchy"). It is not related to the “liga-” in “ligament.”
28:00 – On the idea that the glia-neuron ratio changes as brains grow more complex, see again the article by Dr. Herculano-Houzel.
30:00 – See Dr. Allen’s paper on the idea of glia as “architects.” See also Dr. Allen’s paper on the idea of glia as “sculptors.”
33:00 – See Dr. Allen’s paper on the idea of the “tripartite synapse.”
42:00 – A recent paper reviewing the phenomenon of adult neurogenesis.
48:00 – See Dr. Allen’s recent review of the role of astrocytes in neurodegeneration.
51:30 – A recent article on the roles of APOE in Alzheimer’s.
Recommendations
Glia (2nd edition), edited by Beth Stevens, Kelly R. Monk, and Marc R. Freeman
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
How do we learn? Usually from experience, of course. Maybe we visit some new place, or encounter a new tool or trick. Or perhaps we learn from someone else—from a teacher or friend or YouTube star who relays some shiny new fact or explanation. These are the kinds of experiences you probably first think of when you think of learning. But we can also learn in another way: simply by thinking. Sometimes we can just set our minds to work—just let the ideas already in our heads tumble around and spark off each other—and, as if by magic, come away with a new understanding of the world. But how does this happen exactly? And does it only happen in humans?
My guest today is Dr. Tania Lombrozo. Tania is a Professor of Psychology at Princeton University; she and her research group study learning, reasoning, explanation, belief, and more. In a recent paper, Tania outlines this puzzling alternative form of learning—learning by thinking, as it’s known—and presents evidence that it happens in both humans and AIs.
In this conversation, Tania and I talk about her longstanding work on explanation, and how it led her to study this less-obvious form of learning. We zoom in on four flavors of learning by thinking—learning through explanation, through simulation, through analogy, and through reasoning. We talk about the evidence that machines also learn in this way, and we consider whether animals could, too. We discuss how to resolve the paradox at the heart of "learning by thinking": how it could be that reshuffling old bits of knowledge can actually lead to new understanding. Along the way, Tania and I touch on: chain-of-thought prompting in LLMs, the Reddit community 'Explain Like I'm Five,’ the illusion of explanatory depth, the power of thought experiments, Darwin and Galileo, imagination and rationalization, how psychology and philosophy complement each other, and whether we can also learn—not just by thinking in our proverbial armchairs—but also by writing and talking.
So, happy 2025, friends! We've got some great stuff lined up for the coming year. If you like what we're doing with the show, we would—as ever—appreciate your support. And the main way you can support us is just by helping us get the word out—by telling a friend about us, or a colleague, or a student, or your thousands of social media followers.
Alright, without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Tania Lombrozo. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – An influential early paper on “chain-of-thought prompting” in Large Language Models. A recent preprint by a team, including Dr. Lombrozo, exploring the cases where “chain-of-thought prompting” actually impairs performance in LLMs.
8:00 – For some of Dr. Lombrozo’s important earlier work on explanation, see here and here.
11:15 – The Reddit community ‘Explain Like I’m Five.’
13:00 – An early paper on the “curse of knowledge”—the difficulty of ignoring what you know.
19:00 – Dr. Lombrozo’s recent review article on “learning by thinking” is here. Another article of hers on the same topic is here.
20:00 – The original report of the “self-explanation” effect. The original report of the “illusion of explanatory depth.”
30:00 – For a basic description of Galileo’s falling bodies thought experiment, see here. A discussion of this thought experiment by philosopher Tamar Gendler.
38:00 – For analysis of Darwin’s analogy between artificial and natural selection, see here and here.
42:00 – A paper on rationalization by Fiery Cushman.
48:00 – A paper from Dr. Lombrozo’s lab on “need for explanation.” The original paper describing the construct of “need for cognition.”
52:00 – The original report of “framing effects” by Tversky and Kahneman.
54:00 – A paper by Annette Karmiloff-Smith discussing “representational redescription.”
1:02:00 – A recent overview of issues surrounding “explainable” AI.
Recommendations
Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, & Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib
Frank Keil, Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Happy holidays, friends! We will be back with a new episode in January 2025. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives!
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[originally aired Jun 14, 2023]
Have you heard of Octopolis? It’s a site off the coast of Australia where octopuses come together. It’s been described as a kind of underwater "settlement" or "city." Now, smart as octopuses are, they are not really known for being particularly sociable. But it seems that, given the right conditions, they can shift in that direction. So it's not a huge leap to wonder whether these kinds of cephalopod congregations could eventually give rise to something else—a culture, a language, maybe something like a civilization.
This is the idea at the center of Ray Nayler's new book, The Mountain in the Sea. 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 The Mountain in the Sea 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 Apple Podcasts, 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 here.
Notes and links
8:30 – For the review of The Mountain in the Sea in question, see here.
14:00 – Con Dao is a national park in Vietnam.
17:00 – For our previous episode about cephalopods, see here.
19:00 – For a book-length introduction to biosemiotics, see here.
24:00 – A video 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 our episode with Michael Tomasello.
29:00 – A popular article about RNA editing in cephalopods.
35:00 – A video of the “passing cloud” phenomenon in cuttlefish. A brief article about the phenomenon. A video showing other forms of camouflage in octopuses.
41:00 – An experimental exploration of the movement from “iconic” to “symbolic” communication in humans.
44:00 – A popular article about the communication system used in the movie Arrival.
49:00 – One source of inspiration for Ray’s book was Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think.
1:00:00 – An article on the idea of “architects” and “gardeners” among writers.
1:05:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Disintegration Loops’ is available here.
1:11:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Summer Castle’ is available here.
1:13:00 – A popular article about the phenomenon of highly superior autobiographical memory. An essay about the idea that faulty memory is a feature rather than a bug.
1:18:00 – Ray’s story ‘Muallim’ is available here.
Recommendations
Ways of Being, by James Bridle
Living in Data, by Jer Thorp
Follow Ray on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Using language is a complex business. Let's say you want to understand a sentence. You first need to parse a sequence of sounds—if the sentence is spoken—or images—if it's signed or written. You need to figure out the meanings of the individual words and then you need to put those meanings together to form a bigger whole. Of course, you also need to think about the larger context—the conversation, the person you're talking to, the kind of situation you're in. So how does the brain do all of this? Is there just one neural system that deals with language or several? Do different parts of the brain care about different aspects of language? And, more basically: What scientific tools and techniques should we be using to try to figure this all out?
My guest today is Dr. Ev Fedorenko. Ev is a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT, where she and her research group study how the brains supports language and complex thought. Ev and her colleagues recently wrote a detailed overview of their work on the language network—the specialized system in our brain that underlies our ability to use language. This network has some features you might have expected, and—as we’ll see—other features you probably didn't.
Here, Ev and I talk about the history of our effort to understand the neurobiology of language. We lay out the current understanding of the language network, and its relationship to the brain areas historically associated with language abilities—especially Broca's area and Wernicke's area. We talk about whether the language network can be partitioned according to the subfields of linguistics, such as syntax and semantics. We discuss the power and limitations of fMRI, and the advantages of the single-subject analyses that Ev and her lab primarily use. We consider how the language network interfaces with other major neural networks—for instance, the theory of mind network and the so-called default network. And we discuss what this all tells us about the longstanding controversial claim that language is primarily for thinking rather than communicating.
Along the way, Ev and I touch on: some especially interesting brains; plasticity and redundancy; the puzzle of lateralization; polyglots; aphasia; the localizer method; the decline of certain Chomskyan perspectives; the idea that brain networks are "natural kinds"; the heart of the language network; and the question of what the brain may tell us—if anything—about how language evolved.
Alright friends, this is a fun one. On to my conversation with Dr. Ev Fedorenko. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – The article by a New York Times reporter who is missing a portion of her temporal lobe. The website for the Interesting Brains project.
5:30 – A recent paper from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the brains of three siblings, two of whom were missing portions of their brains.
13:00 – Broca’s original 1861 report.
18:00 – Many of Noam Chomsky’s ideas about the innateness of language and the centrality of syntax are covered in his book Language and Mind, among other publications.
19:30 – For an influential critique of the tradition of localizing functions in the brain, see William R. Uttal’s The New Phrenology.
23:00 – The new review paper by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues on the language network.
26:00 – For more discussion of the different formats or modalities of language, see our earlier episode with Dr. Neil Cohn.
30:00 – A classic paper by Herbert Simon on the “architecture of complexity.”
31:00 – For one example of a naturalistic, “task-free” study that reveals the brain’s language network, see here.
33:30 – See the recent paper arguing “against cortical reorganization.”
33:00 – For more on the concept of “natural kind” in philosophy, see here.
38:00 – On the “multiple-demand network,” see a recent study by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues.
41:00 – For a study from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab finding that syntax and semantics are distributed throughout the language network, see here. For an example of work in linguistics that does not make a tidy distinction between syntax and semantics, see here.
53:30 – See Dr. Fedorenko’s recent article on the history of individual-subject analyses in neuroscience.
1:01:00 – For an in-depth treatment of one localizer used in Dr. Fedorenko’s research, see here.
1:03:30 – A paper by Dr. Stephen Wilson and colleagues, describing recovery of language ability following stroke as a function of the location of the lesion within the language network.
1:04:20 – A paper from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the small language networks of polyglots.
1:09:00 – For more on the Visual Word Form Area (or VWFA), see here. For discussion of Exner’s Area, see here.
1:14:30 – For a discussion of the brain’s so-called default network, see here.
1:17:00 – See here for Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues’ recent paper on the function of language. For more on the question of what language is for, see our earlier episode with Dr. Nick Enfield.
1:19:00 – A paper by Dr. Fedorenko and Dr. Rosemary Varley arguing for intact thinking ability in patients with aphasia.
1:22:00 – A recent paper on individual differences in the experience of inner speech.
Recommendations
Dr. Ted Gibson’s book on syntax (forthcoming with MIT press)
Nancy Kanwisher, ‘Functional specificity in the human brain’
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
How do birds build their nests? By instinct, of course—at least that's what the conventional wisdom tells us. A swallow builds a swallow's nest; a robin builds a robin's nest. Every bird just follows the rigid template set down in its genes. But over the course of the last couple of decades, scientists have begun to take a closer look at nests—they've weighed and measured them, they've filmed the building process. And the conventional wisdom just doesn't hold up. These structures vary in all kinds of ways, even within a species. They're shaped by experience, by learning, by cultural tradition. When we look at a bird's nest, we're looking at the product of a flexible mind.
My guest today is Dr. Susan Healy. Sue is a Professor in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews and an expert in birds—their behavior, their cognition, and their evolution. For more than a decade now, Sue has been pioneering a new chapter in the study of birds' nests.
Here, Sue and I talk about some of the most impressive nests (as well as some of the least impressive). We do a bit of Birds' Nests 101—the different forms they take, the functions they serve, which sex does the building, how these structures evolved, and more. We dig into the mounting evidence that birds are in fact quite flexible in their building practices, that they learn from others and from their own experience. We discuss recent evidence from Sue's team that cultural traditions shape the weaver nests of the Kalahari. And we talk about what nests might have in common with songs and tools. Along the way, we touch on: pigeon nests and hummingbird nests, dinosaur nests and chimpanzee nests; Alfred Russel Wallace; commonalities in the techniques of human weavers and weaver birds; whether bird personality might be reflected in nest style; the brain basis of nest-building; and a whole lot else.
Hope you enjoy this one, friends. On to my conversation with Dr. Sue Healy.
A transcript of this episode is availalble here.
Notes and links
2:30 – An example of a post on the (seemingly inadequate) nests of pigeons.
7:30 – An article featuring a variety of weaverbird nests.
10:30 – Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on birds' nests is available here.
15:00 – A paper from another branch of Dr. Healy’s work, on hummingbirds.
16:00 – The 1902 book by Charles Dixon on the science of “caliology.”
17:00 – An example of research done by the Colliases on weavers.
19:00 – For an up-to-date primer on birds’ nests—covering a number of the questions we discuss here—see Dr. Healy’s recent primer.
22:30 – An article about hummingbird eggs.
28:30 – A paper by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the use of human materials in birds’ nests. Our episode on animal medication is here.
31:30 – An article about bowerbirds and how they decorate their bowers.
35:00 – An article on the evolution of birds’ nests, covering the question of what dinosaur nests were like.
43:00 – A paper by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the impact of temperature and earlier breeding success on nest size.
51:00 – For more discussion of personality in animals, including in clonal fish, see our episode with Kate Laskowski.
55:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues showing that zebra finches build nests that match the color of the walls.
58:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues looking at how zebra finches learn aspects of nest-building from familiar individuals.
59:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues, led by Maria Tello-Ramos, about architectural traditions in an African sociable weaver species.
1:07:00 – An article by Michael Arbib, Dr. Healy, and colleagues on connections between tool use, language, and nest-building.
1:11:00 – An initial study on the brain basis of nest-building in zebra finches. A further study on the same topic.
1:12:30 – A paper by Hopi E. Hoekstra and colleagues on the genetics of burrow-building in deer mice.
1:14:00 – An exploration of the idea that humans initially learned their weaving skills from weaver birds.
Recommendations
Books by Mike Hansell (see here, here, and here)
Birds’ nests, Charles Dixon
Avian architecture, Peter Goodfellow
Animal architects, James Gould & Carol Gould
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
What happens to animals when they get sick? If they’re pets or livestock, we probably call the vet. And the vet may give them drugs or perform a procedure. But what about wild animals? Do they just languish in misery? Well, not so much. It turns out that animals—from bees to butterflies, porcupines to primates—medicate themselves. They seek out bitter plants, they treat wounds, they amputate limbs, they eat clay—the list goes on. This all raises an obvious question: How do they know to do this? How do they know what they know about healing and medicine? It also invites a related question: How do we humans know what we know?
My guests today are Dr. Jaap De Roode and Dr. Michael Huffman. Jaap is a biologist at Emory University, and has studied animal medication in insects; he’s also the author of a forthcoming book about animal medication across the tree of life. Mike is a primatologist at the University of Nagasaki, and made some of the very first observations about animal self-medication in chimpanzees in the 1980s.
Here, Jaap, Mike, and I talk about how they found their way into this field, in both cases kind of by accident. We discuss what defines animal medication generally as well as what defines its more specific subtypes—social medication, allomedication, prophylactic medication, and others. We consider how animals know what they know about healing—whether these medicinal behaviors are mostly driven by innate tendencies, by individual experimentation, by social learning, or by some combination. We talk about the evidence that many of the medical insights that humans have had over the years actually began with observations of animals. Along the way, we touch on medicinal amputation and medicinal cannibalism, geophagy, leaf-folding in primates, animal quackery, bear medicine, why lemurs rub themselves with millipedes, and the anti-parasitic power of cigarette butts.
Alright, friends, this is a fun one. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A paper describing how birds in Mexico City line their nests with cigarette butts. A follow-up experiment showing that they do so in response to increased presence of parasites.
7:30 – Dr. Huffman’s original study of self-medication by a chimpanzee, using Vernonia amygdalina in Tanzania.
15:00 – Dr. de Roode’s study on “transgenerational medicine” in monarch butterflies.
20:00 – For an overview of animal medication, including definitions and examples of its subtypes, see this recent primer by Dr. de Roode and Dr. Huffman.
25:00 – The recent study on “medicinal amputation” in ants. The recent study on “medicinal cannibalism” in ants.
30:00 – For an overview of medication in insects, see this recent paper by Dr. de Roode and colleagues.
34:00 – The paper by Mascaro and colleagues showing that chimpanzees treat wounds (to the self and others) by applying insects.
38:00 – A recent review of geophagy—soil eating—in primates by Paula Pebsworth, Dr. Huffman, and colleagues.
43:00 – A paper by Dr. Huffman and colleagues on chimpanzee leaf-swallowing in the wild. Dr. Huffman later did a series of experimental studies on this behavior, investigating the role of social learning—see here and here.
46:00 – An article on how goats learn to eat what they eat.
52:00 – An article describing the medicinal properties of Vernonia amygdalina.
54:00 – A study showing that lemurs rub each other with millipedes in a possible case of animal medication.
57:00 – A paper by Dr. Huffman in which he describes the use of mulengelele by a sick porcupine. A recent review by Dr. Huffman of what traditional healers have learned from observations of animal medication.
1:01:00 – An article about propolis and its medicinal use in bees; an article about its medicinal potential in humans.
Recommendations
Doctors by Nature, Jaap de Roode (forthcoming)
Wild Health, Cindy Engel
Nourishment, Fred Provenza
‘Five clever animals that treat and prevent their own illnesses,’ National Geographic
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
The machines are coming. Scratch that—they're already here: AIs that propose new combinations of ideas; chatbots that help us summarize texts or write code; algorithms that tell us who to friend or follow, what to watch or read. For a while the reach of intelligent machines may have seemed somewhat limited. But not anymore—or, at least, not for much longer. The presence of AI is growing, accelerating, and, for better or worse, human culture may never be the same.
My guest today is Dr. Iyad Rahwan. Iyad directs the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Iyad is a bit hard to categorize. He's equal parts computer scientist and artist; one magazine profile described him as "the Anthropologist of AI." Labels aside, his work explores the emerging relationships between AI, human behavior, and society. In a recent paper, Iyad and colleagues introduced a framework for understanding what they call "machine culture." The framework offers a way of thinking about the different routes through which AI may transform—is transforming—human culture.
Here, Iyad and I talk about his work as a painter and how he brings AI into the artistic process. We discuss whether AIs can make art by themselves and whether they may eventually develop good taste. We talk about how AIphaGoZero upended the world of Go and about how LLMs might be changing how we speak. We consider what AIs might do to cultural diversity. We discuss the field of cultural evolution and how it provides tools for thinking about this brave new age of machine culture. Finally, we discuss whether any spheres of human endeavor will remain untouched by AI influence.
Before we get to it, a humble request: If you're enjoying the show—and it seems that many of you are—we would be ever grateful if you could let the world know. You might do this by leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, or maybe a comment on Spotify. You might do this by giving us a shout-out on the social media platform of your choice. Or, if you prefer less algorithmically mediated avenues, you might do this just by telling a friend about us face-to-face. We're hoping to grow the show and the best way to do that is through listener endorsements and word-of-mouth. Thanks in advance, friends.
Alright, on to my conversation with Dr. Iyad Rahwan. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – Images from Dr. Rahwan's ‘Faces of Machine’ portrait series. One of the portraits from the series serves as our tile art for this episode.
11:30 – The “stochastic parrots” term comes from an influential paper by Emily Bender and colleagues.
18:30 – A popular article about DALL-E and the “avocado armchair.”
21:30 – Ted Chiang’s essay, “Why A.I. isn’t going to make art.”
24:00 – An interview with Boris Eldagsen, who won the Sony World Photography Awards in March 2023 with an image that was later revealed to be AI-generated.
28:30 – A description of the concept of “science fiction science.”
29:00 – Though widely attributed to different sources, Isaac Asimov appears to have developed the idea that good science fiction predicts not the automobile, but the traffic jam.
30:00 – The academic paper describing the Moral Machine experiment. You can judge the scenarios for yourself (or design your own scenarios) here.
30:30 – An article about the Nightmare Machine project; an article about the Deep Empathy project.
37:30 – An article by Cesar Hidalgo and colleagues about the relationship between television/radio and global celebrity.
41:30 – An article by Melanie Mitchell (former guest!) on AI and analogy. A popular piece about that work.
42:00 – A popular article describing the study of whether AIs can generate original research ideas. The preprint is here.
46:30 – For more on AlphaGo (and its successors, AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero), see here.
48:30 – The study finding that the novelty of human Go playing increased due to the influence of AlphaGo.
51:00 – A blogpost delving into the idea that ChatGPT overuses certain words, including “delve.” A recent preprint by Dr. Rahwan and colleagues, presenting evidence that “delve” (and other words overused by ChatGPT) are now being used more in human spoken communication.
55:00 – A paper using simulations to show how LLMs can “collapse” when trained on data that they themselves generated.
1:01:30 – A review of the literature on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and polarization.
1:02:00 – An influential study by Dr. Chris Bail and colleagues suggesting that exposure to opposing views might actually increase polarization.
1:04:30 – A book by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen, who are often credited with developing the idea of “generalized Darwinism” in the social sciences.
1:12:00 – An article about Google’s NotebookLM podcast-like audio summaries.
1:17:3 0 – An essay by Ursula LeGuin on children’s literature and the Jungian “shadow.”
Recommendations
The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich
“Machine Behaviour,” Iyad Rahwan et al.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for “general cognitive ability”—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they’ve learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot worse. There's no question, after all, that IQ has been misused—that it still gets misused—for all kinds of racist, classist, colonialist purposes. As if this wasn't all thorny enough, the study of IQ is also intimately bound up with the study of genetics. It's right there in the roiling center of debates about how genes and environment make us who we are. So, yeah, what to make of all this? How should we be thinking about IQ?
My guest today is Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Eric is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has studied intelligence and many other complex human traits for decades, and he's a major figure in the field of “behavior genetics.” Eric also has a new book out this fall—which I highly recommend—titled Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate. In a field that has sometimes been accused of rampant optimism, Eric is—as you'll hear—a bit more measured.
In this conversation, Eric and I focus on intelligence and its putatively genetic basis. We talk about why Eric doubts that we are anywhere close to an account of the biology of IQ. We discuss what makes intelligence such a formidable construct in psychology and why essentialist understandings of it are so intuitive. We talk about Francis Galton and the long shadow he’s cast on the study of human behavior. We discuss the classic era of Twin Studies—an era in which researchers started to derive quantitative estimates of the heritability of complex traits. We talk about how the main takeaway from that era was that genes are quite important indeed, and about how more recent genetic techniques suggest that takeaway may have been a bit simplistic. Along the way, Eric and I touch on spelling ability, child prodigies, the chemical composition of money, the shared quirks of twins reared apart, the Flynn Effect, the Reverse Flynn Effect, birth order, the genetics of height, the problem of missing heritability, whether we should still be using IQ scores, and the role of behavior genetics in the broader social sciences.
Alright folks, lots in here—let's just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – The 1994 book The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein a Charles Murray, dealt largely with the putative social implications of IQ research. It was extremely controversial and widely discussed. For an overview of the book and controversy, see the Wikipedia article here.
6:00 – For discussion of the “all parents are environmentalists…” quip, see here.
12:00 – The notion of “multiple intelligences” was popularized by the psychologist Howard Gardner—see here for an overview. See here for an attempt to test the claims of the “multiple intelligences” framework using some of the methods of traditional IQ research. For work on EQ (or Emotional Intelligence) see here.
19:00 – Dr. Turkheimer has also laid out his spelling test analogy in a Substack post.
22:30 – Dr. Turkheimer’s 1998 paper, “Heritability and Biological Explanation.”
24:30 – For an in-passing treatment of the processing efficiency idea, see p. 195 of Daniel Nettle’s book Personality. See also Richard Haier’s book, The Neuroscience of Intelligence.
26:00 – The original study on the relationship between pupil size and intelligence. A more recent study that fails to replicate those findings.
31:00 – For an argument that child prodigies constitute an argument for “nature,” see here. For a memorable narrative account of one child prodigy, see here.
32:00 – A meta-analysis of the Flynn effect. We have previously discussed the Flynn Effect in an episode with Michael Muthukrishna.
37:00 – James Flynn’s book, What is Intelligence? On the reversal of the Flynn Effect, see here.
40:00 – The phrase “nature-nurture” originally comes from Shakespeare and was picked up by Francis Galton. In The Tempest, Prospero describes Caliban as “a born devil on whose nature/ Nurture can never stick.”
41:00 – For a biography of Galton, see here. For an article-length account of Galton’s role in the birth of eugenics, see here.
50:00 – For an account of R.A. Fisher’s 1918 paper and its continuing influence, see here.
55:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s paper on the “nonshared environment”—E in the ACE model.
57:00 – A study coming out of the Minnesota Study of Twins reared apart. A New York Times article recounting some of the interesting anecdata in the Minnesota Study.
1:00:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s 2000 paper on the “three laws of behavior genetics.” Note that this is not, in fact, Dr. Turkheimer’s most cited paper (though it is very well cited).
1:03:00 – For another view of the state of behavior genetics in the postgenomic era, see here.
1:11:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer’s work on poverty, heritability, and IQ, see here.
1:13:00 – A recent large-scale analysis of birth order effects on personality.
1:16:00 – For Dr. Turkheimer’s take on the missing heritability problem, see here and here.
1:19:00 – A recent study on the missing heritability problem in the case of height.
1:30:00 – On the dark side of IQ, see Chapter 9 of Dr. Turkheimer’s book. See also Radiolab’s series on g.
1:31:00 – See Dr. Turkheimer’s Substack, The Gloomy Prospect.
Recommendations
The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige Harden
Intelligence, Stuart Ritchie
Intelligence and How to Get It, Richard Nisbett
‘Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents’’ (Ted talk), James Flynn
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Forests have always been magical places. But in the last couple decades, they seem to have gotten a little more magical. We've learned that trees are connected to each other through a vast underground network—an internet of roots and fungi often called the "wood wide web". We've learned that, through this network, trees share resources with each other. And we've learned that so-called mother trees look out for their own offspring, preferentially sharing resources with them. There's no question that this is all utterly fascinating. But what if it's also partly a fantasy?
My guest today is Dr. Justine Karst. Justine is a forest ecologist at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on mycorrhizas—these are the symbioses formed between fungi and plant roots that are thought to be the basis of the "wood wide web." Last year, Justine and colleagues published a perspective piece in which they argued that some of the claims around the wood wide web have gotten out of hand. These new ideas about forests, they argued, have gotten decoupled from the actual on-the-ground—or under-the-ground—science. In reality, it’s a field still riddled with unknowns and mixed findings.
Here, Justine and I do a bit of mycorrhiza 101—we talk about what mycorrhizas are, how they evolved, and what the structures actually look like. We discuss the original 1997 study that inspired the term "wood wide web." We consider why it's so hard to figure out what's actually going on, mechanistically, under the forest floor. We discuss the increasingly popular notion of plant intelligence and what it means to empirical researchers in this area like Justine. We talk about why people—both members of the public and scientists themselves—have found wood wide web ideas so charming. And, finally, we discuss the question of whether a little bit of hype is really so bad—particularly if it gets people excited about forests, about science, and about conservation.
I got as excited about the "wood wide web" as anyone. The idea totally captured my imagination a couple of years ago. So I was intrigued—if also a little dismayed—to learn recently that these ideas were getting some pushback. And I knew immediately we should talk to one of the researchers leading that pushback.
Alright friends, let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Justine Karst. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – Popular treatments sometimes mentioned as over-hyping the wood wide web (and associated ideas) include The Hidden Life of Trees, Finding the Mother Tree, and the novel The Overstory.
9:30 – The landmark 1997 paper by Simard et al. that kicked off interest in the so-called wood wide web.
11:00 – A study showing that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.
11:30 – For more on the new interest in “plant intelligence” see our previous episodes here and here. On the notion of “fungal intelligence,” see here.
18:00 – A 1975 paper presenting a hypothesis about the origins of land plants.
20:00 – The California “mushroom bible” mentioned.
23:00 – A brief post (and infographic) on the differences between arbuscular mycorrhizas and ectomycorrhizas.
23:30 – Richard Powers’ influential novel, The Overstory. Note that the novel doesn’t exclusively focus on the wood wide web; it covers ideas and findings about trees and forests, many of which are uncontroversial.
36:00 – Dr. Karst co-authored her perspective piece in Nature Ecology & Evolution with Dr. Melanie Jones and Dr. Jason Hoeksema.
50:00 – For more on aspens and how they constitute clonal organisms, see here.
52:00 – The “mother tree” idea was popularized in Dr. Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding the Mother Tree.
1:04:00 – Another recent critique of the wood wide web and mother tree idea is here. In it the authors write: “Reaching out to the general public to make people care about forests is certainly a praiseworthy goal, but not when it involves the dissemination of a distorted view of the plant world. In other words: the end does not justify the means.”
