Happy holidays, friends! We will be back with a new episode in January 2025. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired Jun 14, 2023] 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 something like a civilization.  This is the idea at the center of Ray Nayler's new book, The Mountain in the Sea. It's both a thriller of sorts and a novel of ideas; it’s set in the near future, in the Con Dao archipelago of Vietnam. It grapples with the nature of intelligence and meaning, with the challenges of interspecies communication and companionship, and ultimately with what it means to be human.  Here, Ray and I talk about how he got interested in cephalopods and how he came to know the Con Dao archipelago. We discuss some of the choices he made as an author—choices about what drives the octopuses in his book to develop symbols and about what those symbols are like. We consider the major human characters in his book, in particular two ambitious researchers who embody very different approaches to understanding minds. We also talk a fair bit about AI—another central character in the book, after all, is a super-intelligent android. Along the way, Ray and I touch on Arrival, biosemiotics, the nature of symbols, memory and storytelling, embodiment, epigenetics, cephalopod camouflage, exaptation, and the sandbox that is speculative fiction.  This episode is obviously something a little different for us. Ray is a novelist, after all, but he’s also an intellectual omnivore, and this conversation, maybe more than any other we’ve had on the show, spans three major branches of mind—human, animal, and machine. If you enjoy this episode, note that The Mountain in the Sea just came out in paperback, with a jaw-droppingly cool cover, I’ll add. I highly recommend that you check it out. One more thing, while I have you: If you're enjoying Many Minds, we would be most grateful for your help in getting the word out. You might consider sharing the show with a friend or a colleague, writing us a review on Apple Podcasts, or leaving us a rating on Spotify or Apple. All this would really help us grow our audience.  Alright friends, on to my conversation with Ray Nayler. Enjoy!    A transcript of this episode is available here.     Notes and links 8:30 – For the review of The Mountain in the Sea in question, see here.  14:00 – Con Dao is a national park in Vietnam. 17:00 – For our previous episode about cephalopods, see here. 19:00 – For a book-length introduction to biosemiotics, see here.   24:00 – A video of Japanese macaques washing sweet potatoes.  26:30 – For discussion of the human case, in which environmental pressures of some kind may have propelled cooperation, see our episode with Michael Tomasello.  29:00 – A popular article about RNA editing in cephalopods.  35:00 – A video of the “passing cloud” phenomenon in cuttlefish. A brief article about the phenomenon. A video showing other forms of camouflage in octopuses. 41:00 – An experimental exploration of the movement from “iconic” to “symbolic” communication in humans.  44:00 – A popular article about the communication system used in the movie Arrival.  49:00 – One source of inspiration for Ray’s book was Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think.  1:00:00 – An article on the idea of “architects” and “gardeners” among writers.  1:05:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Disintegration Loops’ is available here. 1:11:00 – Ray’s story ‘The Summer Castle’ is available here.  1:13:00 – A popular article about the phenomenon of highly superior autobiographical memory. An essay about the idea that faulty memory is a feature rather than a bug. 1:18:00 – Ray’s story ‘Muallim’ is available here.   Recommendations Ways of Being, by James Bridle Living in Data, by Jer Thorp   Follow Ray on Twitter.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.   For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

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 sentence is spoken—or images—if it's signed or written. You need to figure out the meanings of the individual words and then you need to put those meanings together to form a bigger whole. Of course, you also need to think about the larger context—the conversation, the person you're talking to, the kind of situation you're in. So how does the brain do all of this? Is there just one neural system that deals with language or several? Do different parts of the brain care about different aspects of language? And, more basically: What scientific tools and techniques should we be using to try to figure this all out?   My guest today is Dr. Ev Fedorenko. Ev is a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT, where she and her research group study how the brains supports language and complex thought. Ev and her colleagues recently wrote a detailed overview of their work on the language network—the specialized system in our brain that underlies our ability to use language. This network has some features you might have expected, and—as we’ll see—other features you probably didn't.   