One of Darwin's most powerful insights was that small changes— accumulated over large swaths of time—can have huge impacts. Where did that idea come from? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode—a discussion of Darwin's life and mind w/ Janet Browne! Listen: disi.org/the-origins-...

Janet is easily my favorite Darwin biographer—her two-volume biography is among my favorite non-fiction books of all time. Needless to say, I was quite tickled to interview her!

A favorite tidbit from this one: The most abundant vertebrates on the planet are small, bony, bioluminescent fish known as bristlemouths. One estimate I found is that there are 12 per square meter of ocean.

As ever these discussions are excellent. Fascinating research!

These have been some of our most popular episodes—and they're all evergreen!

The ethnographic record shows that women do hunt, sometimes for big game. Does that mean that 'Man the Hunter' was a myth all along? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @vivek123.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

This is a great episode - fascinating paper and topic, and Kensy does a good job of pushing beyond the paper for some frank discussions about things like the responsibility of scientists for how academic research is (mis)represented in the popular consciousness.

Really enjoyed this chat with @vivek123.bsky.social! We work through the history of Man the Hunter ideas, the current status of the evidence (archaeological, ethnographic, etc.), and three splashy recent "debunkings." Also, of course, some fun detours along the way.

What heuristics should we be using when deciding whether to accept a review request? I toggle between a few: - Does it look cool? - Would I be helpful to the authors? - Am I especially well-positioned to comment? But these are often in conflict. Anyone have helpful frameworks / rules of thumb?

Which kinds of words are the easiest to learn? Which prove harder? And is it the same for dogs and infants? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ Claudia Fugazza & @bergelsonlab.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/babies-dogs-...

So many chewy questions in this one! Generally fascinated by the idea of "cryptic" word knowledge—understanding that's hard to detect. I suspect there's a lot more of this out there than we've uncovered so far, especially in dogs...

The many functions of bioluminescence at sea (some not yet observed but inferred). Especially love the sacrificial tag—I glow so that if you eat me, your stomach will glow and someone else will eat you. Source: digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Human hands have partnered with tools for millions of years, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not. Is this a case of brain "plasticity"? Or perhaps "motor abstraction"? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @mattlongo.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-inner-li...

Me: You absolutely have to time-box your teaching prep. It will take as much time as you give it. Also me: Spends half of day's time-box searching for marginally better photo of Benjamin Lee Whorf, mentioned on single slide.

Intriguing! The "waggle dance is a primitive form of a semantic system also found (through convergent evolution) in human language. It is remarkably ancient, at least 20 million years old..." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ An interview w/ @mattlongo.bsky.social about the cognitive neuroscience of hands. The hand is often celebrated as a paragon of engineering, but the meat-and-bones design is not particularly novel. Could the real power of the hand lie elsewhere? Listen: disi.org/the-inner-li...

Cuttlefish can put on dazzling displays of color, thanks to chromatophores and other specialized cell types. The irony is that these creatures seem to be colorblind. Just one of the topics discussed in our archive pick, with @tessamontague.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-cuttlefi...

One of the coolest aspects of this work: they tested the same Hai||om participants 20 years apart (!). And they find that they've become more egocentric over time...

“Handy Mnemonics: The Five-Fingered Memory Machine” — @kensycoop explores the history of storing knowledge on the surface of fingers and palms: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/handy-mnemonics

Super cool new work by @ydkisa.bsky.social et al! They set out to replicate influential studies on geocentric spatial preferences in Hai||om speakers in Namibia and found evidence for a dramatic shift: the culture has lurched toward the egocentric. (Only in memory tasks, not in language tasks.)

Kids are such amazing little verbal magpies. Daughter's (2.5 yo) counting sequence: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, maids-a-courting, fifteen..." Stable like this for a few months.

A host favorite, too, I'll add. The biology of "dynamic skin behaviors" in cephs is even more wild than you expect...

The shift from non-figurative (geometric designs) to figurative art (animals, mostly)—and what propelled it—is one of the big enduring puzzles of cave art. We discuss a couple accounts of this shift, including @izzywisher.bsky.social's intriguing suggestion that pareidolia offered a bridge.

