Many Minds

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1. Culture, from birth to death (metal)

   24 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 48 min

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   Culture can be a little hard to wrap our minds around. It's seemingly everywhere, enveloping us—but where is it exactly? What are its core properties? How does culture change? Why does it change? What tools and techniques should we be using to understand its vagaries? How can we illuminate this living, breathing, omnipresent, amorphous thing? Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Jacob Foster. Jacob is a Professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science at Indiana University – Bloomington; he's also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. For more than a decade now, Jacob has been bringing together different disciplinary strands to develop a theory of culture and a toolkit for studying it.

   Here, Jacob and I talk about what culture is—and whether cultural ideas are, in an important sense, alive. We discuss Jacob's path through physics to complexity science to sociology and to cognitive science. We talk about the nature and value of computational thinking. We dig into Jacob's framework for thinking about culture as a set of chains that weave from mind to world and back, across time and space. We dig into a colossal new paper of Jacob's in which he and his co-authors characterize the dynamics of culture through the case of metal music—a genre that has been evolving, splintering, growing, and withering for more than 50 years.

   Along the way, Jacob and I touch on metaphors for culture as dark matter, as amphibian, as a set of companion species, as living vines on a human trellis. We touch on foxes and hedgehogs; personal culture and public culture; how to be a wizard; ecological carrying capacity and cultural carrying; schismogenesis; the ideas of Sperber, Heidegger, Jung, and Culianu; ideal objects and morphodynamics; and how viewing culture as alive gives us a different stance toward the dead.

   This is not my first chat with Jacob. As you'll hear, we overlapped in our undergraduate years, also in our postdoc years, and since 2018 have worked together at the Diverse Intelligen…

2. Island of the tool users

   10 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 27 min

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   Tool use is rare in the animal kingdom—but maybe not as rare as we once thought. Since Jane Goodall famously observed a chimpanzee fishing for termites, many new examples of animals using tools have come to light. Birds using sticks to forage for grubs. Sea otters using rocks to smash open mussels. Digger wasps using stones to close off their burrows. But as these examples mount, so do the scientific questions. What is tool use, really? What different forms does it take? Does it always imply a high degree of intelligence? And perhaps the biggest question of all: Why do some creatures use tools while so many others don't? Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Alice Auersperg. Alice is a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. She and her lab study innovation, technical cognition, and tool use in animals—especially in a species of parrot known as the Goffin's cockatoo.

   Here, Alice and I talk about her lab's recent work with a certain remarkable cow. We discuss the wide variation in definitions of tool use across studies, and why some kinds of tool use are perhaps more impressive than others. We walk through some of her lab's most striking findings about tool use in the Goffin's cockatoo: for example, the finding that these birds don't just use tools but also make them—and can make the same tool out of different materials; the finding that they learn to use tools from others; and the finding that they recognize in some way the value of tools. We dig into some of Alice's ideas about the big picture—why certain species use tools, and why so many tool users seem to live on islands. Along the way, Alice and I talk about whether tool use in birds is fundamentally different from tool use in primates; we talk about play and boldness; the allure of the sea mango; intrinsic motivation to combine objects; why tool use differs in captivity, at least in Great Apes; and why Goffin's cockatoos like to dunk their noodles in blueberry soy yogurt.

   Before we get to i…

3. Cognitive offloading and its consequences

   25 september 2026 · 1 uur 15 min

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   For thousands of years—maybe for as long as we've been human—we've offloaded our thinking. We've counted on our fingers. We've carved tallies into bone. We've invented a long series of tools to help us reason, remember, and manage information—tools like abacuses, calendars, writing systems, calculators, smartphones, and many, many more. So cognitive offloading is hardly new—but the questions around it seem newly urgent. As cognitive technologies accumulate, as opportunities for offloading tempt us at every turn, as headlines warn of "digital dementia" and "cognitive surrender," it seems like a good time to take stock. Yes, cognitive offloading can save us time and effort. But what are its other consequences? Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Sam Gilbert. Sam is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Sam and his colleagues have been trailblazers in the study of cognitive offloading—when we do it, why we do it, what it does for us and to us.