Here, Ev and I talk about the history of our effort to understand the neurobiology of language. We lay out the current understanding of the language network, and its relationship to the brain areas historically associated with language abilities—especially Broca's area and Wernicke's area. We talk about whether the language network can be partitioned according to the subfields of linguistics, such as syntax and semantics. We discuss the power and limitations of fMRI, and the advantages of the single-subject analyses that Ev and her lab primarily use. We consider how the language network interfaces with other major neural networks—for instance, the theory of mind network and the so-called default network. And we discuss what this all tells us about the longstanding controversial claim that language is primarily for thinking rather than communicating.   Along the way, Ev and I touch on: some especially interesting brains; plasticity and redundancy; the puzzle of lateralization; polyglots; aphasia; the localizer method; the decline of certain Chomskyan perspectives; the idea that brain networks are "natural kinds"; the heart of the language network; and the question of what the brain may tell us—if anything—about how language evolved.   Alright friends, this is a fun one. On to my conversation with Dr. Ev Fedorenko. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode is available here.    Notes and links 3:00 – The article by a New York Times reporter who is missing a portion of her temporal lobe. The website for the Interesting Brains project.  5:30 – A recent paper from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the brains of three siblings, two of whom were missing portions of their brains.  13:00 – Broca’s original 1861 report.  18:00 – Many of Noam Chomsky’s ideas about the innateness of language and the centrality of syntax are covered in his book Language and Mind, among other publications. 19:30 – For an influential critique of the tradition of localizing functions in the brain, see William R. Uttal’s The New Phrenology. 23:00 – The new review paper by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues on the language network.  26:00 – For more discussion of the different formats or modalities of language, see our earlier episode with Dr. Neil Cohn. 30:00 – A classic paper by Herbert Simon on the “architecture of complexity.” 31:00 – For one example of a naturalistic, “task-free” study that reveals the brain’s language network, see here.  33:30 – See the recent paper arguing “against cortical reorganization.” 33:00 – For more on the concept of “natural kind” in philosophy, see here.  38:00 – On the “multiple-demand network,” see a recent study by Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues.  41:00 – For a study from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab finding that syntax and semantics are distributed throughout the language network, see here. For an example of work in linguistics that does not make a tidy distinction between syntax and semantics, see here.  53:30 – See Dr. Fedorenko’s recent article on the history of individual-subject analyses in neuroscience.  1:01:00 – For an in-depth treatment of one localizer used in Dr. Fedorenko’s research, see here.  1:03:30 – A paper by Dr. Stephen Wilson and colleagues, describing recovery of language ability following stroke as a function of the location of the lesion within the language network. 1:04:20 – A paper from Dr. Fedorenko’s lab on the small language networks of polyglots.  1:09:00 – For more on the Visual Word Form Area (or VWFA), see here. For discussion of Exner’s Area, see here.   1:14:30 – For a discussion of the brain’s so-called default network, see here.  1:17:00 – See here for Dr. Fedorenko and colleagues’ recent paper on the function of language. For more on the question of what language is for, see our earlier episode with Dr. Nick Enfield.  1:19:00 – A paper by Dr. Fedorenko and Dr. Rosemary Varley arguing for intact thinking ability in patients with aphasia.  1:22:00 – A recent paper on individual differences in the experience of inner speech.   Recommendations Dr. Ted Gibson’s book on syntax (forthcoming with MIT press) Nancy Kanwisher, ‘Functional specificity in the human brain’    Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.   Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.    For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