A tour of all things cave art! In which we discuss... - hand stencils and their missing fingers - the nonfigurative-to-figurative transition - archaeology's "sensory turn" - the puzzling preponderance of animals over humans - the power of pareidolia - palimpsests - children's drawing stages etc.!

Really fun @izzywisher.bsky.social / @kensycoop.bsky.social cross-over. Tune in for a really insightful discussion on cave art and on investigating prehistory (also) with a cognitive science perpective.

In my 'Language' course (for undergrad Cog Sci majors), my first lecture lingers on two major trends in the history of human language. 1. The waxing-then-waning of linguistic diversity. (Numbers are of course ballparks based on various estimates; happy to be pointed to diff estimates.)

Last call, friends!! Our (short, anonymous) audience survey is still live for a brief while longer. We would be ever grateful if you could take a few minutes to let us know what you think! forms.gle/6uUacGZuvfxd...

In which we discuss... - reference and the symbol grounding problem - LargeLMs vs BabyLMs - jabberwocky and pattern matching - the Platonic representations hypothesis - Quine's topiary - poverty of the stimulus arguments - the data efficiency gap between LLMs and human children - etc.!

As LLMs acquire language, they also develop an understanding of space, math, causality, and more. What does this tell us about where our own abilities come from? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @glupyan.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/what-can-ai-...

Some interesting thoughts about our latest episode from @drbarner.bsky.social! disi.org/what-can-ai-...

What a fun conversation! @mcxfrank.bsky.social @kensycoop.bsky.social !

A real treat to have this conversation with two of my favorite cognitive scientists!

Keeping cats once made good practical sense: they helped manage rodent populations. But cats rarely serve this purpose today. Might they be providing other, less tangible benefits? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, with Rob Dunn! Listen: disi.org/mutualisms-a...

Update: we've extended our timeline! Review of applications will now begin March 24. Still plenty of time to put together an app! disi.org/apply/

This rocks

Our podcast (@manymindspod.bsky.social) is conducting a (short) audience survey. Even if you are only an occasional listener, it would be great to have your input! Thanks in advance! forms.gle/6uUacGZuvfxd...

Really loved Rob's book, 'The Call of the Honeyguide.' Big ideas, quirky scientific findings, informed speculations. And a fair bit of food. This episode conveys the flavor well, I'd say.

Such cool work!

Just a nudge from your friendly neighborhood podcast: Could you perhaps take a few minutes to complete our audience survey? Thanks in advance! 🙏

Metaphors offer a colorful window into how we're thinking about AI. But metaphors aren't just idle rhetoric— they also shape how we respond to and regulate new technologies. Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @melaniemitchell.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/seven-metaph...

If you're a Many Minds listener—even just an occasional one—we would love to hear from you!

If you're a Many Minds listener—even just an occasional one—we would love to hear from you!

"Do Great Apes Use Iconic Gestures?" Insightful, detailed discussion by @mperlman.bsky.social. Great to see a bunch of threads of evidence—including comparison to human children—in one place. wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Same amazing community, new location this year!! Feel free to reach out with questions. And please share widely!

I enjoyed talking with @kensycoop.bsky.social on the Many Minds podcast about the metaphors we use to conceptualize AI. manyminds.libsyn.com/seven-metaph...

In our recent interview together, @erinhecht.bsky.social suggested the extreme morphological diversity of dogs was rivaled only by the brassicas—both single species, both products of intense artificial selection. Cool to find a good visual of this! From: worksinprogress.co/issue/sculpt...

Kissing may seem like a frivolous topic—and it is, of course, a fun one!—but there's a reason scholars across the social/behavioral sciences have now started to pay it serious attention. To really puzzle out the origins the kiss, we may need to think about...

Thoroughly enjoyed this podcast about metaphor as a linguistic and cognitive phenomenon, not just a literary device. I think I see metaphor as considerably more integral to (and hence frequent in) language than Kensy does, though: there are often many metaphors hidden in a single everyday sentence.

Surely one of the most timelessly alluring questions in all of metaphor research. Was excited to hear @sflusberg.bsky.social's take on this one! (which I won't spoil)