   Here, Sam and I talk about what cognitive offloading is, how deep it goes in our species' history, and how it pervades our everyday lives. We talk about the different forms that offloading takes. We discuss why some people offload more than others, and why we offload in certain situations. We walk through three bodies of research on the consequences of cognitive offloading—research on the so-called Google effect, on the photo-taking impairment effect, and on the impact of using GPS to navigate. Of course, we also address the elephant in the room: How should we think about the possible dangers—and benefits—of cognitive offloading in the new era of AI?

   Before we get to it, some news: We have re-launched the Many Minds newsletter, as a Substack! We'll be sharing each of our episodes there, as well as other morsels from time to time. We've been wanting to do this, in part, to give you a better way to engage with us—and with each other. Were there questions we should have asked? Are there connections you made that …

4. Coming of age in Ngogo

   11 september 2026 · 1 uur 35 min

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   It's a familiar story in many ways. A child is born, and for years afterward is adored and indulged and anchored to home and family. But then the child grows up and starts crossing that long threshold into adulthood. The transition proves—to say the least—a bit turbulent. Now when I say this story is familiar, I don't just mean familiar to us as human beings. After all, a similar story has long played out among our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Rachna Reddy. Rachna co-directs the longstanding Ngogo Chimpanzee Project in Uganda and is an incoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. For more than a decade now, she has been closely observing the chimpanzees at Ngogo—and especially the adolescents.

   Here Rachna and I talk about why adolescence—in all its intensity—is such a scientifically fascinating life-stage. We sketch the Ngogo research site, home to the largest group of chimpanzees ever studied. We unpack the different stages of chimpanzee life history. We zoom in on chimpanzee adolescence using a variety of different lenses—we talk about greetings, dominance hierarchies, grooming, social rejection, mentorship, deference, patrolling, female dispersal, and more. We discuss the so-called civil war that has taken root at Ngogo. And, finally, we talk about Rachna's in-progress novel (if that's the right word), which tells the story of one chimpanzee's coming of age in immersive detail.

   I think you'll enjoy this one, folks. Chimpanzees offer us a kind of parallel universe, a funhouse mirror version of human life—one that is deeply relatable in some ways, and totally alien to us in others. And the parallels and non-parallels are arguably all the more striking in adolescence.

   But before we get to it, one humble ask: As the new season of Many Minds ramps up, this would be a great time to support the show. You could do this by rating us, writing a review on Apple Podcasts or a comment on Spotify, or by d…

5. The natural history of linguistic diversity

   28 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 33 min

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   Thousands of languages are used around the world today, and this linguistic diversity is a precious part of our human heritage. But it's also more than that. Linguistic diversity provides clues—a vast crazy quilt of clues—about how language works, about how history has unfolded, about the dynamics of culture, and about the nature of the human mind. Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Damián Blasi. Damián is an ICREA Research Professor based at the Center for Brain & Cognition at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Over the last decade or so, Damián's emerged as one of the most innovative researchers in the study of language and linguistic diversity. He's been widely recognized for this work, and most recently was awarded the 2026 FABSS Early Career Impact Award from the Cognitive Science Society.

   In this conversation, Damián and I talk about why scientists should care about linguistic diversity. We do a bit of linguistic diversity 101—how many languages there are, how we can enumerate them, how they vary. We discuss a recent paper in which Damián and his colleagues reconstructed the explosive rise and precipitous fall of human linguistic diversity over the last 12,000 years. We talk about the factors that drive language change. And we discuss how cognitive science relies too much on English and English speakers—and how this may be holding the field back.

   Along the way, Damián and I touch on the Tower of Babel, a golden age of linguistic diversity, the human bite configuration, scientific aesthetics, whether children shape language, polygenetic theories of language evolution, the pace of language change, schooling, linguistic inequality and behemoth languages, and why Damián thinks that the possibility space of human language might be bigger and wilder than we currently imagine.

   This is a special episode of the Many Minds podcast. As I mentioned, Damián is this year's winner of an award from the Cognitive Science Society, in recognition of his outstanding early-career c…

6. From the archive: Electric ecology

   17 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 33 min

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   Hi friends! We're still taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back at the end of August—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! Lees meer

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   [originally aired September 19, 2024]

   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 all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of reality. But many other creatures are—and scientists are starting to take note.