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 nest; a robin builds a robin's nest. Every bird just follows the rigid template set down in its genes. But over the course of the last couple of decades, scientists have begun to take a closer look at nests—they've weighed and measured them, they've filmed the building process. And the conventional wisdom just doesn't hold up. These structures vary in all kinds of ways, even within a species. They're shaped by experience, by learning, by cultural tradition. When we look at a bird's nest, we're looking at the product of a flexible mind.   My guest today is Dr. Susan Healy. Sue is a Professor in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews and an expert in birds—their behavior, their cognition, and their evolution. For more than a decade now, Sue has been pioneering a new chapter in the study of birds' nests.    Here, Sue and I talk about some of the most impressive nests (as well as some of the least impressive). We do a bit of Birds' Nests 101—the different forms they take, the functions they serve, which sex does the building, how these structures evolved, and more. We dig into the mounting evidence that birds are in fact quite flexible in their building practices, that they learn from others and from their own experience. We discuss recent evidence from Sue's team that cultural traditions shape the weaver nests of the Kalahari. And we talk about what nests might have in common with songs and tools. Along the way, we touch on: pigeon nests and hummingbird nests, dinosaur nests and chimpanzee nests; Alfred Russel Wallace; commonalities in the techniques of human weavers and weaver birds; whether bird personality might be reflected in nest style; the brain basis of nest-building; and a whole lot else.    Hope you enjoy this one, friends. On to my conversation with Dr. Sue Healy.    A transcript of this episode is availalble here.    Notes and links 2:30 – An example of a post on the (seemingly inadequate) nests of pigeons.  7:30 – An article featuring a variety of weaverbird nests. 10:30 – Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on birds' nests is available here.  15:00 – A paper from another branch of Dr. Healy’s work, on hummingbirds.  16:00 – The 1902 book by Charles Dixon on the science of “caliology.” 17:00 – An example of research done by the Colliases on weavers.  19:00 – For an up-to-date primer on birds’ nests—covering a number of the questions we discuss here—see Dr. Healy’s recent primer. 22:30 – An article about hummingbird eggs.  28:30 – A paper by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the use of human materials in birds’ nests. Our episode on animal medication is here.  31:30 – An article about bowerbirds and how they decorate their bowers. 35:00 – An article on the evolution of birds’ nests, covering the question of what dinosaur nests were like.  43:00 – A paper by Dr. Healy and colleagues on the impact of temperature and earlier breeding success on nest size. 51:00 ­– For more discussion of personality in animals, including in clonal fish, see our episode with Kate Laskowski.  55:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues showing that zebra finches build nests that match the color of the walls.  58:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues looking at how zebra finches learn aspects of nest-building from familiar individuals. 59:00 – A study by Dr. Healy and colleagues, led by Maria Tello-Ramos, about architectural traditions in an African sociable weaver species.   1:07:00 – An article by Michael Arbib, Dr. Healy, and colleagues on connections between tool use, language, and nest-building.  1:11:00 – An initial study on the brain basis of nest-building in zebra finches. A further study on the same topic.  1:12:30 – A paper by Hopi E. Hoekstra and colleagues on the genetics of burrow-building in deer mice.   1:14:00 – An exploration of the idea that humans initially learned their weaving skills from weaver birds.    Recommendations Books by Mike Hansell (see here, here, and here) Birds’ nests, Charles Dixon Avian architecture, Peter Goodfellow Animal architects, James Gould & Carol Gould   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.  Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.    For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Joining the discussion are Dr. Jaap De Roode, a biologist studying insect medication, and Dr. Michael Huffman, a primatologist known for his groundbreaking work on chimpanzees’ self-medication. They delve into how animals intuitively find medicinal plants, adapt behaviors to heal, and even utilize human waste in urban settings. From the historical observations of chimps using bitter plants to the surprising ways butterflies combat parasites, they reveal a complex world of instinctual healing that challenges our notions of animal intelligence and medicine.

Dr. Iyad Rahwan, Director of the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute, dives into the intersections of AI and human culture. He discusses how AIs are transforming artistic expressions, especially in his own work exploring emotional connections with machines in art. The conversation touches on the impact of large language models on cultural diversity, the evolution of machine culture, and the ethical questions surrounding AI-generated art. Iyad emphasizes the delicate balance between innovation and preserving authentic human creativity.