1:05:30 – Others influenced by The Overstory include Barack Obama and Bill Gates.
1:09:00 – A primer on myco-heterotrophic plants.
1:13:00 – See a recent presentation by Dr. Jared Farmer on trees and “chronodiversity” here.
Recommendations
‘Seeing plants anew,’ Stella Stanford
‘Mother trees and socialist forests: Is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?’, Daniel Immerwahr
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
There's a bit of a buzz out there, right now, but maybe you haven’t noticed. It's in the water, it's in the air. It's electricity—and it's all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of reality. But many other creatures are—and scientists are starting to take note.
My guest today is Dr. Sam England. Sam is a sensory ecologist at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and one of a handful of scientists uncovering some shocking things about the role of electricity in the natural world.
Here, Sam and I have a wide-ranging conversation about electroreception—which is the perception of electrical stimuli—and electric ecology—which is the study of the ecological roles of electricity. We talk about how an interest in electroreception first got started, and why it's recently resurged. We discuss aquatic electroreception versus aerial electroreception, active electroreception versus passive electroreception. We talk about how electroreception is actually kind of easy to evolve. Along the way, we consider electrolocation and, its analog in sound, echolocation. We touch on dolphins, sharks, echidnas, ticks, caterpillars, bees, and spiders. We zoom in on electrostatic pollination, and what is inarguably the coolest sounding anatomical structure known to biology: the ampullae of Lorenzini.
I think you'll enjoy this one, friends. As Sam describes here, electroreception is one of those "alien senses"—it really challenges the imagination. And electric ecology is one of those frontiers in our understanding of the natural world. So without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Sam England. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – For many of the topics discussed in this episode, see this comprehensive recent review of electroreception and electric ecology by Dr. England and a colleague.
7:30 – A paper reviewing the (contested) phenomenon of electromagnetic hypersensitivity in humans.
9:30 – An encyclopedia article on electroreception in monotremes.
13:00 – An early study of electrolocation in “weakly electric” fish.
17:00 – A popular article about the discovery of electroreception in sharks.
20:30 – A 2013 study showing that bumblebees detect the electric fields around flowers.
23:30 – A recent review of electroreception and its evolution in fish.
25:00 – A study demonstrating electroreception in the Guiana dolphin.
34:00 – A recent study by Dr. England and colleagues showing that static electricity pulls ticks onto hosts.
43:00 – For more on echolocation, see our earlier episode on bats.
47:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Ryan Palmer, examining the theoretical possibilities of electroreception in air.
52:30 – A (controversial) 2022 paper on possibly language-like communication in fungi via electricity.
55:00 – Another 2013 study on electroreception in bees, this one in honeybees.
56:30 – An animated video describing the role that electricity plays in spider ballooning.
1:00:00 – Dr. England’s recent study showing that caterpillars can detect the electric fields around wasps.
1:03:00 – A discussion of triboelectric effects.
1:11:00 – Dr. England’s recent study of electrostatic pollination in butterflies and moths.
1:19:00 – A study arguing that the sexual organs of flowers may have evolved to take advantage of electrostatic pollination.
1:25:00 – For more on spider eyes, see our recent episode all about spiders.
Recommendations
‘Electroreception, electrogenesis and electric signal evolution,’ William Crampton
An Immense World, Ed Yong (a previous guest!)
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
The idea of a "maternal instinct"—the notion that mothers are wired for nurturing and care—is a familiar one in our culture. And it has a flipside, a corollary—what you might call “paternal aloofness.” It's the idea that men just aren't meant to care for babies, that we have more, you know, manly things to do. But when you actually look at the biology of caretaking, the truth is more complicated and much more interesting.
My guest today is Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and the author of the new book, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies. In it, she examines paternal care, the biology that supports it, and the norms and practices that sometimes suppress it.
In this conversation, Sarah and I set her new book, Father Time, in the context of her four previous books. We discuss the surprising prevalence of male care in fish and amphibians. We talk about how Charles Darwin noted the plasticity of caretaking in animals, only to ignore that plasticity when talking about humans. We consider how time in intimate proximity with babies activates capacities for nurturing—not just in fathers, but in caretakers of all kinds. Along the way, we touch on langurs and owl monkeys; emus and cassowaries; cichlid fish and fairy shrimp; prolactin and oxytocin; patriarchy and patriarchal notions. We talk about what seems to be distinctive about the human capacity for care; and about what happens when males spend too much time competing for status, and not enough time snuggling babies.
You'll probably get a sense for this from our conversation, but there are very few researchers who take both biology and culture as seriously as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy does. She does not shy away from digging deep into either domain. And she does not shy away from trying to trace the tangled links between the two.
Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A classic paper on male parental care in fishes.
7:00 – Dr. Hrdy’s previous books include The Langurs of Abu, The Woman that Never Evolved, Mother Nature, and Mothers and Others.
13:00 – A academic article on “cooperative breeding” in birds.
16:30 – The full text of Charles Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man.
21:00 – Read about Caroline Kennard and her correspondence with Darwin here.
23:30 – A review of a recent book on Nancy Hopkins and her (quantitative) efforts to expose sexism at MIT.
26:00 – The 2014 paper on the brains of fathers in different caretaking roles.
37:00 – A paper by Larry Young and a colleague on the role of ancient peptides (like oxytocin) in sociality.
40:00 – The lab of Dr. Lauren O’Connell, who studies physiology and social behavior in poison dart frogs.
42:00 – A review of paternal care in primates.
47:00 – For more on Michael Tomasello’s “mutualism hypothesis”—and a lot else—see our earlier episode with Dr. Tomasello.
49:00 – For more on the costliness of the human brain, see our earlier episodes here and here.
58:00 – The 2007 study by Esther Herrmann, Michael Tomasello, and colleagues on the human specialization for social cognition.
59:00 – A study of children’s early “ostensive gestures” of showing and offering.
1:02:00 – An obituary for the ethnographer Lorna Marshall.
1:09:00 – An overview of ostracods and the traces they leave in the fossil record.
Recommendations
The Parental Brain, Michael Numan
Silas Marner, George Eliot
Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin
Brave Genius, Sean Carroll
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
We may not know what it's like to be a bat, but we're pretty confident that it's like something—that bats (and other mammals) are sentient creatures. They feel pleasure and pain, cold and warmth, agitation and comfort. But when it comes to other creatures, the case is less clear. Is a crab sentient? What about a termite, or a tree? The honest answer is we just don't know—and yet, despite that uncertainty, practical questions arise. How should we treat these beings? What do we owe them?
My guest today is Dr. Jonathan Birch. Jonathan is a Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and the author of the new book The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. In it, he presents a framework for thinking about which beings might be sentient and about how our policies should account for this.
Here, we talk about Jonathan's work at the nexus of philosophy, science, and policy—in particular, his role in advising the UK government on the welfare of cephalopods and decapods. We discuss what it means to be sentient and what the brain basis of sentience might be. We sketch his precautionary framework for dealing with the wide-ranging debates and rampant uncertainty around these issues. We talk about several prominent edge cases in the natural world. And, finally, we consider whether AI might become sentient and, if so, by what route. Along the way, Jonathan and I touch on: plants, crayfish, bees, larvae, and LLMs. We talk about "sentience candidates" and the "zone of reasonable disagreement"; about Jonathan's stances on octopus farming and live-boiling of crabs; about the “run-ahead principle” and the “gaming problem”; and about the question of whether all conscious experience has a valence.
Jonathan's book is a remarkably clear and compelling read—if you find yourself intrigued by our conversation, I definitely recommend that you check out The Edge of Sentience as well. Alright friends, without further ado, on to our sixth season of Many Minds and on to my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Birch. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – The full report prepared by Dr. Birch and colleagues for the UK government is available here.
4:30 – Listen to our earlier episode with Dr. Alex Schnell here.
7:00 – Dr. Birch’s 2017 book, from an earlier chapter of his career during which he focused on kin selection and social behavior.
11:00 – A paper by Dr. Birch on the UK government’s response to the pandemic.
16:00 – A classic 1958 paper on sentience by the philosopher Herbert Feigl.
20:30 – Read Dr. Birch’s general audience essay on the case of live-boiling crabs.
28:30 – Advocates of the idea that regions of the midbrain support sentience include Antonio Damasio, Jaak Panskepp (whose work we discussed in this earlier episode), and Bjorn Merker (whose work we discussed in this earlier episode).
31:30 – A discussion of the possibility of sentience in plants, with former guest Paco Calvo.
34:30 – Peter Godfrey Smith’s recent book, Metazoa.
35:30 – A paper by Dr. Birch and colleagues titled ‘Dimensions of animal consciousness.’
39:30 – A study reporting conditioned place avoidance in octopuses.
40:30 – A study reporting anxiety-like states in crayfish.
42:00 – A primer on "nociception" (which Kensy mispronounces in this segment).
44:00 – A popular article by Dr. Birch and colleagues arguing against octopus farming.
47:00 – A paper about welfare concerns in farmed insects.
49:00 – A paper showing that bees will selectively groom an antenna that was touched with a heat probe.
51:00 – The OpenWorm project.
1:02:00 – A recent piece by Dr. Birch and former guest Kristin Andrews about developing better markers for understanding AI sentience. The question of defining “markers” of conscious experience was also a central topic of our recent episode with Tim Bayne.
Recommendations
Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith
The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka
Justice for Animals, Martha Nussbaum
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
Hi friends, we're still on a brief summer break. We'll have a new episode for you later in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!
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[originally aired September 21, 2022]
If your podcast listening habits are anything like mine, you might be out for a walk right now. Maybe you’re wandering the neighborhood, just blocks from home, or maybe you’re further afield. In either case, I’m guessing you’re finding your way without too much trouble—you’re letting some intuitive sense steer you, track how far you’ve gone, tell you where to go next. This inner navigator of yours is doing all in the background, as your mind wanders elsewhere, and magically it gets it all right. Most of the time, anyway. But how is it doing it? What allows us to pull this off?
My guest today is Dr. Hugo Spiers, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His lab studies how our brains "remember the past, navigate the present, and imagine the future.” In recent years Hugo and his group have used a wide variety of methods—and some astonishingly large datasets—to shed light on central questions about human spatial abilities.
Here, Hugo and I do a quick tour of the neuroscience of navigation—including the main brain structures involved and how they were discovered. We talk about research on a very peculiar population, the London taxi driver. We discuss the game Sea Hero Quest and what it's teaching us about navigation abilities around the world. We also touch on what GPS might be doing to us; whether the hippocampus actually resembles a seahorse; the ingenious layout of our brain's inner grids; navigation ability as an early sign of Alzheimer's; how “place cells” actually map more than just place; and how the monarch butterfly finds its way.
Super excited to share this one folks—this is an episode that's been on our wish list for some time. For mobile organisms like us, navigation is life or death—it’s as basic as eating or breathing. So when we dig into the foundations of these spatial abilities, we’re really digging into some of the most basic foundations of mind.
So let’s get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Hugo Spiers. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A brief documentary about a person with developmental topographical disorder.
8:00 – There have been a slew of popular articles about the question of whether GPS is undermining our navigation abilities—see here and here.
12:00 – A classic academic article about path integration in mammals.
14:00 – The classic academic article by Edward Tolman on the idea of “cognitive maps.”
16:00 – A side-by-side comparison of a human hippocampus and seahorse. The resemblance is indeed striking.
18:00 – A classic academic article reporting “place cells” in rats.
21:00 – A research article on seasonal changes in hippocampus size across different species.
22:00 – A recent academic article on interactions between the hippocampus and the striatum in navigation.
23:30 – An article reviewing the first decade of research on “grid cells.” A video showing the activity of grid cells in a rat.
26:00 – The long struggle to calculate longitude is subject of a much-beloved book by Dava Sobel.
27:00 – The press release announcing the Nobel prize for the discovery of grid cells and place cells.
31:00 – A popular article about ‘The Knowledge’—a famed test for London taxi drivers.
33:30 – The celebrated original study by Eleanor Maquire and colleagues on structural changes in the brains of London taxi drivers. The (also-celebrated) follow-up study that Dr. Spiers was part of, comparing London taxi and bus drivers.
37:00 – More about the Taxi Brains project can be found here.
41:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Spiers’ team, led by Eva-Maria Griesbauer, reviews the cognitive neuroscience studies on London taxi drivers and dives deep into the learning techniques the drivers use.
44:30 – A paper by Dr. Spiers and team providing an overview of Sea Hero Quest and the studies it has been used for to date. A video demo of the game, and a popular article describing its motivation. Dr. Spiers developed the idea for the game in collaboration with Michael Hornberger.
50:00 – A recent research article looking at the value of Sea Hero Quest in detecting those at risk for Alzheimers.
53:00 – One of the first studies by Dr. Spiers and colleagues using Sea Hero Quest to test a vast sample and examine effects of variables like age, gender, and nationality.
54:30 – A more recent paper by Dr. Spiers and colleagues examining the effect of growing up in cities that are more or less “griddy.”
57:00 – A study by Dr. Spiers and colleagues showing a relationship between real-world navigation ability and navigation performance in Sea Hero Quest.
1:04:00 – The website of the International Orienteering Foundation. A video showing the sport.
1:06:00 – A review paper by Dr. Spiers and colleagues about the potential roles of cognitive maps in navigation and beyond.
1:07:00 – A review of “concept cells”, aka “Halle Berre cells.”
1:08:00 – A recent opinion piece by Dr. Spiers on the question of how many maps—and of what kind—the hippocampus implements.
1:10:30 – A recent research article on “time cells” in the hippocampus.
1:14:30 – A recent review article about monarch butterfly navigation.
Dr. Spiers recommends:
Human Spatial Navigation, by Ekstrom, Spiers, Bohbot, and Rosenbaum
‘The Cognitive Map in Humans: Spatial Navigation and Beyond,’ by Epstein, Patai, Julian, and Spiers
You can read more about Dr. Spiers work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!
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[originally aired January 25, 2023]
By now you’ve probably heard about the new chatbot called ChatGPT. There’s no question it’s something of a marvel. It distills complex information into clear prose; it offers instructions and suggestions; it reasons its way through problems. With the right prompting, it can even mimic famous writers. And it does all this with an air of cool competence, of intelligence. But, if you're like me, you’ve probably also been wondering: What’s really going on here? What are ChatGPT—and other large language models like it—actually doing? How much of their apparent competence is just smoke and mirrors? In what sense, if any, do they have human-like capacities?
My guest today is Dr. Murray Shanahan. Murray is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind. He's the author of numerous articles and several books at the lively intersections of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy. Very recently, Murray put out a paper titled 'Talking about Large Language Models’, and it’s the focus of our conversation today. In the paper, Murray argues that—tempting as may be—it's not appropriate to talk about large language models in anthropomorphic terms. Not yet, anyway.
Here, we chat about the rapid rise of large language models and the basics of how they work. We discuss how a model that—at its base—simply does “next-word prediction" can be engineered into a savvy chatbot like ChatGPT. We talk about why ChatGPT lacks genuine “knowledge” and “understanding”—at least as we currently use those terms. And we discuss what it might take for these models to eventually possess richer, more human-like capacities. Along the way, we touch on: emergence, prompt engineering, embodiment and grounding, image generation models, Wittgenstein, the intentional stance, soft robots, and "exotic mind-like entities."
Before we get to it, just a friendly reminder: applications are now open for the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (or DISI). DISI will be held this June/July in St Andrews Scotland—the program consists of three weeks of intense interdisciplinary engagement with exactly the kinds of ideas and questions we like to wrestle with here on this show. If you're intrigued—and I hope you are!—check out disi.org for more info.
Alright friends, on to my decidedly human chat, with Dr. Murray Shanahan. Enjoy!
The paper we discuss is here. A transcript of this episode is here.
Notes and links
6:30 – The 2017 “breakthrough” article by Vaswani and colleagues.
8:00 – A popular article about GPT-3.
10:00 – A popular article about some of the impressive—and not so impressive—behaviors of ChatGPT. For more discussion of ChatGPT and other large language models, see another interview with Dr. Shanahan, as well as interviews with Emily Bender and Margaret Mitchell, with Gary Marcus, and with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT).
14:00 – A widely discussed paper by Emily Bender and colleagues on the “dangers of stochastic parrots.”
19:00 – A blog post about “prompt engineering”. Another blog post about the concept of Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback, in the context of ChatGPT.
30:00 – One of Dr. Shanahan’s books is titled, Embodiment and the Inner Life.
39:00 – An example of a robotic agent, SayCan, which is connected to a language model.
40:30 – On the notion of embodiment in the cognitive sciences, see the classic book by Francisco Varela and colleagues, The Embodied Mind.
44:00 – For a detailed primer on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, see here.
45:00 – See Dr. Shanahan’s general audience essay on “conscious exotica" and the space of possible minds.
49:00 – See Dennett’s book, The Intentional Stance.
Dr. Shanahan recommends:
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell
(see also our earlier episode with Dr. Mitchell)
‘Abstraction for Deep Reinforcement Learning’, by M. Shanahan and M. Mitchell
You can read more about Murray’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!
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[originally aired May 17, 2023]
You know the feeling. You're trying to read or write or think through a project, maybe even just respond to an email, when your attention starts to drift. You may not even notice it until you've already picked up your phone or jumped tabs, until your mind has already wandered way off-piste. This problem of distraction has become a bit of a modern-day obsession. We now fret about how to stay focused, how to avoid time-sucks, how to use our attention wisely. But it turns out this fixation of ours—contemporary as it may seem—is really not so new.
My guest today is Dr. Jamie Kreiner, Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Jamie is the author of a new book titled The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell us about Distraction. 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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A webpage devoted to the Ark of Hugh of Saint Victor.
6:30 – For a detailed (and positive) review essay about The Wandering Mind, see here.
11:30 – The Redwall books, by Brian Jacques, are well known for featuring elaborate feasts. An article about some of the best of these.
18:30 – For more on how the body was understood in the early Christian world, see The Burden of the Flesh.
26:30 – Text written continuously is known as scripta continua.
27:30 – Articles that celebrate medieval marginalia can be found here, here, and here.
40:00 – An article about the Six Wings mnemonic. For more on mnemonic techniques in the medieval world, see Mary Carruthers’ book.
53:00 – On the idea of “pure prayer,” see the book, The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings.
57:30 – Dr. Kreiner’s next book, 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 here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
If you've taken Linguistics 101, you know what language is. It's a system for conveying meaning through speech. We build words out of sounds, and then complex ideas out of those words. Remarkably, the relationship between the sounds and the meanings they convey is purely arbitrary. Human language consists, in other words, of abstract symbols. Now, of course, there are also sign languages, but these operate in the same way, just in a different medium. This, anyway, is the view of language that has dominated and defined linguistics for many decades. But some think it gets some pretty fundamental things pretty wrong. Some think we need a new picture of language altogether.
My guest today is Dr. Neil Cohn. Neil is Associate Professor at the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication, in the Netherlands; he is also the director of the Visual Language Lab at Tilburg. For about two decades, Neil has been studying the rich properties of graphic systems—especially comics—and has built an argument that some constitute full-blown languages. His latest book, co-authored with, Joost Schilperoord, is titled A Multimodal Language Faculty. It challenges that longstanding, deeply held view of what language is. Instead, the book argues that the human language capacity combines three different modalities—the vocal modality (as in speech), the bodily modality (as in gesture), and the graphic modality (as in comics and other visual narratives). And each of these modalities is naturally able to support full-blown languages.
Here, Neil and I talk about the basic assumptions of modern linguistics and where those assumptions come from. We discuss the idea that there are three expressive modalities that come naturally to humans, with each modality optimized for certain kinds of meaning. We talk about Neil's career, not only as an academic, but as an illustrator. We discuss cross-cultural differences and similarities in comics, and how comics have changed over the last century. And, finally, we consider how Neil's framework challenges current theorizing about the evolution of language. Along the way, Neil and I touch on sign languages and homesign systems, visual style vs visual language, Peircean semiotics, animal tracks, cave art, emoji, upfixes, sand drawing, Manga, the refrain "I can't draw," and the idea that the graphic modality is the only one that's truly unique to our species.
After this episode we'll be taking a bit of a summer break, but we'll be posting some old favorites to tide you over. Alright friends, hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Neil Cohn. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – An earlier paper by Dr. Cohn on the well-worn refrain “I can’t draw.” His more recent Twitter thread covering the topic.
9:00 – An overview of research on homesign systems. For a broader discussion of differences between gesture, homesign systems, and established sign languages, see here.
15:00 – A comic, ‘Chinese Room,’ commissioned by the philosopher Dan Dennett and drawn by Dr. Cohn.
19:30 – The webpage of Dr. Cohn’s graduate mentor, Ray Jackendoff.
25:00 – A brief overview paper by Dr. Cohn and Dr. Schilperoord on the need to “reimagine language.”
25:30 – The classic book, based on lecture notes, by Ferdinand de Saussure, ‘Course in General Linguistics.'
44:00 – For an overview of “bimodal bilingualism,” see here.
50:00 – A study by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on the processing of emoji substituted for words.
56:00 – A recent study by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on anaphora in visual narratives.
58:30 – For our previous audio essay on animal (and human) tracks, see here.
1:01:30 – For examples of scholarship on non-Western methods of visual storytelling, including Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see Dr. Cohn’s earlier edited volume here. For a deeper dive into sand drawing, see the monograph by Jenny Green here.
1:03:00 – Dr. Cohn also recently published a book on cross-cultural aspects of comics, The Patterns of Comics. The book is the fruit of his lab’s TINTIN project.
1:11:00 – For a video of Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see here.
1:13:00 – See Dr. Cohn’s earlier book, Who Understands Comics?
1:15:00 – A study on “upfixes” by Dr. Cohn and a colleague.
1:22:00 – A popular article by Dr. Cohn on the linguistic status of emoji.
1:31:00 – For a deep dive into Peircean semiotics, see here.
1:36:00 – For my own general-audience treatment of “gesture first” theories of language evolution and the “modality transition” problem, see here.
1:37:00 – A paper by Dr. Jackendoff and Eva Wittenberg outlining their “complexity hierarchy.”
1:50:00 – For the Getty museum exhibit associated with Dr. Cohn’s lecture, see here.
Recommendations
The Texture of the Lexicon, by Jenny Audring and Ray Jackendoff
Battle in the Mind Fields, by John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks
History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast, hosted by James McElvenny
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
It's an enduring puzzle. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors were nomadic, ranging over large territories, hunting and gathering for sustenance. Then, beginning roughly 12,000 years ago, we pivoted. Within a short timeframe—in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas—humans suddenly decided to settle down. We started to store our food. We domesticated plants. We set off, in other words, down a path that would reshape our cultures, our technologies, our social structures, even our minds. Yet no one has yet been able to account for this shift. No one has been able to fully explain why agriculture happened when it happened and where it happened. Unless, that is, someone just did.
My guest today is Dr. Andrea Matranga. Andrea is an economist at the University of Torino, in Italy, with a focus on economic history. In a new paper, he puts forward an ambitious, unifying theory of the rise of agriculture in our species. He argues that the key trigger was a spike in seasonality—with certain parts of the world, particularly parts of the northern hemisphere, suddenly experiencing warmer summers and colder winters. This led risk-averse humans in these places to start to store food and, eventually, to experiment with farming.
In this conversation, Andrea and I talk about how he developed his theory, in steps, over the course of almost 20 years. We consider the weaknesses of earlier explanations of agriculture, including explanations that focused on climate. We discuss how he wrangled vast historical datasets to test his theory. And we talk about some of the downstream effects that agriculture seems to have had. Along the way we touch on: salmon, wheat, taro, and milk; agriculture as a franchise model; Milankovitch Cycles; risk-aversion and consumption-smoothing; interloping in the debates of other disciplines; the possibility of a fig-based civilization; and how we inevitably project our own concerns onto the past.
Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. As I said at the top, the origins of agriculture is just one of those irresistible, perennial puzzles—one that cuts across the human sciences. And, I have to say, I find Andrea's solution to this puzzle quite compelling. I'll be curious to hear if you agree. Without further ado, on to my conversation with Andrea Matranga. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
8:00 – Various versions of the fable ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ are compiled here.
13:00 – One of the last remaining ziggurat complexes is Chogha Zanbil.
16:00 – The classic paper by anthropologist Alain Testart on food storage among hunter-gatherers.
19:30 – An influential study emphasizing that agriculture occurred after the Ice Age due to warming conditions. Other studies have posited that other features of climate may have led to the rise in agriculture (e.g., here).
21:00 – An (illustrated) explanation of Milankovitch Cycles.
27:00 – For Marshall Sahlins’ discussion of ‘The Original Affluent Society,’ see here.
32:00 – Jared Diamond’s popular article, ‘The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.’
33:00 – A paper criticizing the particularistic focus of many archaeological treatments of the origins of agriculture.
36:30 – Dr. Matranga used a variety of data sources to test his theory, including a dataset compiling dates of agricultural adoption.
42:00 – A report detailing evidence of agriculture in Kuk Swamp in New Guinea.
43:00 – The book Cuisine and Empire, by Rachel Laudan.
44:00 – A paper by Luigi Pascali and collaborators on the rise of states and the “appropriability” of cereals.
1:01:00 – A paper about the Natufian culture, which is considered to occupy an intermediate step on the road to agriculture.
Recommendations
What We Did to Father (republished as The Evolution Man), by Roy Lewis
The Living Fields, by Jack Harlan
Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, by Richard Lee and Irven Devore
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Maybe your idea of spiders is a bit like mine was. You probably know that they have eight legs, that some are hairy. Perhaps you imagine them spending most of their time sitting in their webs—those classic-looking ones, of course—waiting for snacks to arrive. Maybe you consider them vaguely menacing, or even dangerous. Now this is not all completely inaccurate—spiders do have eight legs, after all—but it's a woefully incomplete and drab caricature. Your idea of spiders, in other words, may be due for a refresh.
My guest today is Dr. Ximena Nelson, Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Ximena is the author of the new book, The Lives of Spiders. It’s an accessible and stunningly illustrated survey of spider behavior, ecology, and cognition.
In this conversation, Ximena and I do a bit of ‘Spiders 101’. We talk about spider senses—especially how spiders use hairs to detect the minutest of vibrations and how they see, usually, with four pairs of eyes. We talk about web-making—which, by the way, the majority of spiders don't do—and silk-making—which all do, but for more reasons than you may realize. We talk about how spiders hunt, jump, dance, pounce, plan, decorate, cache, balloon, and possibly count. We talk about why so many spiders mimic ants. We take up the puzzle of “stabilimenta”. We talk about whether webs constitute an extended sensory apparatus—like a gigantic ear—and why spiders are an under-appreciated group of animals for thinking about the evolution of mind, brain, and behavior.
Alright friends, this one is an absolute feast. So let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Ximena Nelson. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A general audience article about our “collective arachnid aversion” to spiders.
8:00 – An academic article by Dr. Nelson about jumping spider behavior.
8:30 – In addition to spiders, Dr. Nelson also studies kea parrots (e.g., here).
12:00 – A popular article about the thousands of spider species known to science—and the thousands that remain unknown.
16:30 – A popular article about a mostly vegetarian spider, Bagheera kiplingi.
18:00 – For the mating dance of the peacock spider, see this video.
20:00 – A recent study on spider “hearing” via their webs.
24:00 – The iNaturalist profile of the tiger bromeliad spider.
29:30 – A recent study of extended sensing in humans during tool use.
33:00 – A popular discussion of vision (and other senses) in jumping spiders.
40:00 – An earlier popular discussion of spider webs and silk.
45:00 – For a primer on bird’s nests, see here.
48:00 – An article describing the original work on how various drugs alter spiders’ webs.
49:00 – A recent salvo in the long-standing stabilimenta debate.
54:00 – A video about “ballooning” in spiders.
57:00 – An article by Dr. Nelson and a colleague about jumping spiders as an important group for studies in comparative cognition.
1:01:00 – A study of reversal learning in jumping spiders, which found large individual differences.
1:07:00 – A study of larder monitoring in orb weaver spiders.
1:10:00 – A study by Dr. Nelson and a colleague on numerical competence in Portia spiders.
