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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.
Hi friends! We're skipping a beat to take care of some spring housekeeping tasks. We will be back in May! In the meanwhile, enjoy this liste...
Deep in our past, in the dark depths of caves, our ancestors did something strange and beautiful. Working by firelight, some doodled little...
Everyone is talking about AI these days. Often these conversations are about how AI might upend education, or work, or social life, or maybe...
No one is an island. We all depend on each other in critical, often tangled ways. And when I say "we" and "each other" I don't just mean hum...
If you wanted a petri dish for understanding metaphors—how they emerge and evolve and jostle with each other—it would be hard to do better t...
Humans do some pretty weird things. Some of us will sit in searingly hot rooms or jump into icy ponds. Others risk their lives trying to cli...
Metaphors matter. They enliven our speech and our prose; they animate our arguments and stir our passions. Some metaphors power political mo...
Hello friends, and happy new year! We're gearing up for a new run of episodes starting later in January. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick f...
Hello there, friends! We hope you're having a restful holiday, or a lively holiday, or whatever mix of those you prefer. As the year draws t...
Alright, friends—we've come to the end of the 2025 run of Many Minds ! Our final episode of the year is an audio essay by yours truly. This...
Not long ago culture was considered rare in nature, maybe even uniquely human. But that's changed. We now know that the tree of life is buzz...
Everyone loves a good evolutionary puzzle. Why do we have appendices? Why do we dream? Why do we blush? At first glance, memory would not se...
It's hard to say exactly when, but some tens of thousands of years ago, our best friends were born. I'm referring, of course, to dogs. This...
It seems we've always had monsters among us. We've long been enthralled by dragons and giants, by the likes of Frankenstein and Godzilla and...
AI therapists and caregivers. Digital tutors and advisors and friends. Artificial lovers. Griefbots trained to imitate dead loved ones. Welc...
Birds do the darnedest things. They fly, of course. They sing. They hunt in pitch darkness. They hide their food and remember where they put...
One afternoon you decide to snub your responsibilities and go for a hike. You spend a few hours in the woods or the mountains. You study the...
Hi friends! We're taking a much-needed summer pause—we'll have new episodes for you later in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick fr...
Hi friends! We're taking a much-needed August pause—we'll have new episodes for you in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our...
Hi friends! We're taking a much-needed August pause—we'll have new episodes for you in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our...
When you hear the word "shaman," I'm guessing a web of associations starts to form in your mind. Perhaps you imagine strange ceremonies and...
Childhood is a special time, a strange time. Children are adored and catered to—they're given their own menus and bedrooms. They're consider...
AI will fundamentally transform science. It will supercharge the research process, making it faster and more efficient and broader in scope....
Puppies wrestling and mock-biting each other. Toddlers playing hide and seek. Kittens pouncing—repeatedly—on a toy mouse. You've no doubt lo...
If you've heard anything about the study of human personality, you've probably heard about the "big five." This is a framework that attempts...
Some call it the "psychedelic renaissance." In the last decade or so, interest in psychedelic drugs has surged—and not just among Silicon Va...
We humans have a hard time becoming invisible. For better or worse, we're basically stuck with the skin and body we have; we're pretty fixed...
You've probably come across the "free energy principle." It's become one of the most influential ideas in the broader cognitive sciences. Si...
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 q...
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...
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...
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 in...
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...
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 he...
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 fr...
Happy holidays, friends! We will be back with a new episode in January 2025. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! ----- [...
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 sente...
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 n...
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 perfo...
The machines are coming. Scratch that—they're already here: AIs that propose new combinations of ideas; chatbots that help us summarize text...
IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for "general cognitive ability"—maybe more than any other psy...
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...
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 a...
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 fl...
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...
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 ou...
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...
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...
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...
It's an enduring puzzle. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors were nomadic, ranging over large territories, hunting and gatheri...