In this engaging discussion, Eric Turkheimer, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and author of 'Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate,' dives into the complicated world of IQ. He explores its stability and the significant rise in scores over the past century. Turkheimer challenges essentialist views of intelligence, emphasizing its interplay with genetics and environment. The conversation also touches on the implications of misusing IQ measures and the evolving perspectives on intelligence as both a fixed trait and a malleable quality influenced by various factors.

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 trees are connected to each other through a vast underground network—an internet of roots and fungi often called the "wood wide web". We've learned that, through this network, trees share resources with each other. And we've learned that so-called mother trees look out for their own offspring, preferentially sharing resources with them. There's no question that this is all utterly fascinating. But what if it's also partly a fantasy? My guest today is Dr. Justine Karst. Justine is a forest ecologist at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on mycorrhizas—these are the symbioses formed between fungi and plant roots that are thought to be the basis of the "wood wide web." Last year, Justine and colleagues published a perspective piece in which they argued that some of the claims around the wood wide web have gotten out of hand. These new ideas about forests, they argued, have gotten decoupled from the actual on-the-ground—or under-the-ground—science. In reality, it’s a field still riddled with unknowns and mixed findings. Here, Justine and I do a bit of mycorrhiza 101—we talk about what mycorrhizas are, how they evolved, and what the structures actually look like. We discuss the original 1997 study that inspired the term "wood wide web." We consider why it's so hard to figure out what's actually going on, mechanistically, under the forest floor. We discuss the increasingly popular notion of plant intelligence and what it means to empirical researchers in this area like Justine. We talk about why people—both members of the public and scientists themselves—have found wood wide web ideas so charming. And, finally, we discuss the question of whether a little bit of hype is really so bad—particularly if it gets people excited about forests, about science, and about conservation. I got as excited about the "wood wide web" as anyone. The idea totally captured my imagination a couple of years ago. So I was intrigued—if also a little dismayed—to learn recently that these ideas were getting some pushback. And I knew immediately we should talk to one of the researchers leading that pushback. Alright friends, let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Justine Karst. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode is available here.   Notes and links 5:00 – Popular treatments sometimes mentioned as over-hyping the wood wide web (and associated ideas) include The Hidden Life of Trees, Finding the Mother Tree, and the novel The Overstory. 9:30 – The landmark 1997 paper by Simard et al. that kicked off interest in the so-called wood wide web. 11:00 – A study showing that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. 11:30 – For more on the new interest in “plant intelligence” see our previous episodes here and here. On the notion of “fungal intelligence,” see here. 18:00 – A 1975 paper presenting a hypothesis about the origins of land plants. 20:00 – The California “mushroom bible” mentioned. 23:00 – A brief post (and infographic) on the differences between arbuscular mycorrhizas and ectomycorrhizas. 23:30 – Richard Powers’ influential novel, The Overstory. Note that the novel doesn’t exclusively focus on the wood wide web; it covers ideas and findings about trees and forests, many of which are uncontroversial. 36:00 – Dr. Karst co-authored her perspective piece in Nature Ecology & Evolution with Dr. Melanie Jones and Dr. Jason Hoeksema. 50:00 – For more on aspens and how they constitute clonal organisms, see here. 52:00 – The “mother tree” idea was popularized in Dr. Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding the Mother Tree. 1:04:00 – Another recent critique of the wood wide web and mother tree idea is here. In it the authors write: “Reaching out to the general public to make people care about forests is certainly a praiseworthy goal, but not when it involves the dissemination of a distorted view of the plant world. In other words: the end does not justify the means.” 1:05:30 – Others influenced by The Overstory include Barack Obama and Bill Gates. 1:09:00 – A primer on myco-heterotrophic plants. 1:13:00 – See a recent presentation by Dr. Jared Farmer on trees and “chronodiversity” here.   Recommendations ‘Seeing plants anew,’ Stella Stanford ‘Mother trees and socialist forests: Is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?’, Daniel Immerwahr   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

