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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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?...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 some unreal places, gave you superpowers, unearthed old acquaintances, and twisted your...

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...

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...

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! --- 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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

Friends, here's another favorite episode from our archives while we're still on summer break. Enjoy! ---- 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,...

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...

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:...