Many Minds

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired May 25, 2022] When we think about ancient humans, we often imagine them doing certain kinds of things. Usually very serious things like hunting game and making tools, foraging for food and building fires, maybe performing the occasional intricate ritu...

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. This week's episode is in our audio essay format. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired May 26, 2021] Welcome back folks! We've got an audio essay for you this week. It touches on art, music, the skin, the spine, individual differences, vestigial responses, tiny muscles. There's even some...

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired June 23, 2021] You've no doubt heard that—as humans—our sense of smell is, well, kind of pathetic. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, that we have advanced senses—especially sight and hearing—and then lowly, underdeveloped ones—taste and sme...

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! ---- [originally aired February 17, 2021] Guess what folks: we are celebrating a birthday this week. That's right, Many Mind s 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. P...

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. Enjoy! --- A pharmacologist and a philosopher walk into a bar ... This is not the start of a joke—it's the start of our 2021 finale and our first ever theme episode. The idea with these theme episodes is that we have not one but two guests, from different fields, coming together t...

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 .  ——— Consider the peacock. Its plumage is legendary—those shimmering, iridescent colors, and those eerie, enchanting eyespots. But what...

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! ———   You have a big br...

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 ga...

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 reco...

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. Jod...

We're still on summer break, but we wanted to share a favorite interview from our archives. Enjoy! ---- We've got something special for you today folks: bats. That's right: bats.  Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote  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...

We're taking a little summer break right now, but we wanted to share a favorite essay from our archives. Enjoy! --- Welcome back folks! Today, we've got an audio essay for you. I won't say too too much—don't want to spoil it—but it's about pupils. Not as in students, but as in the dark cores of our eyes. This one of those that's been in the works for a little while. About a year ago I started coll...

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 cephalo...

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 abs...

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 focuse...

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. B...

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...

Taking care of some spring cleaning this week, but we're excited to resurface this conversation with Kristin Andrews and Susana Monsó. We'll be back with a fresh episode in two weeks. In the meanwhile, enjoy! - The Many Minds team --- Your friend is in a bit of distress. They've just been dunked in a pool, and they can't pull themselves out. You're looking on as they're paddling furiously, trying...

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; w e fret over whether we made a good impression; and we do our best to shape and manage our reputations. It's hones...

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 velociraptor...

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 e...

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. Bu...

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...

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—A...

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! --- 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 so...