1:16:00 – An academic essay on the so-called insect apocalypse.
Recommendations
Spider Behaviour: Flexibility and Versatility, by M. Herberstein
‘Spider senses – Technical perfection and biology,’ by F. Barth
‘Extended spider cognition’, by H. Japyassú and K. Lala
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
A cluster of brain cells in a dish, pulsing with electrical activity. A bee buzzing its way through a garden in bloom. A newborn baby staring up into his mother's eyes. What all these entities have in common is that we don't quite know what it’s like to be them—or, really, whether it's like anything at all. We don't really know, in other words, whether they’re conscious. But maybe we could know—if only we developed the right test.
My guest today is Dr. Tim Bayne. Tim is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He’s a philosopher of mind and cognitive science, with a particular interest in the nature of consciousness. Along with a large team of co-authors, Tim recently published an article titled 'Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond.' In it, they review the current landscape of consciousness tests—or “C-tests”, as they call them—and outline strategies for building more and better tests down the road.
Here, Tim and I discuss what consciousness is and why theories of it seem to be proliferating. We consider several of the boundary cases that are most hotly debated right now in the field—cases like brain organoids, neonates, and split-brain patients. We sketch a few of the most prominent current consciousness tests: the command following test, the sniff test, the unlimited associative learning test, and the test for AI consciousness. We talk about how we might be able to inch our way, slowly, toward something like a thermometer for consciousness: a universal test that tells us whether an entity is conscious, or to what degree, or even what kind of conscious it is. Along the way, Tim and I talk about zombies, chatbots, brains in vats, and islands of awareness. And we muse about how, in certain respects, consciousness is like temperature, or perhaps more like happiness or wealth or intelligence, and maybe even a bit like fire.
I think you'll enjoy this one, friends—it's a thought-provoking conversation on a foundational topic, and one that takes us far and wide. So without further ado, here's my interview with Dr. Tim Bayne. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:45 – The philosopher Dan Dennett, who passed away in April, was known for his writings on consciousness—among them his 1991 book, Consciousness Explained.
7:00 – The classic paper on the neural correlates of consciousness, by Francis Crick and Christof Koch.
9:00 – A recent review of theories of consciousness by Anil Seth and Dr. Bayne.
10:00 – David Chalmers’ classic paper on the “hard problem” of consciousness.
13:00 – Thomas Nagel’s classic paper on what it’s like to be a bat.
20:00 – A recent paper by James Croxford and Dr. Bayne arguing against consciousness in brain organoids.
23:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Bayne and colleagues about the emergence of consciousness in infants.
27:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Bayne and colleagues about consciousness in split-brain patients. An earlier paper by Dr. Bayne on the same topic.
30:00 – A paper by Dr. Bayne, Dr. Seth, and Marcello Massimini on the notion of “islands of awareness.”
35:00 – The classic paper using the “(covert) command following test” in a patient in a so-called vegetative state.
38:00 – A 2020 paper introducing the “sniff test.”
40:00 – A recent primer on the “unlimited associative learning” test.
43:00 – An essay (preview only), by the philosopher Susan Schneider, proposing the AI consciousness test.
50:00 – The history of the scientific understanding of temperature is detailed in Hasok Chang’s book, Inventing Temperature.
53:30 – Different markers of consciousness in infants are reviewed in Dr. Bayne and colleagues’ recent paper.
1:03:00 – The ‘New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness’ was announced in April. Read about it here.
Recommendations
Being You, Anil Seth
Into the Gray Zone, Adrian Owen
Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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, Urte Laukaityte. 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 [email protected]. 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 research paper describing the FIDELITY trial.
8:00 – For a neuroscientific overview of placebo research, see this review article. The landmark 1978 study is here.
9:00 – The study using naloxone in rats.
10:30 – A review of placebo effects in Parkinson’s disease.
13:00 – The study showing placebo effects in allergy sufferers. For more on placebo and conditioning in the immune system, see here.
13:30 – An overview of the results on whether placebo “can replace oxygen.”
16:00 – For the “milkshake” study, see here.
20:00 – A perspective piece on open-label placebos. A review of the efficacy of open-label placebos.
22:00 – A review of nocebo-induced side effects within the placebo groups of trials.
24:00 – On the idea of “good placebo responders,” see here.
27:30 – The book Medical Nihilism, by Jacob Stegenga.
28:00 – A review and meta-analysis of the use of placebo by clinicians.
29:30 – A paper on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and placebo.
30:30 – A review of factors modulating placebo effects.
34:00 – For the “signaling theory of symptoms,” see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram. Sarah is Assistant Professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences and Zoology at the University of British Columbia; she also directs the Animal Behavior & Cognition Lab 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 here.
Notes and links
8:50 – A study of manual dexterity in raccoons.
11:30 – A video featuring raccoon chittering, among other vocalizations.
12:00 – A recent academic paper on the categorization of wildlife responses to urbanization—avoider, adapter, exploiter—with some critical discussion.
14:00 – A study of how animals are becoming more nocturnal in response to humans.
18:00 – An encyclopedia article on the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, by one of its originators, Richard Byrne. A recent appraisal of how the hypothesis has fared across different taxa.
18:30 – A recent review article by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues surveying carnivore cognition.
25:00 – On the question of urban vs rural animals, see the popular article, ‘Are cities making animals smarter?’
28:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues using puzzle boxes to study behavioral flexibility in captive raccoons. See also her follow-up study, conducted with a large team of neuroscience collaborators, examining the brains of raccoons who successfully solved the puzzle boxes.
34:30 – An earlier study by Dr. Benson-Amram on innovative problem solving in hyenas.
36:30 – Our earlier episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski.
39:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues exploring raccoons’ ability to solve the Aesop’s Fable task. She has also used this task with elephants.
44:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues examining reversal learning in raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.
49:00 – An article articulating the “cognitive buffer hypothesis.”
51:00 – A paper discussing—and “reviving”—the so-called ecological intelligence hypothesis.
53:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues comparing brain size and problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores.
56:00 – A paper 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 paper on bin-opening in cockatoos and how it might be leading to an “innovation arms race.”
Recommendations
How Monkeys See the World, Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans De Waal
An Immense World, by Ed Yong (featured in a previous episode!)
Urban Carnivores, by Stanley D. Gehrt, Seth P. D. Riley, and Brian L. Cypher
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Mayor; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Our second guest is Elly Truitt; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art.
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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 – See Adrienne’s TedEd lesson about Talos, the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s 2019 talk for the Long Now Foundation.
7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in this painting by Edward Poynter.
12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her website; for more on Elly’s research program, see her website.
18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see here.
23:00 – A recent piece about Aristotle’s writings on slavery.
26:00 – An article about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today.
30:00 – A recent research article about the Antikythera mechanism.
34:00 – See Adrienne’s popular article about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha.
38:45 – See Elly’s article about how automata figured prominently in tombs.
47:00 – See Elly’s recent video lecture 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, The Restless Clock.
50:00 – An article about a “torture robot” of ancient Sparta.
58:00 – A painting of the “Iron Knight” in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
Adrienne Mayor recommends:
The Greeks and the New, by Armand D’Angour
Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, edited by Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens
In Our Own Image, by George Zarkadakis
Ancient Inventions, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
Elly Truitt recommends:
AI Narratives, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon
The Love Makers, by Aifric Campbell
You can read more about Adrienne’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Elly’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Chaz Firestone. Chaz is an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the Perception and Mind 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 Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – Dr. Firestone’s early paper reporting the Times Square experiment and the “skeletal shape” phenomenon.
8:00 – A visual explanation of the “missing bullet holes” graphic.
13:00 – Dr. Firestone has collaborated intensively with the philosopher Ian Phillips.
15:00 – A recent book by Ned Block, The Border Between Seeing and Thinking.
24:00 – Visual illusions are legion, as are inventories of them. See, for instance, this catalogue on Wikipedia or this Reddit thread.
25:00 – An obituary for Jerry Fodor, who died in 2017. The classic book by Zenon Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition.
28:00 – A paper by Dr. Firestone about the history of the El Greco fallacy. An empirical paper by Dr. Firestone and Brian Scholl showing the El Greco fallacy at work in perception research.
35:00 – A target article (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., here, here, & here.
41:00 – A paper with discussion (and illustration) of the classic Dalmation Mooney image.
45:00 – A study of rapid visual pattern recognition in expert chess players.
50:30 – A paper by J.J. Valenti and Dr. Firestone about the case of the blue banana.
54:00 – A review paper by Alon Hafri and Dr. Firestone reviewing evidence that people actually perceive high-level relations like causality, support, and social interaction.
56:00 – A study by Martin Rolfs and colleagues about the perception of causality.
1:02:00 – A study by Liuba Papeo and colleagues about the perception of social interactions. A related paper showing an inversion effect.
1:04:00 – A paper by Alon Hafri and colleagues on the perception of roles in an interaction.
1:06:00 – A widely cited paper by J. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues on the recognition of social interactions in preverbal infants.
1:06:30 – A review paper on reading in the brain.
1:10:00 – A paper by Rui Goh, Dr. Phillips, and Dr. Firestone on the perception of silence.
1:18:00 – A recent review paper 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 perspective piece by Dr. Firestone about human-machine comparisons.
1:25:00 - An empirical paper 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 audio essay.
1:35:00 – Other interesting work going on in Dr. Firestone’s research group has investigated representational momentum, beauty, and epistemic actions, among other topics.
Recommendations
The Modularity of Mind, by Jerry Fodor
The Contents of Visual Experience, by Susanna Siegel
Psych, by Paul Bloom
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Laura Lewis and Dr. Chris Krupenye. 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 paper 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 here.
Notes and links
4:30 – Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye worked together in the lab of Dr. Brian Hare, a former guest on the podcast.
8:30 – The video of Mama and the primatologist Jan van Hooff.
12:00 – For research on the remarkably long social memories of dolphins, see here.
14:00 – For research on long-term voice recognition in bonobos, see here.
19:30 – Another collaborator on the paper we’re discussing was Dr. Fumihiro Kano, affiliated with the Kumamoto Sanctuary.
29:30 – For more on the use of eye-tracking with primates, see a recent review paper 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 here.
41:00 – A popular article reviewing bonobo social behavior.
54:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by scent in chimpanzees.
55:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by butt in chimpanzees.
Recommendations
‘Long-term memory for affiliates in ravens’
‘Decades-long social memory in bottlenose dolphins’
‘Enduring voice recognition in bonobos’
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper 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 DISI.org. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread.
6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places.
11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees.
12:30 – A recent article 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 here and here.
15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.”
22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire.
26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago.
31:30 – A paper 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 this article.
44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq.
45:00 – The article 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 previous episode about intoxication.
1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark.
Recommendations
The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz
Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz
“How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 disi.org—that's disi.org. 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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 - A general audience article 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 recent book and the publications on his lab website.
9:30 - A brief video explaining long-term potentiation. An overview of “Hebbian Learning.” The phrase “neurons that fire together wire together” was, contrary to widespread misattribution, coined by Dr. Carla Shatz here.
12:30 - The webpage of Dr. Jeremy Gunawardena, Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard University. A recent paper 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 recent paper 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 here, here, and here.
20:00 - An article on the importance of H.M. in neuroscience.
28:00 - A review about the phenomenon of spike-timing dependent plasticity.
33:00 - An article, co-authored by former guest Dr. Michael Levin, on the evidence for memory persistence despite radical remodeling of brain structures. See our episode with Dr. Levin here.
35:00 - A study reporting the persistence of memories in decapitated planarians. A popular article about these findings.
36:30 - An article reviewing one chapter in the memory transfer history. Another article reviewing evidence for “vertical” memory transfer (between generations).
39:00 - For more recent demonstrations of memory transfer, see here and here.
40:00 - A paper by Dr. Gershman, Dr. Gunawardena, and colleagues reconsidering the evidence for learning in single cells and describing the contributions of Dr. Beatrice Gelber. A general audience article about Gelber following the publication of the paper by Dr. Gershman and colleagues.
45:00 – A recent article arguing for the need to understand computation in single-celled organisms to understand how computation evolved more generally.
46:30 – Another study of classical conditioning in paramecia, led by Dr. Todd Hennessey.
49:00 – For more on plant signaling, see our recent episode with Dr. Paco Calvo and Dr. Natalie Lawrence.
56:00 – A recent article on “serial reversal learning” and its neuroscientific basis.
1:07:00 – A 2010 paper demonstrating a role for methylation in memory.
Recommendations
The Behavior of the Lower Organisms, by Herbert Spencer Jennings
Memory and the Computational Brain, by C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King
Wetware, by Dennis Bray
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back folks! The new season of Many Minds is quickly ramping up. On today’s episode we’re thrilled to be rejoined by Dr. Michael Muthukrishna. 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 A theory of everyone: The new science of who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. 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 earlier chat 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 here.
Notes and links
8:30 – Dr. Muthukrishna completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia, where he was advised by Joseph Henrich. He also worked with Ara Norenzayan, Steven Heine, and others.
9:30 – Previous books on dual-inheritance theory and cultural evolution mentioned here include The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich, Not by Genes Alone by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, and Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony by Kevin Lala.
16:30 – Dr. Muthukrishna’s paper on the theory problem in psychology, drawn from his dissertation.
17:10 – The classic paper ‘Chaos in the Brickyard,’ 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 this recent paper. For an overview of cumulative culture in comparative perspective, see here.
23:00 – For the 2005 issue of Science magazine showcasing 25 big unanswered questions, see here.
23:30 – For the review paper on cooperation by Dr. Muthukrishna and Dr. Henrich, see here.
26:00 – For Dr. Muthukrishna’s empirical work that attempts to induce corruption in the lab, see here.
28:00 – The scholar Robert Klitgaard, mentioned here, is well-known for his research on corruption.
29:00 – See the preprint by Dr. Muthukrishna and colleagues titled ‘The size of the stag determines the level of cooperation.’
33:30 – A video laying out the RNA world hypothesis.
45:00 – For more on the evolution of human brain size, see our earlier conversation with Dr. Muthukrishna, as well as our conversation with Jeremy DeSilva.
47:00 – For the metric known as Energy Return on Investment (EROI), see here.
54:00 – For more on the cross-cultural variation in numeracy, see here.
55:20 – To correct the record, according to this review of rare numeral systems, there is only a single known base 8 system in the world’s languages.
57:15 – In our earlier conversation (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 earlier audio essay.
1:00:30 – For some experimental evidence consistent with the idea that language improves the transmission of cultural information, see here.
1:07:00 – For data on the acceleration of urbanization, see here.
1:16:00 – For a brief primer on land value taxes, see here.
1:18:30 – For the idea that Machiavelli’s The Prince was satire, see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – Darwin describes his children’s first smiles in his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
4:10 – On so-called Duchenne smiles, see this classic investigation.
5:00 – For a summary of “basic emotions” theory, see any number of Paul Ekman’s writing (e.g., here, here). For a recent articulation of the “social tools” theory, see writings by Alan J. Fridlund (e.g., here). For another influential recent critique of “basic emotions” theory, see here.
6:00 – For the classic bowling study, see here.
7:00 – For a recent review of facial expressions in blind people, see here.
7:45 – For a review of smiling and gender (and the importance of “rules and roles”), see here. For one of the studies linking smiliness to historical migration patterns, see here.
8:30 – For the historical shift in smiling—and its possible relation to the Kodak company—see here. For the yearbook photo analysis, see here.
9:30 – See Darwin’s discussion of infant laughter in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
10:30 – For Darwin’s observations of laughter and smiles in primates, again, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. See Jan van Hooff’s classic study here.
11:30 – For the study comparing laughter across the Great Apes, see here. For the study of an “ape-like” stage in human laughter, see here.
12:30 – For a review of play vocalizations and laughter across species, see here.
13:20 – For the Marina Davila-Ross’s suggestion that laughter and smiles share a common evolutionary source, see here.
13:30 – For research on human infants’ open-mouthed smiles, see here.
14:00 – For the idea of the “acoustic origin” of the smile, see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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!
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[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 Dr. Kate Laskowski. 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 a paper 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A paper by Dr. Laskowski and a colleague on strong personalities in sticklebacks.
5:30 – The website 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 here.
11:00 – A brief encyclopedia entry on sticklebacks.
13:00 – A video of two sea anemones fighting. A research article about fighting (and personality) in sea anemones.
15:00 – A classic article reviewing the “Big 5” model in human personality research.
17:00 – The original article proposing five personality factors in animals.
22:30 – A recent special issue on the “Pace-of-Life syndromes” framework.
27:00 – A recent paper on evidence for the “fluctuating selection” idea in great tits.
29:00 – A 2017 paper by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues on “behavioral individuality” in clonal fish raised in near-identical environments.
32:10 – A just-released paper by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues extending their earlier findings on clonal fish.
39:30 – The Twitter account of the Many Birds project. The website for the project.
Dr. Laskowski recommends:
Innate, by Kevin Mitchell
Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller
The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!
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[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 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Arounds Us. Ed is a science writer for The Atlantic and the author of an exceptional earlier book on the microbiome called I Contain Multitudes. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – One of our earlier audio essays—'Me, my umwelt, and I’—profiled von Uexküll and his concept of an Umwelt.
6:00 – The classic Nagel article ‘What is it like to be a bat?’; Mike Tomasello’s recent variant, ‘What is it like to be a chimpanzee?’, which we discussed just last episode.
10:00 – One of many articles by Ed about COVID-19. He was awarded a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the pandemic.
14:30 – A popular article on proprioception.
19:00 – A research article on the evolution of opsin proteins.
20:00 – A primer on echolocation.
25:00 – A brief article on heat-sensitive pits in snakes.
26:30 – An academic article about the “star” of the star-nosed mole. A video showing the star-nosed mole in action.
31:00 – A popular article about the eyes of starfish.
32:00 – A collection of research articles about the Ampullae of Lorenzini.
35:00 – A very recent article about spider webs as “outsourced” hearing.
38:00 – A research article about aspects of bird song that humans can’t hear.
40:00 – A study 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 his website, catch up on his stories in The Atlantic, or follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!
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[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 sign-up link in the show notes.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Michelle Langley. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – A 15,000 year old horse figurine from Les Espélugues cave in France.
6:00 – A classic paper by Conkey & Spector that helped initiate a wave of feminist archaeology.
7:30 – Dr. Langley’s first paper to examine children’s leavings in the archaeological record.
8:30 – See here for discussion and examples of perforated batons or bâton percés.
9:30 – Dr. Langley’s paper, co-authored with Mirani Litster, ‘Is it ritual? Or is it children?’
14:00 – An influential discussion of ethnographic analogies in archaeology.
18:30 – A paper on the interpretation of Dorset miniature harpoon heads.
23:30 – An article on the Neanderthal ornamental use of raptor feathers.
29:00 - Dr. Langley’s paper on identifying children’s secret spaces in the archaeological record.
30:30 – A book by David Sobel on children’s special spaces.
34:00 – A website about the site of Étiolles.
40:00 – A figure showing the layout of the Bruniquel Cave, including the secondary structures.
41:00 – More information about the mammoth bone huts of Ukraine.
44:00 – A paper by Dr. Langley and Thomas Suddendorf on bags and other “mobile containers” in human evolution.
47:00 – A video 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 Women’s Creation. This later inspired Ursula Le Guin to propose the “carrier bag theory of fiction.”
51:30 – An experimental study by Dr. Langley and colleagues on children’s emerging intuitions about the use of containers and bags.
55:30 – A paper by Dr. Langley and colleagues on early symbolic behavior in Indonesia.
Dr. Langley recommends:
Growing up in the Ice Age, by April Nowell
You can read more about Dr. Langley’s work at her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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!
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[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 Medium.
Notes and links
1:30 – The novel that very recently gave me goosebumps.
2:00 – A brief discussion of Nabokov and his ideas about the tell-tale tingle.
2:45 – Some terms for goosebumps in other languages.
3:00 – A primer on skin anatomy.
4:00 – A paper on the thermoregulatory function of piloerection in primates and other animals.
4:25 – Read Darwin’s Expression here.
5:00 – A paper about “nails on chalkboard chills.” A paper that discusses claims that piloerection attends awe (but which fails to find evidence for this association in a lab setting). A paper on goosebumps in religious experiences. A paper that references mathematicians getting goosebumps when seeing proofs.
5:30 – The 1980 paper by Goldstein on “thrills.”
6:45 – The Darwin passage is quoted in McCrae 2007.
7:00 – A 1995 paper by Panskepp, as well as his 2002 study with a co-author.
7:40 – A recent paper on chills in response to films; another on poetry.
9:15 – The paper by McCrae reporting the association between “openness to experience” and chills.
10:00 – A paper 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 study.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!
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[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 here.
Notes and links
3:40 – A paper on the 19th century rise of the myth that humans are poor smellers.
6:00 – A paper estimating that humans can discriminate possibly a trillion different odors.
7:30 – A theoretical paper 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 Niclas Burenhult.
11:00 – A classic book 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 paper by Dr. Majid and Niclas Burenhult describing the language of olfaction in Jahai.
14:45 – Dr. Majid’s first experiment comparing odor naming (and color naming) in Jahai and English.
20:00 – Dr. Majid has also examined smell lexicons in several other languages, including Seri, Thai, Maniq, and Cha’palaa.
25:40 – A follow-up study by Dr. Majid and a collaborator on two groups within Malaysia who contrast in subsistence mode.
29:30 – A paper 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 paper.
39:00 – The “deodorization” hypothesis was discussed in a classic book on the cultural history of aroma.
39:40 – In a recent study, 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 study 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 paper.
57:00 – Along with her collaborators, Dr. Majid has examined the smell-naming abilities of wine experts. See one paper here.
1:02:45 – A recent paper by Dr. Majid and colleagues showing that wine experts’ smell-naming abilities are not dependent on “thinking in” language.
1:05:35 –Some evidence from “verbal interference” tasks suggests that, when carrying out color discrimination tasks, people rely on language in the moment.
1:09:00 – The Odeuropa project.
1:10:20 – The website of Noam Sobel’s lab.
Dr. Majid’s end of show recommendations:
What the Nose Knows, by Avery Gilbert
The Philosophy of Olfactory Perception, by Andreas Keller
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, by Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synott
Neuroenology, by Gordon Shepard
Cork Dork, by Bianca Bosker
You can keep up with Dr. Majid on Twitter (@asifa_majid).
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!
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[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: The Most Human Human, published in 2011; Algorithms To Live By, co-authored with Tom Griffiths and published in 2016; and most recently, The Alignment Problem. 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 here.
Notes and links
7:26 - Norbert Wiener’s article from 1960, ‘Some moral and technical consequences of automation’.
8:35 - ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is an episode from the animated film, Fantasia (1940). Before that, it was a poem by Goethe.
13:00 - A well-known incident in which Google’s nascent auto-tagging function went terribly awry.
13:30 - The ‘Labeled Faces in the Wild’ database can be viewed here.
18:35 - A groundbreaking article 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 here.
25:55 - For an account of the collaboration between Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch, see here.
29:35- An article about the racial biases built into photographic film technology in the 20th century.
31:45 - The much-investigated Tempe crash involving a driverless car and a pedestrian:
37:17 - The psychologist Edward Thorndike developed the “law of effect.” Here is one of his papers on the law.
44:40 - A highly influential 2015 paper 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 chapter on the classic “preferential looking” paradigm in developmental psychology:
53:40 - A blog post discussing the relationship between dopamine in the brain and temporal difference learning. Here is the paper in Science in which this relationship was first articulated.
1:00:00 - A paper on the concept of “coherent extrapolated volition.”
1:01:40 - An article 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: http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/
1:13:00 - An article on Warren McCulloch’s poetry.
1:17:45 - The concept of “reductions” is central in computer science and mathematics.
Brian Christian’s end-of-show reading recommendations:
The Alignment Newsletter, written by Rohin Shah
Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez:
The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik:
You can keep up with Brian at his personal website or on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we’re putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy!
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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 Dr. Oné Pagán and Dr. Edward Slingerland. Oné is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University and our pharmacologist in residence for this episode. He just published Drunk flies and stoned dolphins: A trip through the world of animal intoxication. Ted is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and our resident philosopher. He is the author of the recent book Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way into civilization.
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 now available.
Notes and links
4:00 – The “write drunk, edit sober” idea is sometimes (mis)attributed to Ernest Hemingway.
8:00 – Dr. Pagán wrote an earlier book about his favored model organism, the planaria (or flatworms). You may recall we discussed planaria in our recent episode with Dr. Michael Levin.
10:10 – Dr. Slingerland wrote an earlier book about the Chinese ideal of wu-wei. See this brief discussion of his ideas in The Marginalian.
13:00 – The idea of alcohol as pharmacological “hand grenade” is a metaphor due to Steven Braun.
19:30 – An article in Science about “why cats are crazy for catnip.”
21:20 – A recent article in The Conversation about Asian flushing genes.
26:00 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, who won the Nobel Prize in 1933, pioneered the use of drosophila as an animal model.
28:20 – An article on the inebriometer (with an accompanying illustration).
33:00 – The biologist Robert Dudley introduced the “drunken monkey” hypothesis. A recent synopsis by Dudley.
38:00 – Not to be confused with the “stoned ape” hypothesis, which was introduced by Terrence McKenna. A recent popular article on the hypothesis.
41:00 – The idea of psychedelics as introducing “mutagens” into culture comes from How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan.
44:00 – A recent popular article on the “beer before bread” hypothesis. The idea was originally proposed in 1953.
48:50 – Pharmaceutical practices of non-human animals are called “zoopharmacognosy.” A 2014 summary of findings about animal self-medication.
53:00 – The original report in Science on the “flower burial” in Shanidar cave.
56:20 – The Laussel Venus appears to be drinking (alcohol?) from a horn.
59:20 – An article describing the tragic case of Tusko the elephant.
1:03:50 – One example of practices that moderate alcohol’s dangerous effect is the Greek symposium.
1:08:00 – A brief history of distillation, which is a relatively recent invention.
1:11:00 – Planaria are widely used as an animal model for understanding nicotine, among other intoxicating substances.
Dr. Slingerland recommends the following books:
Buzz, by Steven Braun
Drink, by Iain Gately
A Short History of Drunkenness, by Mark Forsyth
Dr. Pagán recommends the following book:
Intoxication, by Ronald Siegel
You can find Dr. Slingerland on Twitter (@slingerland20) and follow him at his website; you can find Dr. Pagán on Twitter (@Baldscientist), follow him at his website, and listen to his podcast.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 here.
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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 Dr. Karen Bakker. Karen is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia and author of the new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. 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: [email protected].
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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – A range of bat sounds are available on the website of Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild (who was previously featured on the show!).
4:30 – The winner of the 2014 ‘Most Beautiful Sound in the World’ contest was a recording of a froggy swamp in Malaysia.
10:30 – A popular article profiling the relatively young field of “bioacoustics.” A recent academic article by Dr. Bakker and a colleague about “conservation acoustics” in particular.
11:30 – A popular article about the use of acoustic technologies to discover and monitor whale populations.
17:00 – A research article about the involvement of infrasound in peacock mating displays.
23:30 – A research study showing that coral larvae move toward reef sounds.
28:00 – A review paper by Camila Ferrara and colleagues about sound communication in Amazonian river turtles.
31:00 – A research article by Heidi Appel and a colleague about plants responding to the sounds of leaf-chewing.
35:00 – A recent historical study of Karl von Frisch and his work with honey bees. A recent study suggesting the possibility of play in bumble bees (not honey bees).
42:00 – A popular article profiling the field of “biosemiotics.”
48:00 – An essay 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 (Braiding Sweetgrass), Dylan Robinson (Hungry Listening), and John Borrows.
Dr. Bakker recommends:
A number of examples of the “sounds of life” are collected at Dr. Bakker’s website, here. The same site also includes recommendations for getting involved in citizen science. In addition to the books by Indigenous scholars listed above, Dr. Bakker recommends work by Monica Gagliano.
You can read more about Karen’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 paper 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 critique, which then occasioned a reply by the authors.
Enjoy!
