Many Minds

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 guest...

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 si...

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 be...

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 overlo...

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 medicina...

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 Anth...

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 ou...

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 lifewo...

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...

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, inc...

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! --- 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 di...

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 prop...

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 Politica...

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...

Let's say you're out on the open sea, having a leisurely sail, when you suddenly encounter not one but two sinking boats. One is a boat with two dogs in it; the other is a boat with a single human in it. You can only save one of the boats, so which one do you pick? The answer may seem obvious—you save the boat with the human, right? For many adults—even those who have a special love for animals—th...

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...

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 ha...

Have you ever seen what seemed to be a spirit? Or heard a voice from an unseen source? Or maybe just sensed a presence and found yourself with goosebumps all over? These kinds of experiences can be incredibly powerful— life-altering, in fact—but they don't happen often, and they don't happen to everyone. So what drives this individual variation? Why do some of us have these extraordinary experienc...

Greetings, all! It's been a minute, but we're back, we're refreshed, and we're buzzing with excitement about the next few months of Many Minds . This episode we're talking about one of humanity's most powerful cognitive tools: numerals. Numerals are those unassuming symbols we use whenever we read clocks, check calendars, dial phone numbers, or do arithmetic. My guest on today's show is Stephen Ch...

We're doing some spring cleaning this week, but please enjoy this pick from our archives. It's a conversation with Dr. Alex Taylor that aired originally in September 2020.  We've got a terrific spring lined up for the show. See you in two weeks! --- There's a  viral video clip  from 2014—maybe you've seen it. It features a subject in a pretty remarkable psychology experiment. He's put in room full...

Welcome back folks! Don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but rumor is that in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the signs of spring are starting to emerge—little buds and shocks of color. We'll be monitoring the situation closely over the coming weeks. My guest today is Melanie Challenger. Melanie is a writer and researcher whose work explores the relationship between humans and the natur...

Do you remember the first time you made a good joke? Most likely not. Turns out the first forms of humor emerge super early in infancy, before the first birthday even. We're not talking about stand-up routines here. We're talking about a more basic but no less interesting behavior: teasing. In what's known as "playful teasing," one individual intentionally violates another's expectations for the s...

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. 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 g...

Greetings friends and happy February! Today's episode is a conversation with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna, an Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics. Michael's research takes on a suite of topics that all start from a single big question: Why are we so different from other animals? Part of the answer has to do with our neural hardware. There's no question we've go...

Today we've got another "behind the paper" episode for you. In it, we're talking about some of the most alien-seeming yet charismatic creatures around. I chatted with Dr. Alex Schnell , a Comparative Psychologist and Research Fellow at Cambridge University. We discuss a paper she recently published with a few colleagues titled, ' How intelligent is a cephalopod ?' I've been charmed by cephalopods...