   My guest today is Dr. Sam England. Sam is a sensory ecologist at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and one of a handful of scientists uncovering some shocking things about the role of electricity in the natural world.

   Here, Sam and I have a wide-ranging conversation about electroreception—which is the perception of electrical stimuli—and electric ecology—which is the study of the ecological roles of electricity. We talk about how an interest in electroreception first got started, and why it's recently resurged. We discuss aquatic electroreception versus aerial electroreception, active electroreception versus passive electroreception. We talk about how electroreception is actually kind of easy to evolve. Along the way, we consider electrolocation and, its analog in sound, echolocation. We touch on dolphins, sharks, echidnas, ticks, caterpillars, bees, and spiders. We zoom in on electrostatic pollination, and what is inarguably the coolest sounding anatomical structure known to biology: the ampullae of Lorenzini.

   I think you'll enjoy this one, friends. As Sam describes here, electroreception is one of those "alien senses"—it really challenges the imagination. And electric ecology is one of those frontiers in our understanding of the natural world. So without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Sam England. Enjoy!

   A transcript of this episode is available here.

   Notes and links

   3:00 – For m…

7. From the archive: Varieties of childhood

   31 juli 2026 · 1 uur 29 min

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   Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! Lees meer

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   [originally aired July 10, 2025]

   Childhood is a special time, a strange time. Children are adored and catered to—they're given their own menus and bedrooms. They're considered delicate and precious, and so we cushion them from every imaginable risk. Kids are encouraged to play, of course—but very often it's under the watchful eye of anxious adults. This, anyway, is how childhood looks in much of the United States today. But is this the way childhood looks everywhere? Is this the way human childhoods have always been?

   My guests today are Dr. Dorsa Amir and Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy. Dorsa is an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, where she runs the Mind and Culture Lab. Sheina is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Durham University in the UK, where she co-directs the Forager Child Studies research group. Both Sheina and Dorsa have spent much of their careers thinking about how childhoods differ across cultures—and why.

   In this conversation, I talk with Dorsa and Sheina about their fieldwork with indigenous groups in Ecuador and the Congo, respectively. We discuss the different ways that childhood differs in these places—for instance, in terms of parents' attitudes toward risk, in terms of the social structures and activities in which kids are embedded, and in terms of the freedom that children are granted. We discuss developmental psychology's "WEIRD problem." We talk about the quasi-autonomous cultures that children create among themselves—sometimes called "peer cultures"—and discuss how these kid-driven cultures end up shaping and benefit the larger community. Along the way, we touch on adult supremacy, adverse childhood experiences, walking the forest and climbing papaya trees, parenting norms, ding dong ditch and "nananabooboo", the pioneering work of the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie,…

8. From the archive: Philosophers on psychedelics

   18 juli 2026 · 1 uur 41 min

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   Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We will be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! Lees meer

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   [originally aired May 14, 2025]

   Some call it the "psychedelic renaissance." In the last decade or so, interest in psychedelic drugs has surged—and not just among Silicon Valley types and psychiatrists and neuroscientists. It's also surged among a stereotypically soberer crowd: academic philosophers. The reasons are clear. With their varied and sometimes transformative effects, psychedelics raise ethical questions, epistemological questions, metaphysical questions, questions about the nature of experience and the nature of the mind.

   My guest today is Dr. Chris Letheby. Chris is a philosopher of cognitive science at the University of Western Australia and the author of the 2021 book, Philosophy of Psychedelics.

   Here, Chris and I talk about the so-called classic psychedelics—LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and others—and how interest in them has gone through three distinct waves. We discuss the effects that these substances seem to have, in particular their capacity to treat certain psychiatric conditions and their tendency to induce "mystical-like" experiences. We consider the idea that psychedelics might serve as agents of moral enhancement. And we dig into the psychological and neural mechanisms by which psychedelics seem to have their diverse—and often salutary—effects. Along the way, we talk about ontological shock, comforting delusions, brain plasticity, unselfing, microdosing, placebo effects and adverse effects, physicalism and idealism, the REBUS model, environmental virtues, plant consciousness, meditation, and much more.