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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 Jeremy DeSilva, 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 First Steps 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 here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A podcast episode 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 article 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 here.
19:30 – The original article by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” A more recent popular article on the hypothesis.
20:45 – An article by a major proponent of the social intelligence hypothesis, Dr. Robin Dunbar. A more critical review of the social intelligence hypothesis.
23:00 – A recent paper by Jeff Stibel and an older preprint by John Hawks evaluating the “body size” explanation of recent brain shrinkage.
24:00 – See our earlier episode on human self-domestication with Brian Hare.
29:00 – One of Dr. DeSilva’s collaborators on this research is Dr. James Traniello, who specializes in ants.
34:45 – An overview of the earliest history of writing.
37:20 – Dr. DeSilva’s book, First Steps, came out in 2021.
39:00 – A recent paper discussing the evolution of rotational birth in humans.
Dr. DeSilva recommends:
Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (featured in an earlier episode!)
Origin, by Jennifer Raff
You can find Dr. DeSilva on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Mark Miller. 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 Contemplative Science Podcast, which Mark co-hosts.
Alright friends, on to my chat with Mark Miller. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:15 – The website of the Hokkaido University Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN). The website of the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS).
6:00 – Dr. Miller co-hosts the Contemplative Science podcast, a project of M3CS.
7:30 – For one introduction to the predictive processing framework, see this article by Dr. Miller and colleagues.
11:00 – See Dr. Miller’s essay in Aeon on social media, co-authored with Ben White, as well as this more detailed treatment for an academic audience.
12:00 – See a paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues on depression.
14:00 – An introduction to the subfield of “computational psychiatry.”
17:00 – Andy Clark’s “watershed” paper on the predictive processing framework.
18:00 – A recent book on “active inference” (which is largely synonymous with the predictive processing approach).
22:00 – A chapter on the idea of the “body as the first prior.”
24:30 – A demo of the “hollow face” illusion.
29:00 – On the potential value of psychedelics in jarring people out of trenches and ruts, see also our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.
31:00 – See our recent episode with Dimitris Xygalatas.
34:30 – A popular article on children wanting to hear the same stories over and over.
38:00 – A paper by Coltan Scrivner and colleagues on horror fans and psychological resilience during COVD-19.
42:30 – A recent article 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 recent paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues on the evocative notion of “grip.”
50:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues about video games and predictive processing.
57:00 – A paper 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 Andy Clark, including:
You can read more about Dr. Miller’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back all! So, this episode is a first for us. Two firsts, actually. For one, it features our first-ever repeat guest: Andrew Barron, 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, 'Of bees and brains,' in February 2020. And, second, this episode is our first-ever "live show." We recorded this interview in July at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute in St Andrews, Scotland.
Andy and his colleagues—the philosophers Marta Halina and Colin Klein—just released an ambitious paper titled 'Transitions in Cognitive Evolution.' 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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – For further information about the “major transitions” project, see the project’s web page here.
7:00 – Many transitional accounts of evolution draw inspiration from the classic book The Major Transitions in Evolution.
8:00 – One influential previous transitional account of the evolution of cognition was put forward by Dennett in Kinds of Minds. Another was put forward by Ginsburg and Jablonka in The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.
12:45 – A brief introduction to cnidaria.
18:00 – The idea of cellular memory has been garnering more and more attention—see, e.g., this popular article.
21:00 – The idea of “reflective” systems is also used in computer science.
26:00 – The scala naturae, or Great Chain of Being, 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 brief introduction to the phylum gastropoda.
37:00 – For an overview of Dr. Barron’s work on the neuroscience of honey bees, see our previous episode.
48:30 – It’s commonly observed in popular coverage of octopuses that their brains are “decentralized” (e.g., here, here, and here).
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 earlier episode with Jeremy DeSilva.
58:00 – On the notion of “Turing completeness,” see here. The idea of an “Infinite Improbability Drive” comes (apparently) from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
1:00:06 – For a discussion of eusociality and individuality in the context of “major transitions” ideas, see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Winnie Orchard and Dr. Jodi Pawluski. 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 here.
Notes and links
2:45 – For more on the relationship between adolescence and “matrescence,” see this recent review paper by Winnie and colleagues in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
6:00 – For discussions surrounding the idea of “mommy brain,” see Jodi’s podcast, ‘Mommy Brain Revisited.’ See also this recent editorial by Jodi and colleagues in JAMA Neurology.
17:00 – A recent meta-analysis on cognitive impairment during pregnancy.
25:00 – A study by Winnie and colleagues showing subjective—but not objective—memory deficits in mothers one year after giving birth.
26:45 – An influential study 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 review article by Jodi and colleagues on the idea of neural fine-tuning in early motherhood.
41:45 – A recent review paper by Jodi and colleagues about the neural underpinnings of postpartum depression and anxiety.
44:00 – A review paper about postpartum psychosis.
51:00 – A study on the prevalence of postpartum depression across cultures.
58:00 – A 2014 review of research on mother-child synchrony.
1:00:00 – A recent study by Winnie and colleagues looking at how having children affects later life brain function. Another study 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 here.
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 here.
Recommendations
Dr. Orchard recommends:
Baby Brain, Sarah McKay
Mother Brain, Chelsea Conaboy
Dr. Pawluski recommends:
Matrescence, by Lucy Jones
After the Storm, by Emma Jane Unsworth
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're still on summer break, but we wanted to share a favorite interview from our archives. Enjoy!
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We’ve got something special for you today folks: bats. That’s right: bats.
Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his famous essay 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 here.
Notes and links
7:20 – Meet the Honduran white bat, which Knörnschild likens to a “fluffy little white ping pong ball.”
13:50 – Austin, Texas is home to Bracken Cave, which harbors more than 15 million bats.
16:30 – Much of Dr. Knörnschild’s work focuses on the Greater Sac-winged bat, which is a member of the Emballonurid family.
18:00 – See the audio appendix for an example of a Greater Sac-winged bat’s echolocation calls. See also examples on Dr. Knörnschild’s website.
21:10 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues about how echolocation calls serve social functions in addition to navigational functions.
24:00 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the origin and diversity of bat songs.
30:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the correlation between social complexity and vocal complexity across bat species.
37:30 – A brand new special issue on vocal learning in humans and animals, including a review of vocal learning in mammals by Dr. Vincent Janik and Dr. Knörnschild.
40:35 – Dr. Knörnschild’s first scientific paper, in 2006, reported the observation that Greater Sac-winged bats seemed to babble like infants.
47:20 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on territorial songs in male Greater Sac-winged bats.
53:45 – A very recently published paper in Science by Ahana Fernandez, Dr. Knörnschild, and collaborators; see also this popular article and a video about the findings.
1:05:30 – A recent paper 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 ‘Bats in translation.’
1:14:00 – The philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that we can’t really know what it’s like to be a bat.
Dr. Knörnschild recommends two books by Merlin Tuttle:
Bats: An Illustrated Guide to All Species
You can find Dr. Knörnschild on Twitter (@MKnornschild) and follow her research at her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're taking a little summer break right now, but we wanted to share a favorite essay from our archives. Enjoy!
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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 Medium.
Notes
2:00 – The eye of the giant squid was described in detail for the first time in 2012, in this paper.
3:10 – On diversity in animal pupils, see this recent paper.
4:40 – Pupil changes to imagined and linguistically encoded light can be read about here and here.
5:30 – Eckherd Hess’s early research on pupils is summarized in his 1965 Scientific American article, ‘Attitude and Pupil Size’.
6:45 – The 1966 paper by Kahneman and Beatty is here. Or see a 2018 review 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, ‘The Role of Pupil Size in Communication’. Several of his classic studies have been replicated just this year (with good but not perfect success).
8:50 – Mariska Kret’s suggestion about how pupils fit the baby schema can be found here.
9:45 – Kret’s studies of pupil mimicry include this one, this one, and this one, among others.
10:15 – The 2021 paper by Wohltjen & Wheatley on “pupillary synchrony” is available here.
12:00 – The 1974 Nature article titled ‘Pupils of a talking parrot’ is available here.
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.
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 Ray Nayler's new book, The Mountain in the Sea. 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 The Mountain in the Sea 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 Apple Podcasts, 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 here.
Notes and links
8:30 – For the review of The Mountain in the Sea in question, see here.
14:00 – Con Dao is a national park in Vietnam.
17:00 – For our previous episode about cephalopods, see here.
19:00 – For a book-length introduction to biosemiotics, see here.
24:00 – A video 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 our episode with Michael Tomasello.
29:00 – A popular article about RNA editing in cephalopods.
35:00 – A video of the “passing cloud” phenomenon in cuttlefish. A brief article about the phenomenon. A video showing other forms of camouflage in octopuses.
41:00 – An experimental exploration of the movement from “iconic” to “symbolic” communication in humans.
44:00 – A popular article about the communication system used in the movie Arrival.
49:00 – One source of inspiration for Ray’s book was Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think.
1:00:00 – An article on the idea of “architects” and “gardeners” among writers.
1:05:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Disintegration Loops’ is available here.
1:11:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Summer Castle’ is available here.
1:13:00 – A popular article about the phenomenon of highly superior autobiographical memory. An essay about the idea that faulty memory is a feature rather than a bug.
1:18:00 – Ray’s story ‘Muallim’ is available here.
Recommendations
Ways of Being, by James Bridle
Living in Data, by Jer Thorp
Follow Ray on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Eleanor Scerri, 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 Dr. Manuel Will, an archaeologist and Lecturer at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Together, Eleanor and Manuel are authors of a new paper titled 'The revolution that still isn't: The origins of behavioral complexity in Homo sapiens.' 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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – The paper by Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will we discuss in this episode is here. Their paper updates and pays tribute to a classic paper by McBrearty and Brooks, published in 2000.
6:00 – The classic “cognitive revolution” model sometimes discussed under the banner of “behavioral modernity” or the “Great Leap Forward.” It has been recently featured, for instance, in Harari’s Sapiens.
11:00 – Dr. Scerri has written extensively on debates about where humans evolved within Africa—see, e.g., this paper.
18:00 – A study of perforated marine shells in North Africa during the Middle Stone Age. A paper by Dr. Will and colleagues about the use of various marine resources during this period.
23:00 – A paper describing the uses of ochre across Africa during the Middle Stone Age. Another paper describing evidence for ochre processing 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave in South Africa. At the same site, engraved pieces of ochre have been found.
27:00 – A study examining the evidence that ochre was used as an adhesive.
30:00 – For a recent review of the concept of “cumulative culture,” see here. We discussed the concept of “cumulative culture” in our earlier episode with Dr. Cristine Legare.
37:00 – For an overview of the career of the human brain and the timing of various changes, see our earlier episode with Dr. Jeremy DeSilva.
38:00 – An influential study 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 The Secret of Our Success. See also our earlier episode with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna.
45:00 – For discussion of the Neanderthals and why they may have died out, see our earlier episode with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes.
Recommendations
Dr. Scerri recommends research on the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, found in Morocco and described here, and new research on the evidence for the widespread burning of landscapes in Malawi, described here.
Dr. Will recommends the forthcoming update of Peter Mitchell’s book, The Archaeology of Southern Africa.
See Twitter for more updates from Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Jamie Kreiner, Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Jamie is the author of a new book titled The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell us about Distraction. 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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A webpage devoted to the Ark of Hugh of Saint Victor.
6:30 – For a detailed (and positive) review essay about The Wandering Mind, see here.
11:30 – The Redwall books, by Brian Jacques, are well known for featuring elaborate feasts. An article about some of the best of these.
18:30 – For more on how the body was understood in the early Christian world, see The Burden of the Flesh.
26:30 – Text written continuously is known as scripta continua.
27:30 – Articles that celebrate medieval marginalia can be found here, here, and here.
40:00 – An article about the Six Wings mnemonic. For more on mnemonic techniques in the medieval world, see Mary Carruthers’ book.
53:00 – On the idea of “pure prayer,” see the book, The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings.
57:30 – Dr. Kreiner’s next book, 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 here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Federico Rossano, 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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 – The classic 1964 paper, ‘The Neglected Situation,’ by Erving Goffman.
6:00 – An obituary for the novelist and semiotician, Umberto Eco, who died in 2016. His best-loved novel, perhaps, is The Name of the Rose. He’s also the author of a book of essays called, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition.
17:30 – The classic paper, ‘On doing “being ordinary”’, by Harvey Sacks.
20:00 – A brief introduction to Conversation Analysis.
32:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on gaze is summarized in his 2012 chapter, ‘Gaze in Conversation.’ His work on questions in Italian is here.
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 here.
43:00 – Dr. Rossano did his postdoctoral work with Michael Tomasello, who joined us for a previous episode.
47:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on bonobo interaction is here and here.
56:00 – Dr. Rossano’s original work on food sharing in orangutans is here. A more recent paper on food sharing is here.
1:05:00 – The idea of the “human interaction engine” was first proposed by Stephen Levinson in 2006.
1:10:30 – See the recent theme issue on ‘Revisiting the human “interaction engine”’. Dr. Rossano’s contributions to the issue are here and here.
1:18:00 – Dr. Rossano’s work on dogs has been done in coordination with the company FluentPet. FluentPet makes the pet-friendly buttons (aka soundboards) made famous by Bunny, the “talking dog of TikTok.”
1:23:30 – For an insider’s view of what happened in the original “animal language” studies, see a paper by Irene Pepperberg here.
1:27:30 – A recent review 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 2009.
1:44:45 – A recent podcast 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 here.
Dr. Rossano recommends:
Sequence Organization in Interaction, by Emanuel Schegloff
Lectures on Conversation, by Harvey Sacks
Roots of Human Sociality, edited by Stephen Levison and Nick Enfield
Origins of Human Communication, by Michael Tomasello
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Paco Calvo and Natalie Lawrence. Paco is director of the Minimal Intelligence Lab 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, Planta Sapiens. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – For a popular overview of research on the mimicking plant, Boquila trifoliata, see here. The recent study testing whether this plant can also mimic unfamiliar (plastic!) plants, see here.
20:00 – The focus on climbing plants began at least as early as Charles Darwin—see his 1875 book, On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants.
24:30 – For discussion of domestication and how it affects the behavior, physiology, and cognition of animals, see our earlier episode with Brian Hare.
25:00 – Darwin introduced the term “circumnutation” in his 1880 book, The Power of Movement in Plants.
28:00 – The original paper 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., here).
39:00 – A study investigating the effects of anesthetic drugs on several plants, including Venus Fly Traps.
44:00 – A recent article reviewing what we know about neurotransmitters in plants.
51:00 – A very brief overview of the vascular system of plants.
53:00 – Our audio essay on Darwin’s “root-brain hypothesis” (or read here).
57:00 – A recent study on peas reaching toward support poles, suggesting they are able to “see” those supports.
1:00:00 – A study examining “skototropic” behavior in a tropical vine.
1:03:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Calvo and a colleague on the question of plant sentience. Skeptical discussions of the idea of plant sentience can be found here and here.
Paco Calvo recommends:
The Sentient Cell (forthcoming), by František Baluška and colleagues
White Holes, by Carlo Rivelli
Natalie Lawrence recommends:
Other Minds, by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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
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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. This is one 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 here.
Notes and links
5:00 – An essay by Dr. Andrews & Dr. Monsó in Aeon magazine, about how rats deserve ethical protections.
7:30 – A popular article about findings that vervet monkeys socially learn food preferences. The original research paper is here.
9:10 – A popular article on the findings that rats can learn to play hide-and-seek.
22:00 – Dr. Andrews’ most recent book is How to Study Animal Minds. Her earlier book, The Animal Mind, is now out in a second edition.
24:00 – Morgan’s Canon has been widely discussed and criticized in recent decades (see here, here, and here).
27:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews on the role of folk psychology in animal cognition research.
33:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews discussing the idea of “anthropectomy.”
34:00 – The paper by Dan Dennett that makes the distinction between “romantics” and “killjoys.”
35:20 – Dr. Monsó’s recent book (in Spanish) translates as Schrödinger’s Opossum. See also: her essay 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 (here, here).
49:30 – See the recent chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews on “animal moral psychologies.” See also a paper by Dr. Monsó and colleagues, ‘Animal morality: What it means and why it matters.’
51:30 – A classic article by Frans de Waal, ‘Putting the altruism back into altruism.’
53:40 – An “appreciation and update” to Tinbergen’s four questions.
58:00 – For a review of some of the “rat empathy” studies, see the “animal moral psychologies” chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews. This line of work began with a paper by Bartal and colleagues in 2011. A skeptical take can be found here.
1:01 – A popular article on how chimpanzees pass the “marshmallow test.”
1:04:00 – A paper on (the apparent absence of) “third-party punishment” in chimpanzees.
1:06:00 – A recent paper using thermography to gauge whether marmosets understand each other’s “conversations.”
1:08:00 – One of the now-famous “ape suit” studies by Chris Krupenye and colleagues.
1:11:30 – A recent paper by Dr. Andrews on the possibility of animal social norms.
1:17:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Monsó on “how the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate.”
1:21:00 – A recent paper by Filip Mattens on touch—and the “vigilance” function of touch in particular.
1:25:20 – A video of “eye-poking” in capuchins, which Susan Perry has studied.
1:28:00 – On the WEIRD issue, see our essay on first decade of the acronym.
Dr. Andrews recommends:
The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Dr. Andrews & Jacob Beck
‘Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds,’ by Richard Moore
Chimpanzee Memoirs, edited by Stephen Ross* & Lydia Hopper
Dr. Monsó recommends:
The Animal Cognition entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka (forthcoming)
An Immense World, Ed Yong (forthcoming)
You can read more about Dr. Andrews’ work at her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Dr. Monsó’s work at her website and follow her on Twitter.
* Sadly, shortly after this episode was recorded, Stephen Ross died unexpectedly. Read an obituary here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Mika Asaba, a postdoc in the Psychology Department at Yale University, and Dr. Hyo Gweon, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Together, Mika and Hyo recently published a paper 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 here.
Notes and links
4:30 – Both Dr. Asaba and Dr. Gweon spent time in Rebecca Saxe’s lab at MIT.
7:00 – The website for Dr. Gweon’s ‘Social Learning Lab’ at Stanford. A recent review article by Dr. Gweon describing her lab’s research program.
9:30 – A recent review chapter by Dr. Asaba and Dr. Gweon about how children learn about themselves through praise.
13:00 – In a recent follow-up study 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 here. A meta-analysis of some of the early work on theory of mind; a more recent review article. We discussed “theory of mind” at some length in our recent episode 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 here.
36:00 – See our earlier episode with Michael Tomasello.
40:00 – A recent review on the personality dimension of “conscientiousness.”
Recommendations
‘Achieving a good impression: Reputation management and performance goals,’ by Kayla Good and Alex Shaw
‘Planning with theory of mind,’ by Mark Ho, Rebecca Saxe, and Fiery Cushman
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
When you think of the dinosaurs, you probably think of supersized lizards. At least I do. They were gargantuan, certainly, and maybe quite agile, but also a bit dim-witted. Maybe not markedly dim-witted, but definitely not the brightest. When dinosaurs terrify us it’s because of their giant jaws and their sheer size, not because they were especially clever or crafty. (Except for those velociraptors in Jurassic park, of course—they were terrifyingly wily.) But, in any case, who really knows? It’s all just fantasy and guesswork, right? I mean, how could we ever know how clever the dinosaurs actually were?
My guest today is Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a comparative neuroanatomist at Vanderbilt University. She studies the diversity and composition of brains across the biological world. For more than a decade now, Suzana and her colleagues have made the case that one of the most revealing things about a brain is not how big it is or how big it is relative to the body, but simply how many neurons it has. This basic variable, she argues, can tell us a lot about the cognitive capabilities of different species. Which means that if we were able, in some way, to estimate the number of neurons in the brain of some extinct creature, we could start to make inferences about its mind and its behaviors.
Here, Suzana and I discuss a recent study of hers in which she does exactly that. She was able to reconstruct the make-up of the brains of certain dinosaurs—such as the theropods, a group that included the venerable Tyrannosaurus Rex. But, before we get to the T-Rex, we first lay some important groundwork. We talk about how Suzana counts neurons, by making a kind of brain soup. We discuss how number of neurons proves to be a better predictor of complex cognition than does the much-discussed Encephalization Quotient (or EQ). We then describe how the brains of different groups of animals tend to obey predictable scaling laws. And with that groundwork laid, we dig into Suzana’s estimate that, in terms of number of neurons, a T-Rex's brain was comparable to a baboon's. Which would mean that it was significantly cleverer than we long thought, that it was probably quite behaviorally flexible and long-lived and may have even had culture. As you might imagine, this study caused quite a bit of a stir and so, finally, Suzana and I discuss some of the criticisms that have been leveled against it.
Alright folks, this is a super thought-provoking episode, whether or not you are—or ever were—a dinosaur geek. And even if you’re not quite ready to accept Suzana’s conclusions about the T-Rex, I think you’ll find that her work opens up a host of new questions and new directions. So, without further ado, on to my chat with Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
6:00 – The paper in which Dr. Herculano-Houzel and her collaborator introduced the “brain soup” (aka isotropic fractionator) method.
10:00 – A paper by Dr. Herculano-Houzel about the glia/neuron ratio.
16:00 – The idea of the Encephalization Quotient (EQ) was first laid out by Harry Jerison in a 1973 book, Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence. A paper-length version of the theory is presented here.
23:00 – A recent review paper by Dr. Herculano-Houzel about number of neurons as a correlate of cognitive ability across species.
27:30 – Dr. Herculano-Houzel and colleagues have argued that the human brain is very much a “scaled up” version of the primate brain. See an empirical paper here and a review article here. See also Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s TED talk and book, The Human Advantage.
28:00 – Dr. Herculano-Houzel has found, in a data set of 700 species, that the number of cortical neurons predicts a species’ longevity and age to maturity.
33:00 – A 2022 study in PNAS of neuron numbers across numerous species. The data from this paper formed the basis for some of Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s analyses.
41:30 – For more discussion of planning and future-thinking across species, see our recent episode Traversing the Fourth Dimension, with Dr. Adam Bulley.
46:00 – While Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s study on dinosaur brains has generated much excitement, it also been met with some skepticism in various popular treatments and on Twitter.
48:00 – A popular article describing the idea that dinosaurs were neither warm- nor cold-blooded but “mesotherms.”
Dr. Herculano-Houzel recommends:
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, by Steve Brusatte
Dr. Herculano-Houzel’s The Neuroscience Office Hour: Crash Course
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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 here!
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Once upon a time there was a king and a bishop...
No, I'm not actually going to tell you a story right now. I just wanted you to notice something: As I started into that, your mind likely shifted into a different mode. You might have started mentally salivating as you anticipated a coming morsel of fiction. That’s because stories are special; they work a kind of magic on us. Humans everywhere—in every known society, starting from a very young age—seem to hunger for narratives. But why? What makes them so palatable and powerful? What do they do to us and for us?
This week I’m joined by two guests who research stories and the human mind. The first is Dr. Raymond Mar, Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto. His work explores a bunch of different aspects of the psychology of stories, including the relationship between fiction reading and social cognition. My second guest is Dr. Jamie Tehrani, Professor of Anthropology at Durham University in the UK. His research examines the cultural evolution of stories, including questions about why certain stories spread and stick around (sometimes for millennia).
In this conversation, Raymond, Jamie, and I talk about why stories are so powerful. We discuss what makes something a story, and what makes something a good story. We talk about findings that reading fiction may boost our ability to understand other minds. We consider the origins and diversification of folktales by zooming in on one in particular—Little Red Riding Hood. We talk about why stories are easier to remember than essays, and we examine a few of the ingredients that make certain stories especially memorable. Finally, spoiler alert: we also do a bit of good old-fashioned story time.
This is an episode that has been on our wish list forever. Over the past few years there's been so much buzz about stories and storytelling—both in popular media and across different academic disciplines—we thought the topic deserved an extended treatment. And so here you have it: without further ado, my conversation with Jamie Tehrani and Raymond Mar. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – Many thinkers have alluded to the function of stories in expanding our experiences. As T.S. Eliot put it, “We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.”
11:30 – A brief popular discussion of the dramatic principle known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun.’
14:00 – See Lost in a Book, by Victor Nell. For the idea of “narrative transportation,” see the work of Richard Gerrig, especially the book Experiencing Narrative Worlds.
26:00 – In a recent paper, Dr. Mar has outlined the two routes through which reading fiction may boost social abilities. See also his recent review of work in this area.
29:00 – See Dr. Mar’s earlier review on the cognitive neuroscience of fiction reading. See also his lab’s recent review of published studies on the question of whether brief exposure to fiction can improve social ability.
34:00 – For a review of work using the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task, see here.
36:00 – On the relationship between the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task and oxytocin, see this influential study. See also this attempt to replicate those findings.
37:00 – The study by Robin Dunbar and colleagues on social experience and pain thresholds.
43:30 – See Dr. Tehrani’s study on the phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood. For anyone unfamiliar, here is a version of the story. For anyone unfamiliar with the Wolf and the Kids, here is a version of the story.
47:00 – On the East Asian story known as the Tiger Grandmother, see here.
52:00 – See Dr. Tehrani’s study of a broad swath of Indo-European folktales. For a general overview of Dr. Tehrani’s work in this area, see here.
55:00 – For discussion of five documented “content biases” and an experimental test of these biases in the context of urban legends, see Dr. Tehrani’s recent study here.
58:00 – The idea of “minimally counter-intuitive” ideas—and their allure—was originally formulated within the cognitive science of religion. For work on “minimally counter-intuitive” elements in the transmission of urban legends, see Dr. Tehrani’s study on “Bloody Mary.”
1:02:00 – See Dr. Mar’s recent meta-analysis comparing stories and essays.
1:07:00 – For discussion of the “auditory cheesecake” idea and the evolutionary origins of music, see our previous episode, The Roots of Rhythm. For ideas about the evolutionary origins of fictions, see Gerrig’s Experiencing Narrative Worlds.
1:10:00 – The study on the role of storytelling among the Agta, a hunter-gatherer group.
1:11:00 – A study finding that scientific abstracts with narrative elements get more citations.
Dr. Tehrani recommends:
Why Horror Seduces, by Mathias Clasen
‘The King and the Abbot’ (aka ‘King John and the Abbot of Canterbury’)
Dr. Mar recommends:
The Moral Laboratory, by Frank Hakemulder
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Not sure about you, but it seems like I spend most of my time in the future. We're told to live in the present, of course—and I try. But at any opportunity my mind just races ahead, like an eager puppy. I'm planning my next meal, dwelling on that looming deadline, imagining the possibilities that lie ahead. In one sense, all this time spent puttering around tomorrow-land is kind of regrettable. But in another sense it's really quite extraordinary. When we think ahead, when we cast our thoughts into the future, we're exercising an ability that some consider uniquely human.
My guest today is Dr. Adam Bulley. Adam is a psychologist and Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the University of Sydney and Harvard. Along with his co-authors Thomas Suddendorf & Jonathan Redshaw, Adam recently published a book titled, The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight.
In this conversation, Adam and I talk about two constructs central to the book—"mental time travel" and foresight. We discuss how these constructs relate to memory and to imagination. We dig into the question of whether our abilities to think ahead are really uniquely human. We review the archeological evidence for the emergence of foresight in our species’ evolution. And we also touch on—among other topics and tidbits— hoarding behavior in squirrels, tool use in chimpanzees, the Bischof-Köhler hypothesis, the control of fire, Incan quipus, hand axes, and longtermism.
Foresight is one of those especially tentacly topics. It connects to so many different other abilities and to so many questions about minds, culture, evolution. Both in the book and here in this conversation, Adam proves to be quite a skilled guide to all these connections.
There's also something else notable about Adam: he's an alum of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI). In fact, he was a participant in the first iteration of the program, back in 2018. So if you too aspire to do cool research, write cool books, and be interviewed on the coolest podcasts around, you might consider applying. Just note that review of applications begins soon: Feb 13. More info at: disi.org
Alright, friends, on to my chat with Adam Bulley. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here!