   Maybe this is obvious but this episode is not just for the seasoned psychonauts out there. Whatever your personal experience with these substances, they offer a distinctive window into the mind—a new way of grappling with big questions. Perhaps this much is also obvious but we're not encouraging or…

9. The origins of Darwin's ideas

   3 juli 2026 · 1 uur 19 min

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   No discipline, no sphere of intellectual life, has been untouched by the work of Charles Darwin. He died in 1882 but his ideas are very much alive; they're now central to how we understand the natural world, the human mind, non-human minds, plants, biogeography, morality and emotion, culture, language, and more. But where did his ideas come from? How did they grow out of his travels, his social circle, his hobbies, his particular cast of mind? Lees meer

   My guest today is Dr. Janet Browne. Janet is Professor Emerita at Harvard University in the department of the History of Science. She is perhaps best known for her widely acclaimed two-volume biography of Charles Darwin. And she has now published an updated and abridged single-volume version.

   Here, Janet and I talk about Darwin's life and ideas. We pick up the story during his travels on the Beagle, a five-year voyage that laid the foundation for the rest of his career. We talk about what he was reading, what he was seeing, and how these experiences helped form his most influential work, On the Origin of Species. We discuss Darwin's style as a thinker, as a naturalist, as a writer, and as an experimentalist. We touch on his relationships with contemporaries like Charles Lyell and Alfred Russel Wallace. And we consider his long—and often overlooked—engagements with pigeons, barnacles, plants, and worms.

   I greatly enjoyed Janet's two-volume biography of Darwin, and I enjoyed this new single-volume edition just as much. So if this episode sparks your interest, I heartily recommend that you check these books out.

   Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Janet Browne. Enjoy!

   Notes

   3:30 – Darwin's autobiography is available here. All of Darwin's letters are readable (and searchable) at the Darwin Correspondence Project.

   11:00 – Darwin's account of his five-year stint on the HMS Beagle can be found in his book, The Voyage of the Beagle.

   17:00 – Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (Vol. 1).

   27:00 – For a recently pu…

10. The sparkling deep

    20 juni 2026 · 1 uur 20 min

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    It's tempting to see bioluminescence as an oddity, one of those rare eccentricities of life on earth. And, on land, maybe that's true. But our planet is mostly water, and out in the open ocean bioluminescence is utterly commonplace. Creatures of all shapes and sorts sparkle and glow, glitter and pulse. But what are these displays for? Why did they evolve? How did light become the currency of the deep? Lees meer

    My guest today is Dr. Sönke Johnsen. Sönke is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Duke University, where he and his research group study the visual ecology of the ocean. He's the author of a number of books: most recently Into the Great Wide Ocean, about life in the pelagic realm, and The Radiant Sea, a photographic tour of bioluminescence and color, written in collaboration with Dr. Steven Haddock.

    Here, Sönke and I talk about the open ocean: the most common habitat on our planet, yet one that many people will never experience. We consider the curious distribution of bioluminescence— rare on land, exceptionally prevalent in the ocean, and all but absent in freshwater. We talk about how bioluminescence seems to have evolved—many, many times over in fact. We survey the functions of making light in the deep—from counter-illumination to courtship to revenge. Finally, we consider what Sönke takes to be the biggest remaining puzzle about bioluminescence at sea.

    Alright friends, if you're enjoying Many Minds, we ask (humbly) if you would think about rating us, reviewing us, leaving us a comment, boosting us on social media, or perhaps haranguing your friends—relentlessly—until they give us a listen.

    Without further ado, onto my conversation with Dr. Sönke Johnsen. Enjoy!

    Notes

    3:30 – The scientific report by Dr. Johnsen and colleagues describing the bioluminescent octopus, Stauroteuthis syrtensis.

    12:00 – A popular article on the bristlemouth. The article reports a scientist's estimate of "as many as a dozen [bristlemouths] per square meter of ocean."

    15:00 – A …

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