Notes and links
3:30 – A paper comparing performance on the “forked tube task” in human children and great apes.
6:30 – A now-classic article by Dr. Suddendorf and Michael Corballis on “mental time travel” and the evolution of foresight.
13:00 – An article by Dr. Suddendorf directly comparing memory and foresight. Another take on the same question.
22:00 – A recent paper by Johannes Mahr on the functions of episodic memory.
27:00 – A recent review article on the notion of “cognitive offloading.” The study by Adam and colleagues looking at the development of cognitive offloading in young children.
32:00 – For an earlier discussion of animal caching behavior, see our episode with Dr. Nicky Clayton.
35:00 – An examination of the Bischof–Köhler hypothesis in rhesus monkeys.
40:00 – A recent chapter by Adam and Dr. Redshaw reviewing the evidence for future thinking in animals.
41:00 – For a brief discussion of delayed gratification in cephalopods, see our episode with Dr. Alex Schnell. See also a recent research paper on the question in fish, and a recent paper by Adam and colleagues looking at the psychology of delayed rewards in humans.
45:00 – For an extended foray into (allegedly) uniquely human traits—aka “human autapomorphies” or “human uniquals”—see our earlier essay on the topic.
47:30 – The exchange in Trends in Cognitive Sciences between Dr. Suddendorf and Dr. Corballis on the question of foresight in animals.
49:30 – A book by Richard Wrangham on the role of fire and cooking in human evolution. A more recent article by Dr. Wrangham on the same topic.
54:00 – An episode of the Tides of History podcast about Ötzi the Iceman.
59:00 – For our earlier discussion of bags with Dr. Michelle Langley, see here.
1:03:00 – A book on the Incan quipus.
1:13:00 – The classic treatment of “displacement” in human language, by Charles Hockett, is here.
1:18:00 – Recent books on long term future thinking include What We Owe the Future, The Good Ancestor, Longpath, and others.
Dr. Bulley recommends:
The Gap, by Thomas Suddendorf
The Optimism Bias, by Tali Sharot
Know Thyself, by Stephen Fleming
You can read more about Adam’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
By now you’ve probably heard about the new chatbot called ChatGPT. There’s no question it’s something of a marvel. It distills complex information into clear prose; it offers instructions and suggestions; it reasons its way through problems. With the right prompting, it can even mimic famous writers. And it does all this with an air of cool competence, of intelligence. But, if you're like me, you’ve probably also been wondering: What’s really going on here? What are ChatGPT—and other large language models like it—actually doing? How much of their apparent competence is just smoke and mirrors? In what sense, if any, do they have human-like capacities?
My guest today is Dr. Murray Shanahan. Murray is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind. He's the author of numerous articles and several books at the lively intersections of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy. Very recently, Murray put out a paper titled 'Talking about Large Language Models’, and it’s the focus of our conversation today. In the paper, Murray argues that—tempting as may be—it's not appropriate to talk about large language models in anthropomorphic terms. Not yet, anyway.
Here, we chat about the rapid rise of large language models and the basics of how they work. We discuss how a model that—at its base—simply does “next-word prediction" can be engineered into a savvy chatbot like ChatGPT. We talk about why ChatGPT lacks genuine “knowledge” and “understanding”—at least as we currently use those terms. And we discuss what it might take for these models to eventually possess richer, more human-like capacities. Along the way, we touch on: emergence, prompt engineering, embodiment and grounding, image generation models, Wittgenstein, the intentional stance, soft robots, and "exotic mind-like entities."
Before we get to it, just a friendly reminder: applications are now open for the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (or DISI). DISI will be held this June/July in St Andrews Scotland—the program consists of three weeks of intense interdisciplinary engagement with exactly the kinds of ideas and questions we like to wrestle with here on this show. If you're intrigued—and I hope you are!—check out disi.org for more info.
Alright friends, on to my decidedly human chat, with Dr. Murray Shanahan. Enjoy!
The paper we discuss is here. A transcript of this episode is here.
Notes and links
6:30 – The 2017 “breakthrough” article by Vaswani and colleagues.
8:00 – A popular article about GPT-3.
10:00 – A popular article about some of the impressive—and not so impressive—behaviors of ChatGPT. For more discussion of ChatGPT and other large language models, see another interview with Dr. Shanahan, as well as interviews with Emily Bender and Margaret Mitchell, with Gary Marcus, and with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT).
14:00 – A widely discussed paper by Emily Bender and colleagues on the “dangers of stochastic parrots.”
19:00 – A blog post about “prompt engineering”. Another blog post about the concept of Reinforcement Learning through Human Feedback, in the context of ChatGPT.
30:00 – One of Dr. Shanahan’s books is titled, Embodiment and the Inner Life.
39:00 – An example of a robotic agent, SayCan, which is connected to a language model.
40:30 – On the notion of embodiment in the cognitive sciences, see the classic book by Francisco Varela and colleagues, The Embodied Mind.
44:00 – For a detailed primer on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, see here.
45:00 – See Dr. Shanahan’s general audience essay on “conscious exotica" and the space of possible minds.
49:00 – See Dennett’s book, The Intentional Stance.
Dr. Shanahan recommends:
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell
(see also our earlier episode with Dr. Mitchell)
‘Abstraction for Deep Reinforcement Learning’, by M. Shanahan and M. Mitchell
You can read more about Murray’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back, friends—and a very happy new year! For our first episode of 2023 we're going big. We're examining the minds of some of the most massive, majestic megafauna around.
My guest today is Dr. Joshua Plotnik. Josh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College, and the director of the Comparative Cognition for Conservation Lab. His work focuses on elephants—Asian elephants in particular. Josh studies how these creatures perceive and think, how they solve problems and make decisions. As you’ll hear, Josh and his colleagues are doing this work, not just to better understand elephant cognition, but also to inform elephant conservation.
In this conversation, Josh and I do a healthy bit of Elephants 101. We consider a few of the most widely repeated ideas about elephants—ideas you’ve probably heard, like that they have exceptional memories and that they mourn their dead. We talk about the three different species of elephants and what we can say about the differences between them. We talk about how elephants use their tusks and their ridiculously dexterous trunks. We talk about how elephants communicate and what their social lives are like. We touch on Dumbo (the well-known Disney character) and Happy (an elephant at the Bronx Zoo who recently became the focus of debates about animal personhood). We of course discuss many of Josh’s fascinating findings on elephant cognition—including his findings about mirror self-recognition, consoling behavior, cooperative problem solving, and personality. We also touch on human-elephant conflict, convergent evolution, and the importance of taking the elephant’s perspective.
One of our resolutions for the show this year is to grow, to find ways to reach a bigger audience. You can help us do that, if you like, by recommending us to a friend, leaving us a rating, or maybe even writing a review. (We're actually really hurting for reviews, folks—we haven’t had a new one in ages, so any help on that front would be most gratefully appreciated.) Another resolution we have is to connect more with you, our audience, and learn more about what you’re interested in. So we’d love to hear from you—you can find us on social media or reach out to as at: [email protected].
One last bit of housekeeping: applications are now open for the 2023 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. The institute will be held this summer in St Andrews, Scotland. If you are interested in the kinds of stuff we talk about on the show—mind, cognition, intelligence broadly construed—you should definitely consider applying. More info at: disi.org.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Josh Plotnik. I think you'll agree that Josh is quite the genial guide to the elephant mind. And he gives us a ton to think about here. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – The Mythbusters episode about whether elephants are afraid of mice.
6:45 – An academic article about the possibility that elephants populated certain land masses by swimming to them.
8:30 – A research article about elephants’ concepts of death; another on the same topic.
17:30 — The researcher Shermin de Silva works on elephants in Sri Lanka.
19:00 – A first study finding that African elephants can follow human pointing gestures. A later study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues finding that Asian elephants do not follow human pointing gestures.
23:00 – A study quantifying different aspects of the elephant brain.
24:00 – For some of the latest findings about cephalopods, see our episode ‘The Savvy Cephalopod’ with Dr. Alex Schnell.
25:30 – Elephants in Africa may be becoming tuskless due to poaching. A research article on the topic.
26:30 – A research article on “handedness” (aka laterality) in elephants.
27:30 – The elephant trunk is extraordinarily dexterous, in part because of its “fingers.” A recent study of the basis for this dexterity. For example, elephants can peel bananas (video) and also use their trunks to suction up objects like chips (research article).
30:00 – A research article on the production and interpretation of “periscoping” behavior in elephants.
32:30 – A popular article about Joyce Poole’s research on the elephant “ethogram.” A fuller article on elephant communication.
33:45 – A study by Dr. Plotnik and Frans de Waal about elephant consolation behavior.
35:00 – Images on Twitter of young elephants sucking their trunks, presumably as self-consoling behavior.
37:00 – A research article on elephant’s “seismic communication.”
42:00 – The original study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues about mirror self-recognition in elephants. See also our audio essay about mirror self-recognition, including some criticisms of the paradigm.
53:00 – A popular essay by Jill Lepore about Happy the elephant, and the legal case surrounding whether or not she should be considered a “person.”
55:30 – The original study by Dr. Plotnik and colleagues on cooperative problem solving in elephants.
57:30 – A later study by Li-Li Li, Dr. Plotnik and colleagues on how elephants are able to sustain cooperation.
1:00:00 – A review article about research on Theory of Mind in animals.
1:01:00 – A study by Sarah Jacobson, Dr. Plotnik, and colleagues using puzzle boxes to understand elephant innovation and problem solving. The same study examined personality factors that predict success on the task.
1:04:00 – See also our recent episode on animal personality.
1:07:00 – See a recent review paper by Dr. Plotnik and a colleague on elephant cognition in the context of human-elephant conflict.
1:09:00 – Other studies by Dr. Plotnik’s group that we did not cover include work on the elephant concepts of quantity and elephant bodily awareness.
1:10:00 – A paper by Dr. Plotnik and (former guest) Nicola Clayton on the idea of convergent evolution in diverse species and taxa.
1:16:30 – Along with colleagues, Dr. Plotnik founded the organization Think Elephants International.
Dr. Plotnik recommends:
Elephants, by Hannah Mumby
(see also earlier books by Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Joyce Poole)
A Primate’s Memoir, by Robert Sapolsky
Chimpanzee Politics, by Frans de Waal
(see also de Waal’s more recent books)
You can read more about Josh’s work at his lab website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're off this week but are excited to share a thought-provoking conversation from our archives, about the long-standing puzzle of why we (and other creatures) dream. Happy holidays from the Many Minds team!
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You may not remember much about it, but chances are last night you went on a journey. As you slept, your brain concocted a story—maybe a sprawl of interconnected stories. It took you to some unreal places, gave you superpowers, unearthed old acquaintances, and twisted your perceptions. Meanwhile, billions of brains all around you, up and down the tree of life, were probably doing something very similar—dreaming, that is. But why do we do this? What could possibly be the function of these nightly ramblings?
My guest today is Dr. Erik Hoel. He is a writer and a neuroscientist at Tufts University. In a paper published earlier this year, Erik presented a new theory of why we (and other creatures) dream. It's called the “over-fitted brain hypothesis”; the basic idea is that dreaming helps us stay cognitively limber, adaptable—less tied to the particulars of our previous experiences.
Erik and I discuss how he came to this new theory. We talk about how his account develops an analogy between the "overfitting" problem in machine learning and the "overfitting" problem that biological brains face as well. We discuss how his hypothesis can account for the bizarre nature of dream experience. And we consider Erik's provocative suggestion that dreams are really just one type of fiction—biological fictions, if you like—and that other types of fiction may serve similar purposes.
Erik is a fascinating, wide-ranging thinker (there aren’t a lot of neuroscientists who also write novels). And this is a conversation I'll be chewing on for some time. It takes on one of those timeless questions about human experience—why we dream—from an angle that feels fresh and energizing.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Erik Hoel. Hope you enjoy it!
The paper we discuss is available here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – Dreams have been in the news recently, with reports of an uptick in strange dreams during the pandemic.
9:30 – An early study on “dream deprivation.”
11:00 – An article on the idea that dreams serve memory consolidation.
23:00 – A study showing that we don’t dream about reading or writing.
27:30 – An attempt to solve a Rubik’s cube with a robot hand.
32:00 – An influential paper articulating the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis.
38:30 – A recent paper on the question of whether animals like octopuses dream.
42:00 – We’ve discussed Pinker’s “music is like cheesecake” analogy in previous episodes, most recently in our discussion of the evolution of music.
46:00 – For more on these ideas, see Dr. Hoel’s essay ‘Enter the Supersensorium’—and be sure to check out his new novel The Revelations!
You can find Dr. Hoel on Twitter (@erikphoel) and subscribe his newsletter on Substack.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Karen Bakker. Karen is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia and author of the new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. 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: [email protected].
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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – A range of bat sounds are available on the website of Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild (who was previously featured on the show!).
4:30 – The winner of the 2014 ‘Most Beautiful Sound in the World’ contest was a recording of a froggy swamp in Malaysia.
10:30 – A popular article profiling the relatively young field of “bioacoustics.” A recent academic article by Dr. Bakker and a colleague about “conservation acoustics” in particular.
11:30 – A popular article about the use of acoustic technologies to discover and monitor whale populations.
17:00 – A research article about the involvement of infrasound in peacock mating displays.
23:30 – A research study showing that coral larvae move toward reef sounds.
28:00 – A review paper by Camila Ferrara and colleagues about sound communication in Amazonian river turtles.
31:00 – A research article by Heidi Appel and a colleague about plants responding to the sounds of leaf-chewing.
35:00 – A recent historical study of Karl von Frisch and his work with honey bees. A recent study suggesting the possibility of play in bumble bees (not honey bees).
42:00 – A popular article profiling the field of “biosemiotics.”
48:00 – An essay 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 (Braiding Sweetgrass), Dylan Robinson (Hungry Listening), and John Borrows.
Dr. Bakker recommends:
A number of examples of the “sounds of life” are collected at Dr. Bakker’s website, here. The same site also includes recommendations for getting involved in citizen science. In addition to the books by Indigenous scholars listed above, Dr. Bakker recommends work by Monica Gagliano.
You can read more about Karen’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 also subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Mayor; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Our second guest is Elly Truitt; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art.
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 here.
Notes and links
4:00 – See Adrienne’s TedEd lesson about Talos, the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s 2019 talk for the Long Now Foundation.
7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in this painting by Edward Poynter.
12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her website; for more on Elly’s research program, see her website.
18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see here.
23:00 – A recent piece about Aristotle’s writings on slavery.
26:00 – An article about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today.
30:00 – A recent research article about the Antikythera mechanism.
34:00 – See Adrienne’s popular article about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha.
38:45 – See Elly’s article about how automata figured prominently in tombs.
47:00 – See Elly’s recent video lecture 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, The Restless Clock.
50:00 – An article about a “torture robot” of ancient Sparta.
58:00 – A painting of the “Iron Knight” in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
Adrienne Mayor recommends:
The Greeks and the New, by Armand D’Angour
Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, edited by Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens
In Our Own Image, by George Zarkadakis
Ancient Inventions, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
Elly Truitt recommends:
AI Narratives, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon
The Love Makers, by Aifric Campbell
You can read more about Adrienne’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Elly’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're taking care of some housekeeping this week, so we're sharing a favorite from our archives. Look out for a new episode at the end of the month!
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Preferences, decisions, goals. When you hear these words, you probably think of humans. Or, if not humans then maybe charismatic animals—you know, great apes, certain species of birds, maybe dogs. In any case, I bet you think of creatures that are more or less cognitively sophisticated. I know I do. But, according to some researchers, this is an outmoded and over-narrow way of thinking. They propose that decisions and goals—not to mention other fancy-seeming constructs like memory, problem-solving, and intelligence—can usefully be ascribed to an astonishingly large array of agents. Not just humans, not just animals, not even just organisms.
My guest on today’s episode is Dr. Michael Levin. He’s the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University; he directs the Allen Discovery Center and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. In recent years, Mike’s been developing a radical reconsideration of the nature of mind and intelligence. He argues that it’s not just humans and other smart creatures that traffic in all this classically cognitive stuff. It’s also cells, tissues, organs, colonial organisms, and much more. He sometimes summarizes his view as “cognition all the way down.”
Here we talk about how Mike came to this perspective. We discuss his empirical studies of bioelectricity, including some pretty astonishing experiments on planaria. We dig deep into two of the conceptual models he uses in talking about his “mind everywhere” framework: the “axis of persuadability” and the notion of the “cognitive light-cone”. And we talk about why Mike rejects the criticism that this is all mere anthropomorphism. In fact, he makes a compelling case that it’s time we retired that term altogether.
In the intro to Many Minds way back when, we talked about how the terrain of mind is vast. But as I’ve learned about the work of Mike and others, I’ve become convinced that the terrain of mind is actually vaster than I imagined then—maybe vastly vaster. I think you’ll like this one, folks. And even if you’re not convinced, there’s little doubt you’ll be provoked. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:10 – Dr. Levin mentions the caterpillar-to-butterfly transition in the introduction to a recent theoretical paper.
8:00 – Dr. Levin’s work on bioelectricity and regeneration are the focus of a recent profile of his work in the New Yorker. A recent perspective piece on bioelectric signaling by Dr. Levin is here.
8:50 – The book The Body Electric was an early influence on Dr. Levin’s interests.
10:30 – The term “basal cognition” refers to minimal cognitive agents like cells and slime molds. It is also the label for a newly formed subfield or researchers who work on such systems. Read the introduction to a recent special issue on the topic, written by Dr. Levin and colleagues.
13:45 – Much of Dr. Levin’s early work (described, e.g., here) was on the generation of left-right asymmetry, a thorny issue in morphogenesis.
15:45 – Planaria are a popular model organism in biology. For a fun conversation about their curious properties, see this episode of the podcast Ologies.
20:30 – Dr. Levin and colleagues’ experiments with two-headed planaria were first reported here.
25:30 – Here Dr. Levin mentions Shuffle Brain by Paul Pietsch.
26:40 – See Dr. Levin’s recent discussions of “scale-free cognition” and “cognition all the way down” (the latter piece was written for a general audience and co-authored with the philosopher Daniel Dennett).
32:00 – Dr. Levin’s notion of the “axis of persuadability” is discussed here.
42:00 – Dr. Levin’s light-cone model of cognition is sketched here (see especially Figure 2).
52:00 – Dr. Levin has applied his ideas to tumorigenesis (e.g., here).
52:45 – For an intro to Umwelt theory, see our earlier episode, ‘Me, my Umwelt and I.’
58:00 – Dr. Levin discusses ideas about the anthropomorphism objection here.
Dr. Levin recommends books by:
You can find Dr. Levin on Twitter (@drmichaellevin) and keep up with his latest research on his lab’s website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Kate Laskowski. 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 a paper 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 here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A paper by Dr. Laskowski and a colleague on strong personalities in sticklebacks.
5:30 – The website 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 here.
11:00 – A brief encyclopedia entry on sticklebacks.
13:00 – A video of two sea anemones fighting. A research article about fighting (and personality) in sea anemones.
15:00 – A classic article reviewing the “Big 5” model in human personality research.
17:00 – The original article proposing five personality factors in animals.
22:30 – A recent special issue on the “Pace-of-Life syndromes” framework.
27:00 – A recent paper on evidence for the “fluctuating selection” idea in great tits.
29:00 – A 2017 paper by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues on “behavioral individuality” in clonal fish raised in near-identical environments.
32:10 – A just-released paper by Dr. Laskowski and colleagues extending their earlier findings on clonal fish.
39:30 – The Twitter account of the Many Birds project. The website for the project.
Dr. Laskowski recommends:
Innate, by Kevin Mitchell
Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller
The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
You can read more about Dr. Laskowksi’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Mark Miller. 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 Contemplative Science Podcast, which Mark co-hosts.
Alright friends, on to my chat with Mark Miller. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:15 – The website of the Hokkaido University Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (CHAIN). The website of the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS).
6:00 – Dr. Miller co-hosts the Contemplative Science podcast, a project of M3CS.
7:30 – For one introduction to the predictive processing framework, see this article by Dr. Miller and colleagues.
11:00 – See Dr. Miller’s essay in Aeon on social media, co-authored with Ben White, as well as this more detailed treatment for an academic audience.
12:00 – See a paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues on depression.
14:00 – An introduction to the subfield of “computational psychiatry.”
17:00 – Andy Clark’s “watershed” paper on the predictive processing framework.
18:00 – A recent book on “active inference” (which is largely synonymous with the predictive processing approach).
22:00 – A chapter on the idea of the “body as the first prior.”
24:30 – A demo of the “hollow face” illusion.
29:00 – On the potential value of psychedelics in jarring people out of trenches and ruts, see also our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.
31:00 – See our recent episode with Dimitris Xygalatas.
34:30 – A popular article on children wanting to hear the same stories over and over.
38:00 – A paper by Coltan Scrivner and colleagues on horror fans and psychological resilience during COVD-19.
42:30 – A recent article 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 recent paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues on the evocative notion of “grip.”
50:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues about video games and predictive processing.
57:00 – A paper 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 Andy Clark, including:
You can read more about Dr. Miller’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
From one perspective, rituals are pure silliness. They might involve us waving our hands in a certain way and saying these exact words, in this exact order; we might put on a funny costume, or eat specific foods, or even subject ourselves to considerable amounts of pain. And we don't just perform these rituals once either—we tend to do them over and over again, year after year. Seen in this way, rituals are frivolous, expendable, and mind-numbingly repetitive. And yet they’re also central. Rituals are found in abundance in all human cultures; they're a fixture of every historical period. So what's the story? How can we reconcile the apparent silliness of rituals with their centrality to our species?
My guest today is Dr. Dimitris Xygalatas. He is Associate Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He’s also the author of the new book, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. In the book, Dimitris makes the case that rituals are far from extraneous sideshows: they’re enormously valuable, both for individuals and for groups, and they form a core part of what it means to be human.
Here, Dimitris and I talk about some of the extreme rituals that he's studied, in particular, fire walking. We discuss the methods he uses to study these kind of traditions, especially unobtrusive physiological measures like heart rate monitoring. We also touch on: ritual-like behaviors in other species; what OCD behaviors have in common with certain ritual behaviors; why collective traditions often involve pain and synchronized movement; and how rituals serve to strengthen social bonds and enhance our well-being.
If you enjoy this convo, be sure to check out Dimitris's book—I can recommend it heartily. And if you're enjoying Many Minds, perhaps consider posting a review or leaving us a rating. Or maybe telling a friend, or three.
Alright folks, on to my chat with Dimitris Xygalatas. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – Dr. Xygalatas wrote a previous book about firewalking in Greece. For his papers on various aspects of firewalking, see here, here, and here, among others.
14:00 – The website for the Experimental Anthropology lab at UConn.
20:00 – A paper in which Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues examined heart-rate synchrony in the context of a fire-walking ritual.
26:00 – A popular article about the concept of “over-imitation”—the idea that children will copy adults’ actions with high fidelity, even if those actions have no clear causal effect.
27:00 – A research article discussing imitation and over-imitation in chimpanzees and human children.
28:00 – A research article about children’s ritualistic behaviors and obsessive compulsive disorder.
31:00 – A popular article on the “waterfall display” originally described by Jane Goodall. A video about the display, put out by the Jane Goodall Institute.
34:00 – A recent study by Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues about pre-free-throw rituals in basketball players.
36:00 – A theoretical article on the “compensatory control model.”
40:00 – See this paper by Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues about the Thaipusam festival and how it promotes prosociality.
45:00 – For a classic exploration of synchronized movement, see the book, Keeping Together in Time, by the historian William H. McNeill.
48:00 – A study in which Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues explored the phenomenon of “collective effervescence” in the context of fire-walking.
50:00 – A recent article by Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues about ritual and well-being.
51:50 – A recent popular article by Dr. Xygalatas about Burning Man as an example of modern collective ritual.
Dr. Xygalatas recommends:
The Sweet Spot, by Paul Bloom
Drunk, by Edward Slingerland (featured in an earlier episode!)
You can read more about Dr. Xygalatas’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
If your podcast listening habits are anything like mine, you might be out for a walk right now. Maybe you’re wandering the neighborhood, just blocks from home, or maybe you’re further afield. In either case, I’m guessing you’re finding your way without too much trouble—you’re letting some intuitive sense steer you, track how far you’ve gone, tell you where to go next. This inner navigator of yours is doing all in the background, as your mind wanders elsewhere, and magically it gets it all right. Most of the time, anyway. But how is it doing it? What allows us to pull this off?
My guest today is Dr. Hugo Spiers, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His lab studies how our brains "remember the past, navigate the present, and imagine the future.” In recent years Hugo and his group have used a wide variety of methods—and some astonishingly large datasets—to shed light on central questions about human spatial abilities.
Here, Hugo and I do a quick tour of the neuroscience of navigation—including the main brain structures involved and how they were discovered. We talk about research on a very peculiar population, the London taxi driver. We discuss the game Sea Hero Quest and what it's teaching us about navigation abilities around the world. We also touch on what GPS might be doing to us; whether the hippocampus actually resembles a seahorse; the ingenious layout of our brain's inner grids; navigation ability as an early sign of Alzheimer's; how “place cells” actually map more than just place; and how the monarch butterfly finds its way.
Super excited to share this one folks—this is an episode that's been on our wish list for some time. For mobile organisms like us, navigation is life or death—it’s as basic as eating or breathing. So when we dig into the foundations of these spatial abilities, we’re really digging into some of the most basic foundations of mind.
So let’s get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Hugo Spiers. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A brief documentary about a person with developmental topographical disorder.
8:00 – There have been a slew of popular articles about the question of whether GPS is undermining our navigation abilities—see here and here.
12:00 – A classic academic article about path integration in mammals.
14:00 – The classic academic article by Edward Tolman on the idea of “cognitive maps.”
16:00 – A side-by-side comparison of a human hippocampus and seahorse. The resemblance is indeed striking.
18:00 – A classic academic article reporting “place cells” in rats.
21:00 – A research article on seasonal changes in hippocampus size across different species.
22:00 – A recent academic article on interactions between the hippocampus and the striatum in navigation.
23:30 – An article reviewing the first decade of research on “grid cells.” A video showing the activity of grid cells in a rat.
26:00 – The long struggle to calculate longitude is subject of a much-beloved book by Dava Sobel.
27:00 – The press release announcing the Nobel prize for the discovery of grid cells and place cells.
31:00 – A popular article about ‘The Knowledge’—a famed test for London taxi drivers.
33:30 – The celebrated original study by Eleanor Maquire and colleagues on structural changes in the brains of London taxi drivers. The (also-celebrated) follow-up study that Dr. Spiers was part of, comparing London taxi and bus drivers.
37:00 – More about the Taxi Brains project can be found here.
41:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Spiers’ team, led by Eva-Maria Griesbauer, reviews the cognitive neuroscience studies on London taxi drivers and dives deep into the learning techniques the drivers use.
44:30 – A paper by Dr. Spiers and team providing an overview of Sea Hero Quest and the studies it has been used for to date. A video demo of the game, and a popular article describing its motivation. Dr. Spiers developed the idea for the game in collaboration with Michael Hornberger.
50:00 – A recent research article looking at the value of Sea Hero Quest in detecting those at risk for Alzheimers.
53:00 – One of the first studies by Dr. Spiers and colleagues using Sea Hero Quest to test a vast sample and examine effects of variables like age, gender, and nationality.
54:30 – A more recent paper by Dr. Spiers and colleagues examining the effect of growing up in cities that are more or less “griddy.”
57:00 – A study by Dr. Spiers and colleagues showing a relationship between real-world navigation ability and navigation performance in Sea Hero Quest.
1:04:00 – The website of the International Orienteering Foundation. A video showing the sport.
1:06:00 – A review paper by Dr. Spiers and colleagues about the potential roles of cognitive maps in navigation and beyond.
1:07:00 – A review of “concept cells”, aka “Halle Berre cells.”
1:08:00 – A recent opinion piece by Dr. Spiers on the question of how many maps—and of what kind—the hippocampus implements.
1:10:30 – A recent research article on “time cells” in the hippocampus.
1:14:30 – A recent review article about monarch butterfly navigation.
Dr. Spiers recommends:
Human Spatial Navigation, by Ekstrom, Spiers, Bohbot, and Rosenbaum
‘The Cognitive Map in Humans: Spatial Navigation and Beyond,’ by Epstein, Patai, Julian, and Spiers
You can read more about Dr. Spiers work on his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
And we're back. We're rested, we're rejuvenated, and we're ready for Season 4 of Many Minds! We're also, frankly, a bit hot. As I am recording this there is a heat dome parked over California and there is sweat under my headphones.
But, more to the point, we've got a great episode to kick the new season off. My guest today is Dr. Irene Pepperberg. For more than forty years now, Irene has been doing groundbreaking research on parrots, with a focus on how they think and communicate. She is best known for her work with an African Grey parrot named Alex. Alex learned English words for numbers, shapes, colors, and more; he asked questions and talked to himself; he sometimes even invented words of his own. He was, in short, pretty remarkable.
In this conversation, Irene and I talk about Alex, as well as his successors in the lab, Griffin and Athena. We talk about these animals' histories and personalities and their most impressive feats. We discuss how parrots are like human children in some ways—and unlike them in others. And while we talk a lot about verbal abilities, we also discuss visual working memory, delayed gratification, and optical illusions. Finally, we touch on the power of symbols, parrot communication and cognition in the wild, and the future of animal communication research.
One quick production note: there are just couple of patches of fuzzy audio here. Please do stick with it though—things get smooth later on and this conversation is just too chock full of cool stuff, really wouldn’t want you to miss it.
Alright friends, a very warm welcome back, and on to my chat with Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – For some reflections on the early days of “animal language studies,” see Dr. Pepperberg’s recent paper ‘Nonhuman and nonhuman-human communication: Some issues and questions.’
5:00 – Dr. Pepperberg is the author of two influential books about her research with Alex. The first is The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots; the second Alex & Me, which was a New York Times bestseller.
6:15 – One of the original studies on parrot vocal abilities by Dietmar Todt. For more on the “modelling” technique that Dr. Pepperberg adapted, see her recent paper.
9:00 – Read an article that the New York Times published about Alex upon his death in 2007.
10:00 – Photos of Alex, Griffin, and Athena can be found on the Alex Foundation website.
17:00 – For an example of Dr. Pepperberg’s classic work teaching the parrots to talk about shape and color, see here. For one of her more recent studies on shape learning, see here.
19:00 – For an example of Dr. Pepperberg’s classic work teaching the parrots to talk about numbers, see here. For a review of numerical concepts in the parrots, see here.
24:00 – Alex originally learned “none” in the context of learning the concepts of same and different. For the original paper, see here.
28:30 – For Dr. Pepperberg’s recent work on delayed gratification, see here and here. For a recent effort to “revisit” the classic Marshmallow Task in human children, see here.
33:00 – For a recent study by Dr. Pepperberg and colleagues on “inference by exclusion”, see here.
35:30 – A popular article about recent research showing that baby parrots babble. For discussion of babbling in baby bats, see our earlier interview with Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild.
37:00 – An older article in Scientific American describing some of David Premack’s work teaching apes to use symbols.
38:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Pepperberg and colleagues involving a “shell game on steroids” (to test “visual working memory manipulation”).
41:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Pepperberg and colleagues looking at the parrots’ ability to reason about probabilities.
43:30 – For the “transformative power of symbols” idea as it applies to humans, see here.
45:00 – See Dr. Pepperberg’s recent article reviewing her research on visual perception in parrots, including work using optical illusions.
48:00 – A recent research article comparing birds’ and primates’ brains.
51:00 – For Dr. Pepperberg’s recent reflections on the past and future of “animal language studies,” see here.
54:00 – A short animated video explaining the “gavagai problem,” which is associated with the issue of the “indeterminacy of translation.”
You can read more about Dr. Pepperberg’s work and collaborators—human and parrot!—at the Alex Foundation website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Friends, here's another favorite episode from our archives while we're still on summer break. Enjoy!
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It’s an old question: How does experience shape our minds and brains? Some people play the piano; others drive taxis; others grow up trilingual. For years now, scientists have examined how these and other kinds of life experiences can lead to subtle differences in our concepts and cortexes. But to really push on the question, to really explore the limits of how experience can rewire us, some researchers have turned to an especially dramatic case: blindness. What does a life without visual input do to the mind and brain? My guest today is Dr. Marina Bedny, an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. For more than a decade now, Marina has been researching blindness and, in particular, what blindness can tell us much about where our concepts come from and about how our brains get organized.
Here, Marina and I discuss how people who have been blind since birth nonetheless develop rich, sophisticated understandings of the visual world. We talk about how the visual cortex in blind folks gets repurposed for other decidedly non-visual functions, like language. We consider the intriguing findings that blind people very often outperform sighted people in certain kinds of tasks. On the way, we also touch on John Locke and the British empiricists; the notion of cortical recycling; the possibility of re-opening the brain's critical periods; and a bunch else.
This was a super thought-provoking conversation—I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think you will too. But, before we get to it, a final reminder about the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. This year’s DISI will be not only in-person but held in the charming seaside city of St Andrews, Scotland. More details at disi.org. The application window is only open for a little while longer, so better act fast.
Alright friends, on to my chat with Dr. Marina Bedny. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – A popular article and video on the ideas of John Locke and other empiricists.
4:50 – One of the original articles by the philosopher Frank Jackson on Mary the color scientist.
7:35 – The 1985 book by Dr. Barbara Landau and Dr. Lila Gleitman on language acquisition in (a few) blind children.
11:00 – Dr. Bedny’s first study involving blind subjects, in collaboration with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Dr. Rebecca Saxe.
15:00 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing color knowledge in blind and sighted adults.
23:30 – A recent study by Dr. Bedny and collaborators on blind people’s understanding of visual verbs like sparkle, glow, peek, and stare.
30:30 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing knowledge of animal appearance in blind and sighted adults.
34:00 – Tour an interactive model of the visual cortex—and the rest of the brain—here.
36:00 – A now-classic paper by Dr. Norihiro Sadato and colleagues on how reading Braille activates blind people’s “visual” cortex.
37:30– The “metamodal” hypothesis and the “pluripotent” hypothesis are compared in Dr. Bedny’s recent article in TiCs.
45:30 – A 2011 paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues about how, in blind people, the “visual” cortex is involved in language processing.
49:00 – A paper showing that “visual” areas in blind people are highly synchronized when listening to stories. A more recent paper in a similar vein.
53:00 – A now-classic paper by Dehaene and Cohen on the “cultural recycling” of certain brain areas.
56:00 – A paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues on sensitive periods and cortical specialization.
1:01:00 – A recent paper from Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Karen Arcos, showing superior verbal working memory in blind relative to sighted adults.
1:03:30 – Another study from Dr. Bedny’s lab showing that blind people are less likely than sighted people to be led astray by garden-path sentences.
Dr. Bedny recommends:
Her TiCs article on the “pluripotent cortex”
Recent papers (e.g. here and here) from her lab led by Dr. Judy Kim
A now-classic paper on cortical recycling.
You can read more about Dr. Bedny’s work at her lab’s website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're on break this month, but are sharing some favorite episodes from our archives to tide you over. Enjoy, friends!
I’m betting you’ve heard about the next generation of artificial intelligence, the one that’s just around the corner. It’s going to be pervasive, all-competent, maybe super-intelligent. We’ll rely on it to drive cars, write novels, diagnose diseases, and make scientific breakthroughs. It will do all these things better, faster, more safely than we bumbling humans ever could. The thing is, we’ve been promised this for years. If this next level of AI is coming, it seems to be taking its time. Might it be that AI is simply harder than we thought?
My guest today is Dr. Melanie Mitchell. She is the Davis Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the author of a number of books, including her latest, which is titled ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.’
In this conversation we zoom in on Melanie’s widely discussed recent essay, 'Why AI is harder than we think.’ We talk about the repeating cycle of hype and disenchantment within AI, and how it stretches back to the first years of the field. We walk through four fallacies that Mitchell identifies that lead us to think that super smart AI is closer than it actually is. We talk about self-driving cars, brittleness, adversarial perturbations, Moravec’s paradox, analogy, brains in vats, and embodied cognition, among other topics. And we discuss an all-important concept, one we can’t easily define but we can all agree AI is sorely lacking: common sense.
Across her scholarly publications and public-facing essays, Melanie has recently emerged as one of our most cogent and thoughtful guides to AI research. I’ve been following her work for a while now and was really stoked to get to chat with her. Her essay is insightful, lucid, and just plain fun—if you enjoy this conversation, I definitely suggest you check it out for yourselves.
Alright folks, on to my conversation with Dr. Melanie Mitchell. And for those in the US—happy thanksgiving!
The paper we discuss is available here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – A recent essay by Dr. Mitchell on self-driving cars and common sense.
14:00 – An influential paper from 2013 titled ‘Intriguing properties of neural networks.’
16:50 – A video introduction to “deep learning.”
19:00 – A paper on “first step fallacies” in AI by Hubert Dreyfus.
21:00 – For a discussion of Alpha Go’s recent success with the game of Go, see our earlier interview with Dr. Marta Halina.
26:00 – An influential 1976 paper titled, ‘Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity.’
31:00 – A popular Twitter account that tags recent findings with “In mice.”
38:00 – A paper by Lawrence Barsalou on “grounded cognition.” For related ideas see Lakoff & Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By.
41:00 – A recent book by Brian Cantwell Smith, The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.
43:00 – An article on the idea of “core knowledge.”
47:00 – The CYC project.
49:30 – A recent article by Dr. Mitchell about analogies people have been using to understand COVID-19.
50:30 – An op-ed by Dr. Mitchell about why we should not worry os much about super-intelligence.
End-of-show recommendations:
Dr. Mitchell’s 2019 book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
Blake et al., 2017, ‘Building Machines that Think and Learn Like People’
Chollet, 2019, ‘On the Measure of Intelligence’
You can find Dr. Mitchell on Twitter (@MelMitchell1) and follow his research at her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Arounds Us. Ed is a science writer for The Atlantic and the author of an exceptional earlier book on the microbiome called I Contain Multitudes. 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 here.
Notes and links
3:30 – One of our earlier audio essays—'Me, my umwelt, and I’—profiled von Uexküll and his concept of an Umwelt.
6:00 – The classic Nagel article ‘What is it like to be a bat?’; Mike Tomasello’s recent variant, ‘What is it like to be a chimpanzee?’, which we discussed just last episode.
10:00 – One of many articles by Ed about COVID-19. He was awarded a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the pandemic.
14:30 – A popular article on proprioception.
19:00 – A research article on the evolution of opsin proteins.
20:00 – A primer on echolocation.
25:00 – A brief article on heat-sensitive pits in snakes.
26:30 – An academic article about the “star” of the star-nosed mole. A video showing the star-nosed mole in action.
31:00 – A popular article about the eyes of starfish.
32:00 – A collection of research articles about the Ampullae of Lorenzini.
35:00 – A very recent article about spider webs as “outsourced” hearing.
38:00 – A research article about aspects of bird song that humans can’t hear.
40:00 – A study 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 his website, catch up on his stories in The Atlantic, or follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back, friends! Apologies for the brief delay in getting this episode out. We’re now happily back on track and super stoked for what we have coming up—starting with today’s episode.
My guest is Dr. Michael Tomasello, a voraciously interdisciplinary thinker, an incredibly productive scientist, and a pioneer in the systematic comparison of chimpanzee and human capacities. Mike is a Distinguished Professor in the department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, where also holds appointments in Evolutionary Anthropology, Philosophy, and Linguistics. He is the author of growing list of influential books, including the recent Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny and a new book coming out this fall titled The Evolution of Agency.
In this conversation, Mike and I talk about how he came to study both children and chimpanzees. We discuss the challenges of working with each of these groups—and the challenges of comparing them. We talk about some of the key concepts that have figured prominently in Mike’s work over the years—like joint attention and false belief—and well as some of the concepts he’s been elaborating more recently—including norms, roles, and agency. We also discuss Vygotsky and Piaget; how humans got started down the path toward intense interdependence and cooperation; and what Mike thinks he got wrong earlier in his career.
Lots in here, folks—let’s just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Michael Tomasello. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – Early in his career, Dr. Tomasello was affiliated with the storied Yerkes Primate Center.
5:00 – Major works by Lev Vygotsky (in translation) include Mind in Society and Thought and Language.
7:00 – A video about some of the early work of Wolfgang Kohler.
10:30 – Dr. Tomasello is the Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
17:00 – A chapter outlining some key results of “looking time” (or “preferential-looking”) experiments in developmental psychology.
21:00 – A recent article by Cathal O’Madagain and Dr. Tomasello about “joint attention to mental content.”
25:00 – A paper by Holger Diessel on demonstratives and joint attention.
25:00 – A video describing work that Dr. Tomasello and colleagues have carried out on chimpanzee theory of mind. A 2019 general audience article summarizing the state of this research.
28:00 – Dr. Tomasello’s book on child development, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny, was published in 2018.
31:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Tomasello on the importance of roles in human cognition and social life.
34:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Tomasello on the psychology behind the human sense of obligation.
35:00 – A paper of Art Markman and C. Hunt Stillwell on “role-governed categories.”
36:00 – A paper by Christophe Boesch on “cooperative hunting roles” among chimpanzees.
38:00 – A very recent paper by Dr. Tomasello, “What is it like to be a chimpanzee?”
39:15 – A study by Dr. Tomasello and colleagues about whether apes (and children) monitor their decisions.
40:45 – Dr. Tomasello’s most cited book, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, was published in 2001.
43:00 – Dr. Tomasello’s next book, The Evolution of Agency, will be published in September by MIT press.
You can read more about Dr. Tomasello’s work at his website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Have you ever pondered the letter P, or maybe reflected on the letter R? As in, thought about their structures, their shapes, and how they came to be. I, to be honest, had not. I have never given these letters—or any other letters—much thought. But that’s what we’re up to today. In this episode, we’re looking across the world’s hundred plus scripts and asking some basic questions: How are they alike? How do they differ? And why do they have the shapes that they do?
My guests are Dr. Yoolim Kim and Dr. Olivier Morin. Yoolim is a Psycholinguist at the Korea Institute at Harvard University, and Olivier is director of the Minds and Traditions research group (aka ‘The Mint’) at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. Olivier and Yoolim, along with other colleagues, have recently launched a new online game called Glyph. You can play right now. It asks players to help describe, break down, and classify the characters of dozens of writing systems around the world.
Here, we talk about Glyph and what Yoolim and Olivier hope to learn from it. We do a bit of ‘Writing Systems 101’ and shine a spotlight on two scripts with fascinating origin stories: Hangul, the Korean script which was devised in the 15th century and Vai, a script invented in Liberia in the 19th century. We also talk about how universal cognitive factors shape writing systems and about whether the writing system you use shapes how you think. Finally, we discuss the earliest writing systems and what they were used for; the myth that the alphabet is the most advanced type of writing system; and the understudied—but not uncommon!—phenomenon of “biscriptalism.”
If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Glyph. It sounds super fun and engrossing—and I’ll definitely be playing it myself!
On to my conversation with Dr. Yoolim Kim and Dr. Olivier Morin. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – You can sign up to play Glyph and watch a video about the game here.
6:30 – The International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA.
10:00 – In addition to writing, Dr. Morin’s group at the MPI has also studied coin designs and other aspects of visual culture.
16:30 – A paper by Dr. Morin and colleagues about writing as one of many kinds of “graphic codes.”
18:40 – An explanation of the international laundry symbols.
19:50 – A video about how Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded. A website where you can see your name written in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
24:50 – An article laying out five major types of writing system, distinguished by the linguistic unit they encode.
27:40 – More information about Hangul and Vai.
33:00 – A pioneering early paper by Mark Changizi and colleagues about the origins of letter shapes.
34:00 – A research paper by Dr. Morin about how cognitive biases for cardinal shapes and vertical symmetry shape letter forms.
37:30 – A cuneiform tablet, which shows how the script has a distinctive three-dimensional “wedge-shaped” quality.
41:30 – A research paper by Dr. Morin and colleagues on how the Vai script seems to have gotten simpler over its short history. A general audience treatment of the same study by co-author Piers Kelly.
42:00 – A research paper by Dr. Helena Miton and Dr. Morin about what determines the complexity of written letters.
45:00 – The Ogham script, which may have needed to grow more complex over time rather than simplify.
46:00 – An article on the origins of writing in different parts of the world. An article on the rebus principle.
48:30 – Our earlier essay on footprints, which discusses the idea that bird tracks inspired the Chinese writing system.
50:00 – A paper in which Dr. Morin and colleagues discuss the role of early writing in “recitation practices”.
52:00 – The idea that literacy profoundly affects cognition was famously articulated by Jack Goody in The Domestication of the Savage Mind. A paper by Stanislas Dehaene and a colleague about the “Visual Word Form Area” and how it becomes rapidly specialized for reading.
55:00 – Korean readers are often “biscriptal” in that they are familiar with both Hangul and Hanja.
57:30 – A paper by Dr. Kim and colleagues on whether Hanja shapes the mental lexicon of Korean speakers.
59:00 – A research paper examining some of the effects of biscriptalism.
1:03 – A paper by Isabelle Dautriche and colleagues about how word forms are clustered in the lexicon.
Dr. Kim recommends:
In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent
Highly Irregular, by Arika Okrent
Frindle, by Andrew Clements
Dr. Morin recommends:
The Greatest Invention, by Silvia Ferrara
Stories of Your Life, by Ted Chiang
Codes of the Underworld, by Diego Gambetta
You can read more about Dr. Morin’s lab on the Mint website and follow him on Twitter. You can read more about Dr. Kim’s research here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Right now, as I’m recording this, there’s an astonishing spectacle unfolding in the forests of Tennessee. Every June, vast swarms of Photinus carolinus fireflies light up the night there. The members of this particular species don’t just blink erratically and independently. They sync up; they flash in a dazzling unison, creating waves of light that seem to propagate through the forest. But how do they do it? How do these tiny creatures pull off such a brilliant display?
My guest today is Dr. Orit Peleg. She’s an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute, at the University of Colorado – Boulder. Though a physicist by training, Orit and her lab focus on the dynamics of living systems, and they have recently taken up the puzzle of firefly synchrony.
Here, we talk about what it’s like to do fieldwork on fireflies. We discuss the colorful history of research in this area and how the phenomenon of firefly synchrony was originally contested and explained away. We talk about what Orit and her team have learned about the mechanisms of this synchrony—and about their methods, which include rich in-the-wild recordings, experiments involving tents and LEDs, and a fair bit of modeling and math. We also touch on the firing of neurons, the pulsing of heart cells, the clapping of hands, and other examples of synchronization in the natural world.
As always, if you’re enjoying the show, we would really appreciate a rating or review or a recommendation to a friend. Thanks so much in advance for your support.
Alright, friends, on to my chat with Dr. Orit Peleg. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – A video of firefly synchrony, produced by the Peleg lab from their own data, is available here. Other videos are here and here. A general audience essay about firefly synchrony that Dr. Peleg wrote is here; another general audience essay about the Peleg lab’s work on fireflies is here. Firefly photography is an entire genre these days.
3:15 – Dr. Peleg and collaborators have conducted fieldwork on fireflies (different species) in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arizona.
8:00 – The website of the mathematician and popularizer Steven Strogatz.
11:00 – An example of Dr. Peleg’s work on bee swarms. A popular article she wrote on the topic.
13:30 – An example of an early report on firefly synchrony in Science magazine. Pioneering earlier work by Buck & Buck on the topic. An interview with Lynn Faust.
20:00 – Our previous episode on bat signals also discussed the issue of a congested signalling channel.
24:00 – Dr. Peleg and her lab have put out a number of studies on firefly synchrony in recent years—see here, here, and here (preprint).
32:00 – An academic review of the “integrate and fire” model.
34:00 – A video of an audience applauding and eventually syncing up.
40:00 – An article about the work of Todd Oakley on bioluminescence in sea fireflies. Edith Widder’s book, Below the Edge of Darkness.
42:30 – An article by Dr. Peleg and a colleague on dung beetle navigation.
Dr. Peleg recommends:
Silent Sparks, by Sara Lewis
Sync, by Steven Strogatz
David Attenborough’s Life that Glows
You can read more about Dr. Peleg’s work at her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 sign-up link in the show notes.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Michelle Langley. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – A 15,000 year old horse figurine from Les Espélugues cave in France.
6:00 – A classic paper by Conkey & Spector that helped initiate a wave of feminist archaeology.
7:30 – Dr. Langley’s first paper to examine children’s leavings in the archaeological record.
8:30 – See here for discussion and examples of perforated batons or bâton percés.
9:30 – Dr. Langley’s paper, co-authored with Mirani Litster, ‘Is it ritual? Or is it children?’
14:00 – An influential discussion of ethnographic analogies in archaeology.
18:30 – A paper on the interpretation of Dorset miniature harpoon heads.
23:30 – An article on the Neanderthal ornamental use of raptor feathers.
29:00 - Dr. Langley’s paper on identifying children’s secret spaces in the archaeological record.
30:30 – A book by David Sobel on children’s special spaces.
34:00 – A website about the site of Étiolles.
40:00 – A figure showing the layout of the Bruniquel Cave, including the secondary structures.
41:00 – More information about the mammoth bone huts of Ukraine.
44:00 – A paper by Dr. Langley and Thomas Suddendorf on bags and other “mobile containers” in human evolution.
47:00 – A video 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 Women’s Creation. This later inspired Ursula Le Guin to propose the “carrier bag theory of fiction.”
51:30 – An experimental study by Dr. Langley and colleagues on children’s emerging intuitions about the use of containers and bags.
55:30 – A paper by Dr. Langley and colleagues on early symbolic behavior in Indonesia.
Dr. Langley recommends:
Growing up in the Ice Age, by April Nowell
You can read more about Dr. Langley’s work at her website and follow her on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back friends! Today’s episode is an audio essay. Those who’ve listened to the show for a while now know that this is a classic Many Minds genre. But we actually haven’t done one in quite awhile. This one takes on a topic that is big, consequential, and above all quite fun: our species’ long-running obsession with our own uniqueness. I won’t say too much more—don’t want to spoil anything—but, like a lot of our essays, this one’s a mix of history of ideas and contemporary science, leavened—naturally—with a bit of speculation. Oh, and some neologizing. There’s a good neologism in here, or at least, a neologism.
One news item before we get to the essay: we’re stoked to announce the new Many Minds newsletter! The first edition is already out in the world—we’ll put a link to that and to the sign-up form in the show notes. For now the plan is that each installment will include brief descriptions of the latest episodes, as well as a curated little link pack—links to 5-10 of the most interesting things we’ve come across recently. Installments will be monthly so shouldn’t burden your inbox too much either. Again, look for the sign-up info in the show notes.
Alright folks, now on to our essay on the quest for human uniqueness!
A text version of this episode is also available on Medium.
Notes
2:00 – The “great hippocampus” debate has been discussed by the neuroscientist Charles Gross here and here.
4:00 – For discussion of the “man alone among animals” trope, see here and here.
5:00 – For the idea that only humans cry emotional tears, see here.
5:20 – The suggestion of the term human cognitive “autapomorphies” is from Thomas Suddendorf.
6:00 – On the idea that, relative to other primates, we have strange sleeping habits, see here.
6:30 – The website in question is called the Matrix of Contemporary Anthropogeny and is put out by CARTA, a transdisciplinary center at UCSD.
7:15 – On Von Economo neurons, see here.
8:00 – On “categorical perception” in chinchillas, see here.
9:00 – For the famous Jane Goodall & Louis Leakey exchange, see here.
9:30 – The paper by Laland and Seed, ‘Understanding Human Cognitive Uniqueness’, is available here.
11:00 – On our motivation to police our own uniqueness, see here.
12:00 – On the scarcity of ion channels in human neurons, see here. On our attunement to abstract geometry, see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
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 here!**
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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. This is one 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 here.
Notes and links
5:00 – An essay by Dr. Andrews & Dr. Monsó in Aeon magazine, about how rats deserve ethical protections.
7:30 – A popular article about findings that vervet monkeys socially learn food preferences. The original research paper is here.
9:10 – A popular article on the findings that rats can learn to play hide-and-seek.
22:00 – Dr. Andrews’ most recent book is How to Study Animal Minds. Her earlier book, The Animal Mind, is now out in a second edition.
24:00 – Morgan’s Canon has been widely discussed and criticized in recent decades (see here, here, and here).
27:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews on the role of folk psychology in animal cognition research.
33:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews discussing the idea of “anthropectomy.”
34:00 – The paper by Dan Dennett that makes the distinction between “romantics” and “killjoys.”
35:20 – Dr. Monsó’s recent book (in Spanish) translates as Schrödinger’s Opossum. See also: her essay 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 (here, here).
49:30 – See the recent chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews on “animal moral psychologies.” See also a paper by Dr. Monsó and colleagues, ‘Animal morality: What it means and why it matters.’
51:30 – A classic article by Frans de Waal, ‘Putting the altruism back into altruism.’
53:40 – An “appreciation and update” to Tinbergen’s four questions.
58:00 – For a review of some of the “rat empathy” studies, see the “animal moral psychologies” chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews. This line of work began with a paper by Bartal and colleagues in 2011. A skeptical take can be found here.
1:01 – A popular article on how chimpanzees pass the “marshmallow test.”
1:04:00 – A paper on (the apparent absence of) “third-party punishment” in chimpanzees.
1:06:00 – A recent paper using thermography to gauge whether marmosets understand each other’s “conversations.”
1:08:00 – One of the now-famous “ape suit” studies by Chris Krupenye and colleagues.
1:11:30 – A recent paper by Dr. Andrews on the possibility of animal social norms.
1:17:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Monsó on “how the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate.”
1:21:00 – A recent paper by Filip Mattens on touch—and the “vigilance” function of touch in particular.
1:25:20 – A video of “eye-poking” in capuchins, which Susan Perry has studied.
1:28:00 – On the WEIRD issue, see our essay on first decade of the acronym.
Dr. Andrews recommends:
The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Dr. Andrews & Jacob Beck
‘Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds,’ by Richard Moore
Chimpanzee Memoirs, edited by Stephen Ross* & Lydia Hopper
Dr. Monsó recommends:
The Animal Cognition entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka (forthcoming)
An Immense World, Ed Yong (forthcoming)
You can read more about Dr. Andrews’ work at her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Dr. Monsó’s work at her website and follow her on Twitter.
* Sadly, shortly after this episode was recorded, Stephen Ross died unexpectedly. Read an obituary here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back friends and happy spring! (Or fall, as the case may be.) Today's show takes on a disarmingly simple question: What is language for? As in, why do we say things to each other? What do words do for us? Why do our languages label some aspects of the world, but not others? My guest today is Dr. Nick Enfield. He's Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Nick has authored or edited more than a dozen books on different aspects of human language and communication—books on word meaning, gesture, conversation, social interaction, the languages of Southeast Asia, and more. His latest book, just published by MIT press, is titled Language vs Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. In it, Nick argues that language is pretty awful at capturing reality—but actually that's fine, because capturing reality isn’t the primary reason we use it. The real reason, in his view, is to coordinate with others. In this conversation, Nick and I flesh out this way of thinking about language as foremost a social coordination tool. Along the way, we talk about the two "reductions" that happen as brute reality gets transmuted into words. We discuss the economist Thomas Schelling and so-called Schelling maps. We talk about color words and plant names, salt and spoons, the insights of Benjamin Lee Whorf, the idea of “verbal overshadowing,” and a bunch of other phenomena and thinkers.
As I say in the interview, Nick has one of the most expansive views of human language of anyone I know. He draws on anthropology, economics, primatology, developmental psychology, not to mention decades of his own fieldwork in Laos. That expansive—one might say, "many minded"—perspective is on full display here.
Briefly, before we get to the conversation: if you have any ideas for future guests or topics—or want to lodge some criticisms—you can reach out to us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. We're always eager to hear from listeners.
Alright friends, now to my conversation with Dr. Nick Enfield. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
10:00 – Dr. Enfield’s 2002 edited book on “ethnosyntax.” Here is a brief overview of serial verb constructions.
15:30 – Dr. Enfield has another book coming out later this year, with Jack Sidnell, titled Consequences of Language.
20:00 – The website of the influential semanticist Anna Wierzbicka, one of Dr. Enfield’s early mentors.
22:45 – Roger Brown’s classic 1958 paper ‘How shall a thing be called?’
24:30 – Daniel Dor’s 2015 book, The Instruction of the Imagination.
25:40 – A popular article about the contributions of the economist Thomas Schelling. Another article on his notion of “focal points.”
37:00 – The classic treatment of color terms across languages is Berlin & Kay’s 1991 book Basic Color Terms.
40:00 – Dr. Enfield spent a large portion of his early career at the MPI for Psycholinguistics.
44:45 – The classic treatment of plant names across cultures is Berlin’s book, Ethnobiological Classification.
49:30 – Dr. Enfield has been documenting Kri, an indigenous language in Laos.
53:00 – The classic study on “verbal overshadowing” was done by Schooler & Engstler-Schooler in 1990.
58:20 – A classic paper by Krebs and Dawkins on signaling in nonhuman animals.
1:00:00 – The website of the influential (late) linguist Wallace Chafe.
1:08:30 – A widely-circulated 2013 paper by Dr. Enfield and colleagues on whether “huh” is a universal word. Spoiler: it seems to be.
1:10:00 - The researcher Jim Hurford has written several influential books on the evolution of language.
Dr. Enfield recommends:
Origins of Human Communication, by Michael Tomasello
Social Intelligence and Interaction, edited by Esther Goody
Language, Thought, and Reality, by Benjamin Lee Whorf
You can read more about Dr. Enfield’s work at his website and follow him on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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Welcome back folks! Today is a return to one of our favorite formats: the audio essay. If you like your audio essays short, concise, and full of tidbits, then this one will not disappoint.
We take a look at a 140-year-old idea but very much a radical one—the root-brain hypothesis. It was proposed by Charles Darwin in a book published in the twilight of his career. The idea, in short, is that plants have a structure that is, in some ways, brain-like—and it is located underground, at their roots. We talk about how Darwin and his son Francis arrived at this idea, why it was ignored for so long, and how it’s recently stirred to life.
Enjoy!
A text version of this essay is available here.
Notes and links
2:15 – The last page of Darwin’s The Power of Movement in Plants (1880).
3:25 – The 2009 paper by Dr. Baluška and colleagues about the history and modern revival of the “root-brain hypothesis.”
6:00 – The tinfoil hats experiment—and its influence—is discussed in this 2009 paper.
8:00 – The dust-up between Darwin and Sachs is described in this 1996 paper.
8:47 – The 2011 paper listing many of the environmental variables plants are now known to be sensitive to.
9:28 – Dr. Gagliano and colleagues’ paper on associative learning in plant and on plants’ use of sounds to find water. The possibility of echolocation is discussed here.
9:45 – For broader context surrounding the question of plants may have something like a brain, see Oné R. Pagán's essay titled 'The brain: A concept in flux.'
9:57 – The 2006 paper that inaugurated the field of “plant neurobiology.”
10:34 – Discussions of the “transition zone” of the root can be found in the 2009 paper by Baluška and colleagues, as well as in this more technical paper from 2010.
11:00 – The response letter to the original “plant neurobiology” paper, signed by 36 plant biologists.
12:00 – Michael Pollan’s 2013 article ‘The Intelligent Plant’ in The New Yorker.
12:05 – Anthony Trewavas’s letter, highlighting the power of metaphors in science.
12:26 – The 2020 paper about pea tendrils in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
Correction: The audio version of this episode misstates the publication year of Darwin's final book, about worms. The correct year is 1881, not 1883.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
It’s an old question: How does experience shape our minds and brains? Some people play the piano; others drive taxis; others grow up trilingual. For years now, scientists have examined how these and other kinds of life experiences can lead to subtle differences in our concepts and cortexes. But to really push on the question, to really explore the limits of how experience can rewire us, some researchers have turned to an especially dramatic case: blindness. What does a life without visual input do to the mind and brain? My guest today is Dr. Marina Bedny, an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. For more than a decade now, Marina has been researching blindness and, in particular, what blindness can tell us much about where our concepts come from and about how our brains get organized.
Here, Marina and I discuss how people who have been blind since birth nonetheless develop rich, sophisticated understandings of the visual world. We talk about how the visual cortex in blind folks gets repurposed for other decidedly non-visual functions, like language. We consider the intriguing findings that blind people very often outperform sighted people in certain kinds of tasks. On the way, we also touch on John Locke and the British empiricists; the notion of cortical recycling; the possibility of re-opening the brain's critical periods; and a bunch else.
This was a super thought-provoking conversation—I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think you will too. But, before we get to it, a final reminder about the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. This year’s DISI will be not only in-person but held in the charming seaside city of St Andrews, Scotland. More details at disi.org. The application window is only open for a little while longer, so better act fast.
Alright friends, on to my chat with Dr. Marina Bedny. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – A popular article and video on the ideas of John Locke and other empiricists.
4:50 – One of the original articles by the philosopher Frank Jackson on Mary the color scientist.
7:35 – The 1985 book by Dr. Barbara Landau and Dr. Lila Gleitman on language acquisition in (a few) blind children.
11:00 – Dr. Bedny’s first study involving blind subjects, in collaboration with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Dr. Rebecca Saxe.
15:00 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing color knowledge in blind and sighted adults.
23:30 – A recent study by Dr. Bedny and collaborators on blind people’s understanding of visual verbs like sparkle, glow, peek, and stare.
30:30 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing knowledge of animal appearance in blind and sighted adults.
34:00 – Tour an interactive model of the visual cortex—and the rest of the brain—here.
36:00 – A now-classic paper by Dr. Norihiro Sadato and colleagues on how reading Braille activates blind people’s “visual” cortex.
37:30– The “metamodal” hypothesis and the “pluripotent” hypothesis are compared in Dr. Bedny’s recent article in TiCs.
45:30 – A 2011 paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues about how, in blind people, the “visual” cortex is involved in language processing.
49:00 – A paper showing that “visual” areas in blind people are highly synchronized when listening to stories. A more recent paper in a similar vein.
53:00 – A now-classic paper by Dehaene and Cohen on the “cultural recycling” of certain brain areas.
56:00 – A paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues on sensitive periods and cortical specialization.
1:01:00 – A recent paper from Dr. Bedny’s lab, led by Karen Arcos, showing superior verbal working memory in blind relative to sighted adults.
1:03:30 – Another study from Dr. Bedny’s lab showing that blind people are less likely than sighted people to be led astray by garden-path sentences.
Dr. Bedny recommends:
Her TiCs article on the “pluripotent cortex”
Recent papers (e.g. here and here) from her lab led by Dr. Judy Kim
A now-classic paper on cortical recycling.
You can read more about Dr. Bedny’s work at her lab’s website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
To be a good magician, you have to be a good psychologist. If you want to pull off a really good magic trick, you need to know your audience—what they are likely to attend to or gloss over, what shortcuts they take, what predictions they tend to make. Which all raises a question: Could you get to know a new audience, a very different audience, by seeing which tricks they fall for and which they don't? Could we use magic as a scientific tool, in other words, as a window into minds that may be quite unlike our own?
My guest today is Dr. Nicola Clayton. Nicky is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Psychology department at the University of Cambridge. She is this year's winner of the prestigious ASAB medal, awarded by Association for the Study of Animal Behavior. Nicky is perhaps best known for her research on birds—corvids in particular—and how they show evidence of sophisticated cognitive abilities like memory, planning, mental time travel, and even understanding of other minds. Recently, Nicky and her colleagues have been up to something new: showing magic tricks to birds, as a way of probing their impressive mental capacities.
Here, Nicky and I talk about why magic is a useful tool for psychologists. We discuss her pioneering earlier work on corvids and, in particular, on how they hide or “cache” vast amounts of food. We talk about how corvids protect their caches from would-be thieves using tactics that, curiously, resemble some of those used by human magicians. We dive into some recent studies from Nicky's lab that involved showing classic magic tricks to Eurasian jays. And, finally, we get a tiny taste of what might be coming up in this line of research.
Before we get to it, one quick announcement: Applications are now open for the 2022 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute or DISI. After two years in the Zoomverse, DISI will be back in 3D this summer in St Andrews, Scotland. If you like the topics we talk about on this show, it’s a pretty safe bet you’d be into DISI. So check out disi.org for more info.
Alright folks, without further hocus pocus, here's my conversation about magic and birds with Dr. Nicky Clayton. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:45 – A recent editorial in Science by Dr. Clayton and colleagues about the promise of using magic to illuminate animal minds.
4:45 – One of Dr. Clayton’s primary collaborators on her magic studies is Clive Wilkins, who is an artist, writer, and professional magician. He is a member of the Magic Circle in London.
8:30 – For more on tool use in corvids, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Taylor. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Clayton have collaborated on a number of studies.
10:30 – A 2004 paper in Science by Dr. Clayton and Dr. Nathan Emery on the convergent evolution of intelligence in apes and corvids. A recent paper on physical and social intelligence in ravens.
14:00 – Dr. Clayton has authored a number of influential studies on caching behavior in corvids; see here, here, and here, among others.
17:30 – A paper by Dr. Clayton and a colleague on how caching jays are sensitive to who can hear them caching.
21:30 – A recent paper in PNAS by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, examining three sleight of hand tricks in jays and humans.
24:00 – A recent video profile of Dr. Clayton’s line of work on magic includes examples of these sleight of hand tricks.
27:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Dr. Alex Schnell, examining a version of the “cup and balls” trick, also shown to jays.
35:00 – The proposed priming experiment was inspired by a recent paper on subconscious gestural priming in humans.
36:00 – For work on cephalopods, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Schnell, who has collaborated with Dr. Clayton on the magic work in addition to wave-making studies on cephalopods.
Dr. Clayton recommends:
A profile of her lab’s work on magic in New Scientist
Bird Brain, by Nathan Emery
Experiencing the Impossible, by Gustav Kuhn
You can find Dr. Clayton on Twitter (@nickyclayton22).
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
I have this theory about podcasts—it’s almost certainly not original, and it's probably not right. But anyway, I have this theory that what makes for a great podcast episode is really just a few good moments. Sure, it’s nice if the conversation has a satisfying arc and good energy; it's great if it’s not too dense or repetitive—all that stuff matters. But I think what really makes an interview stick out for us—and stick with us—are these little time slices. Charged little moments that burn a little brighter. On Many Minds, those moments might come when someone is telling us about their big idea or reframe, a sudden realization they had, maybe just a charming factoid. It might come from them transporting us to a recent research trip, or musing on what it’s like to be another creature. It really could come from almost anywhere honestly.
So on the occasion of our 2nd birthday— okay, fine, I seem to have buried the lead. We have a birthday this week: we are turning two years old. Incredible—I know. It’s really gone by in a flash, but also felt like eons and all that. But anyway, on the occasion of our 2nd birthday, we wanted to look back at some of our favorite moments from the first two years. Fair warning, this is a highly selective selection. We weren’t able to feature all our episodes—less than half of them, actually. And those that are featured have been reduced to a tiny snippet. So it’s a selective and reductive sample but hopefully somehow still a satisfying one.
One more thing: some of you will no doubt be wondering what to get us for our birthday. Great question. In lieu of the usual cake or cards or cash, we would happily take a rating or review, a forward to a friend, or a shout out on social media. All that stuff makes us feel good, and ensures that we can keep going and keep growing.
Alright friends without further ado, here’s a select few of our favorite moments from the show—interleaved with bits of context and commentary. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Episodes excerpted:
Revising the Neanderthal Story
Culture, Innovation, and the Collective Brain
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 Jeremy DeSilva, 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 First Steps 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 here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A podcast episode 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 article 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 here.
19:30 – The original article by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” A more recent popular article on the hypothesis.
20:45 – An article by a major proponent of the social intelligence hypothesis, Dr. Robin Dunbar. A more critical review of the social intelligence hypothesis.
23:00 – A recent paper by Jeff Stibel and an older preprint by John Hawks evaluating the “body size” explanation of recent brain shrinkage.
24:00 – See our earlier episode on human self-domestication with Brian Hare.
29:00 – One of Dr. DeSilva’s collaborators on this research is Dr. James Traniello, who specializes in ants.
34:45 – An overview of the earliest history of writing.
37:20 – Dr. DeSilva’s book, First Steps, came out in 2021.
39:00 – A recent paper discussing the evolution of rotational birth in humans.
Dr. DeSilva recommends:
Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (featured in an earlier episode!)
Origin, by Jennifer Raff
You can find Dr. DeSilva on Twitter.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
You’ve probably seen those lists of the so-called “wonders of the world.” Many are works of architecture: the Great Wall, the pyramids, the colosseum, Taj Mahal. But these lists are, in a sense, always incomplete. Our world holds other architectural wonders, after all—albeit ones that are hidden from human eyes, made from different materials, and a bit scaled down. I’m talking, of course, about the wonders of the underworld. I’m talking about ant nests.
My guest today is Dr. Walter Tschinkel. Walter is an Emeritus Professor of Biological Science at Florida State University, where he’s led a distinguished career as a myrmecologist—a scientist who studies ants. He’s the author of the recent book Ant Architecture: The Wonder, Beauty, and Science of Underground Nests. For decades now, Walter has been delving into ant colonies using a variety of creative, homegrown techniques. Foremost among these is his method of “nest casting”—the process of making durable, three-dimensional casts of ant nests.
In this conversation, Walter and I do a bit of “Ants 101.” We discuss the notion of ant colonies as superorganisms. We talk about how Walter developed his nest-casting technique (not to mention other ingenious methods). We discuss where the blueprint for an ant nest resides, and whether ants might appreciate the beauty of their own nests. We also talk about the scientific process—about the joys of low-tech problem solving, about the importance of negative results, and about the pleasure of pursuing a good scientific mystery.
One last thing I’ll mention: a podcast really can’t do justice to these ant nests. So be sure check out the show notes below—and also Walter’s gorgeously illustrated book—to see these architectural wonders for yourselves.
Alright, folks, on to my conversation with Dr. Walter Tschinkel. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – Dr. E. O. Wilson, one of the starts of myrmecology, recently passed away at the age of 92. Read a recent tribute to him.
6:00 – Dr. Tschinkel’s previous book, published in 2013, was The Fire Ants.
6:30 – See a recent popular article about harvester ants.
10:20 – An interactive map showing the diversity of ant species.
15:00 – On the “superorganism” concept, see the book by the same name by Bert Hölldobler & E. O. Wilson.
20:30 – A figure from an academic paper showing the excavation of a giant leafcutter ant colony in Brazil. See also this 2012 popular article.
24:05 – A photo of Dr. Tschinkel’s original plaster cast that has made the rounds on the internet. You can also view numerous other images of Dr. Tschinkel’s nest casts in this recent paper. Finally, check out this recent video showcasing some of Dr. Tschinkel’s methods and nest casts.
29:00 – A recent paper on the division of labor in leafcutter ants, and another paper critiquing the concept of division of labor as applied to ants.
38:30 – A recent editorial on null results in science.
39:00 – An article by Dr. Tschinkel describing his technique for building artificial ice nests.
43:00 – A photo showing the contrast between the charcoal-covered nest disk of an old harvester ant colony with the in-progress (uncharcoaled) nest disk of a new colony.
54:15 – Here Dr. Tschinkel is referring to two books: On size and life, and Scaling: Why is animal size so important?
56:00 – A recent article on the so-called “insect apocalypse.”
Dr. Tschinkel recommends the following books:
The Ants, by Bert Hölldobler & E. O. Wilson
The Superorganism, by Bert Hölldobler & E. O. Wilson
The Guests of Ants, by Bert Hölldobler & Christina Kwapich
For more on ant architecture, be sure to check out Dr. Tschinkel’s fascinating book!
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're on a brief winter break right now, but we'll be back later in January. To tide you over, here's one of our favorite episodes from 2021: a conversation with Dr. Luke Rendell about culture in whales and dolphins. Enjoy!
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Whales and dolphins are, without a doubt, some of the most charismatic, enigmatic creatures around. Part of what draws us to them is that—different as our worlds are from theirs, different as our bodies are—we sense a certain kinship. We know they’ve got big brains, much like we do. We know that some cetacean species live long lives, sing songs, and form close bonds. If you’re like me, you may have also wondered about other parallels. For example, do whales and dolphins have something we might want to call culture? If so, what do those cultures look like? What sorts of traditions might these animals be innovating and circulating down in the depths?
On this week’s episode I chatted with Dr. Luke Rendell, a Reader in the School of Biology and a member of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He’s been studying cetaceans for more than two decades. He’s the author, with Hal Whitehead, of the 2014 book The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins. (You can probably guess by the book’s title where Luke comes down on the question of cetacean culture.) Luke’s work is, to my mind, an impressive blend of naturalistic observation, cutting edge methods, and big-picture theorizing.
In this conversation, Luke and I do a bit of “Cetaceans 101.” We talk about what culture is and why whale song is a good example of it. We discuss lob-tail feeding in humpback whales and tail-walking in bottlenose dolphins. We talk about Luke’s very recent work on how sperm whales in the 19th century may have learned from each other how to evade whalers. And we discuss why an understanding of culture may be crucial for ongoing cetacean conservation efforts.
We didn’t plumb all the depths of this rich topic—nor did we exhaust all the maritime puns—but we did have a far-reaching chat about some of the most fascinating beings on our planet and their distinctive cultures. As always, thanks a bunch for listening folks. On to my conversation with Dr. Luke Rendell. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – My favorite edition of Moby Dick (for what it’s worth).
6:45 – A primer on cetaceans.
9:30 – A paper on the ins and outs of the whale nose.
10:45 – A general audience article about echolocation in cetaceans, drawing on this recent academic article.
12:30 – A discussion of Roger Payne’s storied whale song album.
19:00 – A paper on cetacean brain and body size.
19:45 – Dr. Rendell’s 2001 article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, co-authored with Hal Whitehead. The paper made a splash.
24:50 – A paper by Dr. Rendell and colleagues describing some of his work on whale song.
26:40 – The 2000 paper by Michael Noad and colleagues, presenting some of compelling early evidence for whale song as a culturally transmitted phenomenon.
28:30 – A subsequent paper by Ellen Garland, Michael Noad, and colleagues showing further evidence for the socially transmitted nature of song.
31:45 – Dr. Rendell has also done important theoretical work on social learning strategies. See, for instance, here and here.
33:24 – An article offering evidence of imitation in killer whales.
36:10 – The paper by Dr. Rendell and colleagues on lob-tail feeding in humpback whales.
36:35 – A video illustrating “bubble net feeding.”
47:45 – The paper by Dr. Rendell and colleagues on tail-walking in dolphins.
55:30 – The paper by Dr. Rendell and colleagues on 19th century sperm whales' evasion tactics, as well as a popular piece on the same.
57:00 – A website documenting various aspects of whaling history.
1:05:00 – A recent discussion of gene-culture co-evolution across animal species.
1:10:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Rendell and (many) colleagues about how an appreciation of animal culture offers important lessons for conservation.
Dr. Rendell’s end of show recommendations:
Dolphin Politics in Shark Bay, by Richard Connor
Deep Thinkers, edited by Janet Mann
The Wayfinders, by Wade Davis
You can keep up with Dr. Rendell on Twitter (@_lrendell).
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Dr. Oné Pagán and Dr. Edward Slingerland. Oné is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University and our pharmacologist in residence for this episode. He just published Drunk flies and stoned dolphins: A trip through the world of animal intoxication. Ted is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and our resident philosopher. He is the author of the recent book Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way into civilization.
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 now available.
Notes and links
4:00 – The “write drunk, edit sober” idea is sometimes (mis)attributed to Ernest Hemingway.
8:00 – Dr. Pagán wrote an earlier book about his favored model organism, the planaria (or flatworms). You may recall we discussed planaria in our recent episode with Dr. Michael Levin.
10:10 – Dr. Slingerland wrote an earlier book about the Chinese ideal of wu-wei. See this brief discussion of his ideas in The Marginalian.
13:00 – The idea of alcohol as pharmacological “hand grenade” is a metaphor due to Steven Braun.
19:30 – An article in Science about “why cats are crazy for catnip.”
21:20 – A recent article in The Conversation about Asian flushing genes.
26:00 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, who won the Nobel Prize in 1933, pioneered the use of drosophila as an animal model.
28:20 – An article on the inebriometer (with an accompanying illustration).
33:00 – The biologist Robert Dudley introduced the “drunken monkey” hypothesis. A recent synopsis by Dudley.
38:00 – Not to be confused with the “stoned ape” hypothesis, which was introduced by Terrence McKenna. A recent popular article on the hypothesis.
41:00 – The idea of psychedelics as introducing “mutagens” into culture comes from How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan.
44:00 – A recent popular article on the “beer before bread” hypothesis. The idea was originally proposed in 1953.
48:50 – Pharmaceutical practices of non-human animals are called “zoopharmacognosy.” A 2014 summary of findings about animal self-medication.
53:00 – The original report in Science on the “flower burial” in Shanidar cave.
56:20 – The Laussel Venus appears to be drinking (alcohol?) from a horn.
59:20 – An article describing the tragic case of Tusko the elephant.
1:03:50 – One example of practices that moderate alcohol’s dangerous effect is the Greek symposium.
1:08:00 – A brief history of distillation, which is a relatively recent invention.
1:11:00 – Planaria are widely used as an animal model for understanding nicotine, among other intoxicating substances.
Dr. Slingerland recommends the following books:
Buzz, by Steven Braun
Drink, by Iain Gately
A Short History of Drunkenness, by Mark Forsyth
Dr. Pagán recommends the following book:
Intoxication, by Ronald Siegel
You can find Dr. Slingerland on Twitter (@slingerland20) and follow him at his website; you can find Dr. Pagán on Twitter (@Baldscientist), follow him at his website, and listen to his podcast.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
You may not remember much about it, but chances are last night you went on a journey. As you slept, your brain concocted a story—maybe a sprawl of interconnected stories. It took you to some unreal places, gave you superpowers, unearthed old acquaintances, and twisted your perceptions. Meanwhile, billions of brains all around you, up and down the tree of life, were probably doing something very similar—dreaming, that is. But why do we do this? What could possibly be the function of these nightly ramblings?
My guest today is Dr. Erik Hoel. He is a writer and a neuroscientist at Tufts University. In a paper published earlier this year, Erik presented a new theory of why we (and other creatures) dream. It's called the “over-fitted brain hypothesis”; the basic idea is that dreaming helps us stay cognitively limber, adaptable—less tied to the particulars of our previous experiences.
Erik and I discuss how he came to this new theory. We talk about how his account develops an analogy between the "overfitting" problem in machine learning and the "overfitting" problem that biological brains face as well. We discuss how his hypothesis can account for the bizarre nature of dream experience. And we consider Erik's provocative suggestion that dreams are really just one type of fiction—biological fictions, if you like—and that other types of fiction may serve similar purposes.
Erik is a fascinating, wide-ranging thinker (there aren’t a lot of neuroscientists who also write novels). And this is a conversation I'll be chewing on for some time. It takes on one of those timeless questions about human experience—why we dream—from an angle that feels fresh and energizing.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Erik Hoel. Hope you enjoy it!
The paper we discuss is available here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – Dreams have been in the news recently, with reports of an uptick in strange dreams during the pandemic.
9:30 – An early study on “dream deprivation.”
11:00 – An article on the idea that dreams serve memory consolidation.
23:00 – A study showing that we don’t dream about reading or writing.
27:30 – An attempt to solve a Rubik’s cube with a robot hand.
32:00 – An influential paper articulating the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis.
38:30 – A recent paper on the question of whether animals like octopuses dream.
42:00 – We’ve discussed Pinker’s “music is like cheesecake” analogy in previous episodes, most recently in our discussion of the evolution of music.
46:00 – For more on these ideas, see Dr. Hoel’s essay ‘Enter the Supersensorium’—and be sure to check out his new novel The Revelations!
You can find Dr. Hoel on Twitter (@erikphoel) and subscribe his newsletter on Substack.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
I’m betting you’ve heard about the next generation of artificial intelligence, the one that’s just around the corner. It’s going to be pervasive, all-competent, maybe super-intelligent. We’ll rely on it to drive cars, write novels, diagnose diseases, and make scientific breakthroughs. It will do all these things better, faster, more safely than we bumbling humans ever could. The thing is, we’ve been promised this for years. If this next level of AI is coming, it seems to be taking its time. Might it be that AI is taking awhile because it's simply harder than we thought?
My guest today is Dr. Melanie Mitchell. She is the Davis Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the author of a number of books, including her latest, which is titled ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.’
In this conversation we zoom in on Melanie’s widely discussed recent essay, 'Why AI is harder than we think.’ We talk about the repeating cycle of hype and disenchantment within AI, and how it stretches back to the first years of the field. We walk through four fallacies that Mitchell identifies that lead us to think that super smart AI is closer than it actually is. We talk about self-driving cars, brittleness, adversarial perturbations, Moravec’s paradox, analogy, brains in vats, and embodied cognition, among other topics. And we discuss an all-important concept, one we can’t easily define but we can all agree AI is sorely lacking: common sense.
Across her scholarly publications and public-facing essays, Melanie has recently emerged as one of our most cogent and thoughtful guides to AI research. I’ve been following her work for a while now and was really stoked to get to chat with her. Her essay is insightful, lucid, and just plain fun—if you enjoy this conversation, I definitely suggest you check it out for yourselves.
Alright folks, on to my conversation with Dr. Melanie Mitchell. And for those in the US—happy thanksgiving!
The paper we discuss is available here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – A recent essay by Dr. Mitchell on self-driving cars and common sense.
14:00 – An influential paper from 2013 titled ‘Intriguing properties of neural networks.’
16:50 – A video introduction to “deep learning.”
19:00 – A paper on “first step fallacies” in AI by Hubert Dreyfus.
21:00 – For a discussion of Alpha Go’s recent success with the game of Go, see our earlier interview with Dr. Marta Halina.
26:00 – An influential 1976 paper titled, ‘Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity.’
31:00 – A popular Twitter account that tags recent findings with “In mice.”
38:00 – A paper by Lawrence Barsalou on “grounded cognition.” For related ideas see Lakoff & Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By.
41:00 – A recent book by Brian Cantwell Smith, The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.
43:00 – An article on the idea of “core knowledge.”
47:00 – The CYC project.
49:30 – A recent article by Dr. Mitchell about analogies people have been using to understand COVID-19.
50:30 – An op-ed by Dr. Mitchell about why we should not worry os much about super-intelligence.
End-of-show recommendations:
Dr. Mitchell’s 2019 book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
Blake et al., 2017, ‘Building Machines that Think and Learn Like People’
Chollet, 2019, ‘On the Measure of Intelligence’
You can find Dr. Mitchell on Twitter (@MelMitchell1) and follow his research at her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
If you're a brain, it can be tough to stay organized. The world comes at you fast, from all angles, in different sensory formats—sights, sounds, smells. You need to take it all in, but you also need to parse it, process it, categorize it, remember and learn from it. And of course you also need react to it, preferably appropriately. So what do you do—as a brain—to handle this organizational overload? Well, for one thing, you make maps. Lots of maps.
My guest today is Dr. Rebecca Schwarzlose, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the new book Brainscapes: The warped, wondrous maps written in your brain—and how they guide you. Rebecca is former editor of Trends in Cognitive Sciences and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Washington University in St Louis. Her book was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program in the Public Understanding of Science and Technology.
In this conversation, Rebecca and I talk about what brain maps are and why brains evolved to make them. (And just to be clear, it’s not just human brains—it’s the brains of many creatures.) We talk about how delightfully warped these maps are —and, of course, why. We discuss how we rely on them for vision, touch, smell, and movement, not to mention for thinking about faces, places, numbers, and more. We also discuss the fascinating duality at the heart of these brain maps, which is their balance of universal and unique features.
I just love this angle on neuroscience, this way of thinking about the brain as a restless, prodigious cartographer. I thoroughly enjoyed Rebecca's book. And definitely there's a lot in it we couldn't touch on in this episode—details about how the mustache bat makes echolocation maps, for example, and about how new techniques are leveraging brain maps to do something like mindreading. So I hope you enjoy the episode, but I also hope you go and check out Rebecca’s book for yourselves.
Alright folks, on to my conversation with Dr. Rebecca Schwarzlose. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:15 – A review article by Dr. Schwarzlose’s doctoral advisor, Nancy Kanwisher, on the fusiform face area. (Be sure to check out Dr. Kanwisher’s brain course online.)
8:00 – An article on Inouye’s work and the “discovery of the visual cortex.”
14:00 – Much work has focused on the metabolic costs associated with the brain. For instance, an article on how metabolic costs of the brain shift over development.
18:30 – A study of cortical magnification in V1 and how it relates to visual acuity.
21:00 – The famous “homunculi” of the brain’s touch maps are described and depicted in this article.
28:50 – A recent popular article on the brain’s maps of odors.
32:00 – Our interview with Asifa Majid about smell across cultures.
42:00 – An article about how numbers are represented in the parietal cortex. Another article about the relationship between finger discrimination and number discrimination abilities.
46:30 – An article about how the hippocampus supports thinking about the social world.
54:00 – An article about plasticity in the developing brain.
1:01:00 – One of Dr. Schwarzlose’s earliest studies, which was on face and body maps in the fusiform gyrus.
Dr. Schwarzlose recommends the following books:
Making Space, Jennifer Groh
Into the Gray Zone, Adrian Own
The New Mind Readers, Russell Poldrack
You can find Dr. Schwarzlose on Twitter (@gothemind) and follow her work at her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Our planet is home to an astonishing diversity of plants—close to 400,000 species. Over the millennia, indigenous communities around the world have been studying those plants, experimenting with them, using them as a sort of free-growing pharmacy. Certain species, prepared in certain ways, might be used for digestive ailments; others for the skin, teeth, or liver. But this vast trove of medicinal knowledge is now under threat. Under two threats, really—we’re losing plant species and we’re losing indigenous languages and cultures.
My guests this week are Dr. Rodrigo Camara-Leret and Dr. Jordi Bascompte, both of the University of Zurich's Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies. Rodrigo is a Senior Researcher there, and Jordi is a Full Professor. We discuss their remarkable recent paper titled 'Language extinction triggers the loss of unique medicinal knowledge', published this past summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In the paper, Rodrigo and Jordi analyzed data from three hotspots of biocultural diversity—New Guinea, the Northwest Amazon, and North America. They were trying to better understand the nature of indigenous medicinal knowledge, the threats it is facing, and how we might best protect it.
This is one of those papers that immediately grabbed me. It's deeply, unclassifiably interdisciplinary; it takes on an urgent question with a clever approach; and it tells us something we genuinely didn't already know. As I already said, our global stores of ethnobotanical knowledge are under threat—and from different directions. What Jordi & Rodrigo's work shows is that, in order to protect that knowledge, we need to focus on protecting indigenous languages.
Before we get to it, just wanted to mention that, as it happens, Jordi was just very recently awarded the prestigious Ramon Margalef prize for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of ecology. So it was an extra special honor to have him on this episode.
Alright friends—on to my conversation with Dr. Rodrigo Cámara-Leret and Dr. Jordi Bascompte. Enjoy!
The paper we discuss is available here. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:45 – The Bascompte lab focuses on the architecture of biodiversity.
9:30 – Dr. Cámara-Leret and Dr. Bascompte have previously worked together on indigenous knowledge networks.
12:00 – The concept of “ecosystem services” is central in ecology.
16:30 – Dr. Cámara-Leret has previously worked on plant biodiversity in New Guinea, as well as on ethnobotany in Northwestern South America.
25:30 – A 2000 paper estimated that only about 6% of the world’s plant species have been screen for biological activity.
36:20 – Dr. Bascompte very recently won the 2021 Margalef Award for his contributions to ecology.
End-of-show recommendations:
Dr. Bascompte recommends Perspectives in Ecological Theory, by Ramon Margalef.
Dr. Cámara-Leret recommends Where the Gods Reign, by Richard Evans Schultes, and One River, by Wade Davis.
You can find Dr. Cámara-Leret on Twitter (@R_CamaraLeret) and follow his research at his website. You can follow Dr. Bascompte’s work at his lab’s website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back folks! Today’s episode circles some big questions. What does it mean to be human? What’s distinctive about the human mind and the human mode of being? What is human nature—if such a thing exists—and how could we catch a glimpse of it? Should we go looking for it in other primate species? Should we look deep in our fossil record?
My guest today is Dr. Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the other of a number of books, most recently The Creative Spark, in 2017, and Why We Believe, in 2019. Agustín was trained as a biological anthropologist, but as, you’ll hear, he’s very much interested in the whole human, not just our skulls and teeth and genes. He’s spent the better part of his career trying to build a more integrated, more fully fleshed out view of our species—one that takes seriously our bodies and brains, our culture and cognition, our primate heritage and our Pleistocene past.
Here we talk about Agustín’s career—how he got into anthropology in the first place, and how he went from observing langurs in Indonesia, to writing about human creativity and belief. We discuss the human niche and why it’s distinctive (but maybe not unique). We touch on monogamy and how it’s not a monolith. We talk about maleness and masculinity. And, for those who’ve been following recent hubbubs online, rest assured that we also talk about Darwin—and specifically what Darwin got wrong about biological sex and race.
I’ve been following Agustín’s work for some time and was thrilled to get him on the show. He’s an unusually expansive and boundary-crossing thinker—and that’s on full display in this conversation. He also doesn’t shy away from messiness. He welcomes the mess. He celebrates complexity. He enthuses about the richly, entangled human condition. Whether or not you yourself celebrate mess and complexity and entanglement—I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy hearing what Agustín has to say about it.
One quick announcement before he get to it: we’d like to welcome a new member of the Many Minds team: Cecilia Padilla. She is our new Assistant Producer, and we’re super excited to have her on board.
Alright friends—here’s my chat with Dr. Agustín Fuentes. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
6:00 – One of the first anthropology courses to inspire Dr. Fuentes was taught by Dr. Phyllis Dolhinow of UC Berkeley.
9:15 – An early publication by Dr. Fuentes on the Mentawai langur (Presbytis potenziani).
12:00 – A 2012 paper by Dr. Fuentes laying out the aims, findings, and history of the subfield known as ethnoprimatology, which studies interactions between humans and primates.
13:30 – A 2013 paper by Dr. Fuentes describing ethnoprimatological findings from Bali.
17:30 – Dr. Fuentes’s 1998 paper on monogamy, which he considers one of his first important contributions to the field.
22:00 – In 2008 Dr. Fuentes published Evolution and Human Behavior, a book-length comparison of different accounts of why humans are the way they are.
23:15 – The classic book on niche construction by Odling-Smee and colleagues. A single-article discussion of the concept of niche construction is available here.
26:00 – The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis website, which Dr. Fuentes recommends.
29:40 – A paper by Dr. Fuentes on the human niche.
32:00 – One distinctive aspect of the human niche—belief—is discussed extensively in Dr. Fuentes’s book Why We Believe.
37:00 – Dr. Fuentes recently reviewed Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, who we had on the show previously.
39:30 – Dr. Fuentes’s recent paper on the search for the “roots” of masculinity.
54:00 – Dr. Fuentes recently wrote a chapter on Darwin’s account of the “races of man” in A Most Interesting Problem, a volume edited by Jeremy De Silva. See also his recent editorial in Science, which raised quite a stir. Dr. Fuentes also recommends the chapter in the De Silva volume by Dr. Holly Dunsworth titled ‘This View of Wife.’
1:03:00 – For the broader historical and biographical context of Darwin’s ideas, I recommend Janet Browne’s two-volume biography.
1:12:15 – Dr. Fuentes quotes Tim Ingold’s idea that “anthropology is philosophy with people in it.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the topics we discussed, be sure to check out Why We Believe and The Creative Spark. Dr. Fuentes also recommends:
Kindred, Rebecca Wragg Sykes
The Promise of Contemporary Primatology, Erin P. Riley
Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past, Nam C. Kim & Marc Kissel
Recent books on race by Dorothy Roberts and Alondra Nelson
Anthropology: Why It Matters, Tim Ingold
Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, Kevin Laland
Pink Brain, Blue Brain, Lise Eliot
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You can find Dr. Fuentes on Twitter (@Anthrofuentes) and follow his research at his website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from assistant producer Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 Medium.
Notes
2:00 – The eye of the giant squid was described in detail for the first time in 2012, in this paper.
3:10 – On diversity in animal pupils, see this recent paper.
4:40 – Pupil changes to imagined and linguistically encoded light can be read about here and here.
5:30 – Eckherd Hess’s early research on pupils is summarized in his 1965 Scientific American article, ‘Attitude and Pupil Size’.
6:45 – The 1966 paper by Kahneman and Beatty is here. Or see a 2018 review 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, ‘The Role of Pupil Size in Communication’. Several of his classic studies have been replicated just this year (with good but not perfect success).
8:50 – Mariska Kret’s suggestion about how pupils fit the baby schema can be found here.
9:45 – Kret’s studies of pupil mimicry include this one, this one, and this one, among others.
10:15 – The 2021 paper by Wohltjen & Wheatley on “pupillary synchrony” is available here.
12:00 – The 1974 Nature article titled ‘Pupils of a talking parrot’ is available here.
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.
We’ve got something special for you today folks: bats. That’s right: bats.
Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his famous essay 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. Bat 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 here.
Notes and links
7:20 – Meet the Honduran white bat, which Knörnschild likens to a “fluffy little white ping pong ball.”
13:50 – Austin, Texas is home to Bracken Cave, which harbors more than 15 million bats.
16:30 – Much of Dr. Knörnschild’s work focuses on the Greater Sac-winged bat, which is a member of the Emballonurid family.
18:00 – See the audio appendix for an example of a Greater Sac-winged bat’s echolocation calls. See also examples on Dr. Knörnschild’s website.
21:10 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues about how echolocation calls serve social functions in addition to navigational functions.
24:00 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the origin and diversity of bat songs.
30:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the correlation between social complexity and vocal complexity across bat species.
37:30 – A brand new special issue on vocal learning in humans and animals, including a review of vocal learning in mammals by Dr. Vincent Janik and Dr. Knörnschild.
40:35 – Dr. Knörnschild’s first scientific paper, in 2006, reported the observation that Greater Sac-winged bats seemed to babble like infants.
47:20 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on territorial songs in male Greater Sac-winged bats.
53:45 – A very recently published paper in Science by Ahana Fernandez, Dr. Knörnschild, and collaborators; see also this popular article and a video about the findings.
1:05:30 – A recent paper 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 ‘Bats in translation.’
1:14:00 – The philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that we can’t really know what it’s like to be a bat.
Dr. Knörnschild recommends two books by Merlin Tuttle:
Bats: An Illustrated Guide to All Species
You can find Dr. Knörnschild on Twitter (@MKnornschild) and follow her research at her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Why do we make music? Why do we love music? Well, you say, because it's in our nature. Our brains were sculpted over the course of evolution to delight in sonic sequences, to remember melodies, to revel in rhythms.
Perhaps. But, actually, not everyone thinks music is an adaptation. Not everything we do was directly shaped by natural selection. And even if music was an evolutionary adaptation, that raises a bunch of further questions, like: Why would musical abilities have been an advantage? Why did music emerge in our species, but not, say, in chimps? What were the first contexts in which music took shape? What were we singing or drumming or making all that racket about?
For today's episode we're going behind a recent paper that explores these questions. My guest is Dr. Ed Hagen, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology Washington State University – Vancouver. For a couple decades now, on and off, Ed has been thinking and writing about the origins of music. Along with his co-authors Samuel Mehr, Max Krasnow, and Greg Bryant, Ed recently published a paper in the journal Behavioral & Brain Sciences titled 'Origins of music in credible signaling.'
Ed and I talk about what first got him musing about music, back in graduate school. We consider the functions of vocal signaling in birds, wolves, chimps, and other creatures. We discuss three prominent ideas about the roots of music: Darwin's idea that it evolved as a way for males to advertise their quality, Pinker's idea that music is like cheesecake, and—perhaps the most popular of all—the idea that music evolved to help cement social bonds. And, of course, we dig into the meat Ed and company’s paper, their alternative proposal. They argue that the roots of music lie in two contexts: coalition signaling and infant care. We’ll get into the specifics, of course.
One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is that it’s a fascinating time to be interested in the deep history of music. Seems like a bit of a subfield is coalescing around the topic. In fact—as Ed and I talk about—their paper was actually one of two papers on the origins of music published in the very same issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. If you want to dive deeper, definitely check out the other article as well.
One last note—and this is something I keep forgetting to mention: If you have ideas about who we should interview, or about which papers or topics we should feature, we would *love* to hear from you. Just find us on Twitter, or send an email to [email protected]. That's [email protected].
Alright, on to my conversation with Dr. Ed Hagen. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:00 – A 2003 paper by Dr. Hagen and co-author Greg Bryant about music as a “coalition signaling system.”
10:50 – An example of a gibbon song.
12:00 – The companion paper, led by Patrick Savage, advances the social bonding view.
15:30 – Darwin’s theory of the origins of music was laid out in The Descent of Man.
20:20 – Steven Pinker proposed the “auditory cheesecake” hypothesis in How the Mind Works.
28:30 – An early article on how singing is preserved in aphasia.
42:00 – A paper on chimpanzee pant hoots; a video showing an example.
46:00 – Long-standing listeners will recall that we briefly discussed “contact calls” in our episode on piloerection.
51:00 – The study showing that dance music and lullabies are perhaps the most readily recognized genres of music, and the past episode where Manvir Singh and I discussed this.
55:30 – A book by Brian Hayden on feasting in pre-industrial societies.
1:00:30 – One advocate of the idea that language may have emerged from music is W. Tecumseh Fitch, who wrote The Evolution of Language.
Dr. Hagen recommends you check out the companion paper—which advances the social bonding view and which appeared in the same issue of Behavioral & Brain Sciences—and Steven Mithen’s book, The Singing Neanderthals.
You can find Dr. Hagen on Twitter (@ed_hagen) and follow him at his website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Welcome back friends! Cue the kazoos and the champagne—after a short summer snooze, we’re much revived and ready for a third season of Many Minds!
I could not be more thrilled about the guest we have to help kick things off: Dr. Alison Gopnik. Alison is a Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s the author of several books, including most recently The Gardener and the Carpenter, and she writes the “Mind and Matter” column for the Wall Street Journal. She also recently became the president-elect of the Association for Psychological Science.
As many of you know, Alison is a distinguished developmental psychologist—she’s been thinking deeply about children and writing insightfully about them for decades. But more recently she’s stepped back to think also about childhood itself: that long period where we’re kind of needy, messy, dreamy, and blissfully unproductive. She notes that childhood may be one of the most puzzling and distinctive things about our species. Though it is perhaps rivaled by the other extreme of the human lifespan: old age, or as she calls it, “elderhood.”
Here Alison and I talk about childhood and elderhood and how they go hand in hand. We discuss how they evolved, and, of course, why. We consider how they are associated with different modes of thinking and different ways of being. We talk about Alison’s radical suggestion that it’s during these bookends of life—our first act and last act—that we are, in fact, at our most human.
Something I especially enjoyed about this conversation—and you’ll definitely notice it if you’ve been listening to the show for awhile—is how often we hit on themes and topics from past episodes. We touch on cephalopods, orcas, bees, and Neanderthals; we talk about the tension between imitation and innovation and about why adults don’t change their minds. But here, of course, we’re seeing all this familiar terrain from new angles.
But before we get to the episode, just wanted to say a quick but heartfelt thanks for all your support over our first two seasons. The best way to keep supporting the show is just to keep listening, to rate and review us if you haven’t already, and, of course, to recommend us to a friend or colleague.
Alright folks, looking forward to spending more time with you in the coming months. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Alison Gopnik. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – On our distinctive life history, see Dr. Gopnik’s recent paper ‘Childhood as a solution to explore-exploit tensions’ and her 2020 piece in Aeon magazine. Some of this terrain is also covered in her most recent book, The Gardener and the Carpenter.
8:30 – The term “alloparents” was introduced by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. See especially her book Mothers and Others.
11:30 – A recent study of hunting productivity and life history by Jeremy Koster, Michael Gurven, and colleagues.
13:40 – A 1972 paper by Jerome Bruner on the uses of immaturity.
15:00 – One of Dr. Gopnik’s (co-authored) earlier books was The Scientist in the Crib.
20:15 – A paper on life history and brain size in marsupials.
21:00 – On the explore-exploit tradeoff, see especially Dr. Gopnik’s recent paper ‘Childhood as a solution to explore-exploit tensions.’
29:30 – The 1983 paper that described this analogy with metallurgy and the “simulated annealing” approach to optimization.
35:30 – A paper on the division of labor among bees.
37:00 – See Dr. Gopnik’s recent column titled ‘The Many Minds of the Octopus.’
40:00 – A paper on the role of climate variability in evolution.
43:00 – A series of papers by Dr. Gopnik and colleagues suggest that children have a more exploratory mindset than adults. See here, here, and here.
49:30 – On the finding that adolescents are more flexible than either young children or adults on a social task, see here.
52:00 – Michael Pollan’s new book, This is Your Mind on Plants, discusses three drugs derived from plants.
55:00 – A paper by (former guest!) Cristine Legare about the trade-offs between imitation and innovation.
56:20 – Dr. Gopnik’s most recent column on altruism and aging.
1:00:20 – A paper by Dr. Gopnik and collaborators on causal learning across cultures and socioeconomic strata, which included children in Peru.
Dr. Gopnik recommends a recent special issue on life history and learning.
You can find Dr. Gopnik on Twitter (@AlisonGopnik) and follow her work on her website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
We're on summer break this week. Back in a couple weeks with the kick-off of Season 3! In the meanwhile, here's a favorite episode from our archives: a conversation with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes about her 2020 book, Kindred. Enjoy!
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You probably think you know the Neanderthals. We’ve all been hearing about them since we were kids, after all. They were all over the comics; they were in museum dioramas and on cartoons. They were always cast as mammoth-eating, cave-dwelling dimwits—nasty brutes, in other words. You probably also learned that they died off because they couldn’t keep pace with us, Homo sapiens, their svelter, savvier superiors.
That’s story we had long been told anyhow. But, over the past few decades, there’s been a slow-moving sea change—a revolution in how archaeologists understand our closest cousins. For this episode I talked to Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes about this revolution. She is a Neanderthal specialist and the author of the new book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
Rebecca and I discuss the new picture of Neanderthals emerging from the latest archaeological research. We talk about where they lived, what they ate, the tools and clothing they made. We talk about the evidence that they had a considerable degree of cognitive sophistication and—very possibly—an aesthetic sense. Once we put all this together—and let the new picture come into focus—the gap long thought to separate them from us from them starts to close. And this makes the question of why they vanished about 40 thousand years ago all the more puzzling.
I really hope you enjoy this one—I certainly did. And if you do, I definitely encourage you to check out Kindred!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
Most of the topics we discuss are treated in detail in Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s book, Kindred.
5:40 – Earlier book-length treatments of the Neanderthals include The Smart Neanderthal and Neanderthals Revisited.
9:15 – The archaeological site of Atapuerca in Spain, which includes the Sima de los Huesos (Pit of Bones).
11:20 – The Neander Valley in Germany was the site of the very first Neanderthal find in 1856.
11:50 – Another early site was Krapina, Croatia, which is now home to a Neanderthal museum.
24:30 – A recent academic article on the complexity of Neanderthal tool use.
28:27 – A French site—La Folie—gives a sense of what some Neanderthal dwellings were like.
41:05 – A popular article about the “wow site” at Bruniquel. The original academic article.
49:16 – An article on the evidence that Neanderthals were preparing and using birch tar.
56:45 – Some evidence suggests Neanderthals were interested in bird feathers and talons.
1:01:30 – There is now evidence for repeated phases of interbreeding between human and Neanderthals.
1:05:00 – Other ancient hominin species included the Denisovans.
1:07:00 – There are some reasons to believe that pathogens carried by humans may have played a role in the demise of the Neanderthals.
1:13:30 – Another richly imaginative treatment of ancient human life is Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic, by Mark Edmonds.
To keep up with the latest Neanderthal research, Dr. Wragg Sykes recommends following archaeologists such as John Hawks (@johnhawks). She is also on Twitter (@LeMoustier) and her website is: https://www.rebeccawraggsykes.com/.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Preferences, decisions, goals. When you hear these words, you probably think of humans. Or, if not humans then maybe charismatic animals—you know, great apes, certain species of birds, maybe dogs. In any case, I bet you think of creatures that are more or less cognitively sophisticated. I know I do. But, according to some researchers, this is an outmoded and over-narrow way of thinking. They propose that decisions and goals—not to mention other fancy-seeming constructs like memory, problem-solving, and intelligence—can usefully be ascribed to an astonishingly large array of agents. Not just humans, not just animals, not even just organisms.
My guest on today’s episode is Dr. Michael Levin. He’s the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University; he directs the Allen Discovery Center and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. In recent years, Mike’s been developing a radical reconsideration of the nature of mind and intelligence. He argues that it’s not just humans and other smart creatures that traffic in all this classically cognitive stuff. It’s also cells, tissues, organs, colonial organisms, and much more. He sometimes summarizes his view as “cognition all the way down.”
Here we talk about how Mike came to this perspective. We discuss his empirical studies of bioelectricity, including some pretty astonishing experiments on planaria. We dig deep into two of the conceptual models he uses in talking about his “mind everywhere” framework: the “axis of persuadability” and the notion of the “cognitive light-cone”. And we talk about why Mike rejects the criticism that this is all mere anthropomorphism. In fact, he makes a compelling case that it’s time we retired that term altogether.
In the intro to Many Minds way back when, we talked about how the terrain of mind is vast. But as I’ve learned about the work of Mike and others, I’ve become convinced that the terrain of mind is actually vaster than I imagined then—maybe vastly vaster. I think you’ll like this one, folks. And even if you’re not convinced, there’s little doubt you’ll be provoked. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:10 – Dr. Levin mentions the caterpillar-to-butterfly transition in the introduction to a recent theoretical paper.
8:00 – Dr. Levin’s work on bioelectricity and regeneration are the focus of a recent profile of his work in the New Yorker. A recent perspective piece on bioelectric signaling by Dr. Levin is here.
8:50 – The book The Body Electric was an early influence on Dr. Levin’s interests.
10:30 – The term “basal cognition” refers to minimal cognitive agents like cells and slime molds. It is also the label for a newly formed subfield or researchers who work on such systems. Read the introduction to a recent special issue on the topic, written by Dr. Levin and colleagues.
13:45 – Much of Dr. Levin’s early work (described, e.g., here) was on the generation of left-right asymmetry, a thorny issue in morphogenesis.
15:45 – Planaria are a popular model organism in biology. For a fun conversation about their curious properties, see this episode of the podcast Ologies.
20:30 – Dr. Levin and colleagues’ experiments with two-headed planaria were first reported here.
25:30 – Here Dr. Levin mentions Shuffle Brain by Paul Pietsch.
26:40 – See Dr. Levin’s recent discussions of “scale-free cognition” and “cognition all the way down” (the latter piece was written for a general audience and co-authored with the philosopher Daniel Dennett).
32:00 – Dr. Levin’s notion of the “axis of persuadability” is discussed here.
42:00 – Dr. Levin’s light-cone model of cognition is sketched here (see especially Figure 2).
52:00 – Dr. Levin has applied his ideas to tumorigenesis (e.g., here).
52:45 – For an intro to Umwelt theory, see our earlier episode, ‘Me, my Umwelt and I.’
58:00 – Dr. Levin discusses ideas about the anthropomorphism objection here.
Dr. Levin recommends books by:
You can find Dr. Levin on Twitter (@drmichaellevin) and keep up with his latest research on his lab’s website.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
Public opinion can sometimes shift dramatically over time. Beliefs that were widely held a few decades ago may now seem antiquated or even repugnant. But what’s driving these shifts? Is it individual people changing their minds? Or is it just folks with old-fashioned worldviews dying out and being replaced?
My guest on today’s show is Dr. Stephen Vaisey. He’s a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Duke University and co-director of the compellingly named Worldview Lab. In a recent paper, Steve and his co-author Kevin Kiley sought to better understand whether people every really update their beliefs. We’re talking about beliefs about gender, race, the environment, the role of government, and a bunch of other central issues. The answer Steve and Kevin arrived at may surprise you: while people do sometimes change their minds—particularly at certain life stages and particularly around certain kinds of issues—more often they don’t. People’s beliefs tend to be pretty settled.
So I’ll admit, sheepishly, that it was really only pretty recently that I realized that sociologists and political scientists think a lot about minds. That they’re often grappling with the same questions that exercise psychologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and others. Questions about how beliefs are formed, about the dynamics of culture, about how minds change over the course of the lifespan, about how our social forces shape our thinking. As you’ll hear, Steve’s been thinking deeply about these questions for awhile now, and he’s innovating new ways to address them. He’s also just a super affable guide to this whole terrain.
Hope you enjoy this one folks. Without further ado, my conversation with Dr. Steve Vaisey!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
2:30 – The Worldview Lab at Duke University is co-directed by Steve and Christopher Johnston.
4:00 – The paper we discuss is here (open access preprint).
6:00 – An influential article looking at the phenomenon of “pluralistic ignorance” and its consequences.
8:30 – The General Social Survey—as Dr. Vaisey describes it, the Hubble Telescope of sociology.
10:30 – A paper by Omar Lizardo elaborating the notion of personal culture.
12:15 – The webpage of Steve’s co-author, Kevin Kiley.
20:45 – A 2010 paper by Steve and Omar Lizardo asking related questions.
37:45 – For more on issues with generalizing from WEIRD samples, see our past episode.
For more on these topics, Dr. Vaisey recommends checking out the work of:
You can find Dr. Vaisey on Twitter (@vaiseys).
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
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 here.
Notes and links
3:40 – A paper on the 19th century rise of the myth that humans are poor smellers.
6:00 – A paper estimating that humans can discriminate possibly a trillion different odors.
7:30 – A theoretical paper 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 Niclas Burenhult.
11:00 – A classic book 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 paper by Dr. Majid and Niclas Burenhult describing the language of olfaction in Jahai.
14:45 – Dr. Majid’s first experiment comparing odor naming (and color naming) in Jahai and English.
20:00 – Dr. Majid has also examined smell lexicons in several other languages, including Seri, Thai, Maniq, and Cha’palaa.
25:40 – A follow-up study by Dr. Majid and a collaborator on two groups within Malaysia who contrast in subsistence mode.
29:30 – A paper 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 paper.
39:00 – The “deodorization” hypothesis was discussed in a classic book on the cultural history of aroma.
39:40 – In a recent study, 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 study 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 paper.
57:00 – Along with her collaborators, Dr. Majid has examined the smell-naming abilities of wine experts. See one paper here.
1:02:45 – A recent paper by Dr. Majid and colleagues showing that wine experts’ smell-naming abilities are not dependent on “thinking in” language.
1:05:35 –Some evidence from “verbal interference” tasks suggests that, when carrying out color discrimination tasks, people rely on language in the moment.
1:09:00 – The Odeuropa project.
1:10:20 – The website of Noam Sobel’s lab.
Dr. Majid’s end of show recommendations:
What the Nose Knows, by Avery Gilbert
The Philosophy of Olfactory Perception, by Andreas Keller
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell, by Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synott
Neuroenology, by Gordon Shepard
Cork Dork, by Bianca Bosker
You can keep up with Dr. Majid on Twitter (@asifa_majid).
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Isabelle Laumer. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).
You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.
We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected].
For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.