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 many of the topics discussed in this episode, see this comprehensive recent review of electroreception and electric ecology by Dr. England and a colleague. 7:30 – A paper reviewing the (contested) phenomenon of electromagnetic hypersensitivity in humans. 9:30 – An encyclopedia article on electroreception in monotremes. 13:00 – An early study of electrolocation in “weakly electric” fish. 17:00 – A popular article about the discovery of electroreception in sharks. 20:30 – A 2013 study showing that bumblebees detect the electric fields around flowers. 23:30 – A recent review of electroreception and its evolution in fish.   25:00 – A study demonstrating electroreception in the Guiana dolphin. 34:00 – A recent study by Dr. England and colleagues showing that static electricity pulls ticks onto hosts. 43:00 – For more on echolocation, see our earlier episode on bats. 47:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Ryan Palmer, examining the theoretical possibilities of electroreception in air. 52:30 – A (controversial) 2022 paper on possibly language-like communication in fungi via electricity. 55:00 – Another 2013 study on electroreception in bees, this one in honeybees. 56:30 – An animated video describing the role that electricity plays in spider ballooning. 1:00:00 – Dr. England’s recent study showing that caterpillars can detect the electric fields around wasps. 1:03:00 – A discussion of triboelectric effects. 1:11:00 – Dr. England’s recent study of electrostatic pollination in butterflies and moths. 1:19:00 – A study arguing that the sexual organs of flowers may have evolved to take advantage of electrostatic pollination. 1:25:00 ­– For more on spider eyes, see our recent episode all about spiders.   Recommendations ‘Electroreception, electrogenesis and electric signal evolution,’ William Crampton An Immense World, Ed Yong (a previous guest!)   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).  

In this engaging discussion, Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a distinguished Professor Emerita of Anthropology, delves into the complexities of paternal care. She debunks the myth of 'maternal instinct' by exploring surprising instances of male caregiving in various species. The conversation touches on Darwin's observations of caretaking plasticity, the impact of intimate time on nurturing abilities, and the societal shifts reshaping fatherhood today. Hrdy also examines the cultural constructs of patriarchy and their implications for caregiving roles in humans.

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 creatures. They feel pleasure and pain, cold and warmth, agitation and comfort. But when it comes to other creatures, the case is less clear. Is a crab sentient? What about a termite, or a tree? The honest answer is we just don't know—and yet, despite that uncertainty, practical questions arise. How should we treat these beings? What do we owe them? My guest today is Dr. Jonathan Birch. Jonathan is a Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and the author of the new book The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. In it, he presents a framework for thinking about which beings might be sentient and about how our policies should account for this. Here, we talk about Jonathan's work at the nexus of philosophy, science, and policy—in particular, his role in advising the UK government on the welfare of cephalopods and decapods. We discuss what it means to be sentient and what the brain basis of sentience might be. We sketch his precautionary framework for dealing with the wide-ranging debates and rampant uncertainty around these issues. We talk about several prominent edge cases in the natural world. And, finally, we consider whether AI might become sentient and, if so, by what route. Along the way, Jonathan and I touch on: plants, crayfish, bees, larvae, and LLMs. We talk about "sentience candidates" and the "zone of reasonable disagreement"; about Jonathan's stances on octopus farming and live-boiling of crabs; about the “run-ahead principle” and the “gaming problem”; and about the question of whether all conscious experience has a valence. Jonathan's book is a remarkably clear and compelling read—if you find yourself intrigued by our conversation, I definitely recommend that you check out The Edge of Sentience as well. Alright friends, without further ado, on to our sixth season of Many Minds and on to my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Birch. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 3:00 – The full report prepared by Dr. Birch and colleagues for the UK government is available here. 4:30 – Listen to our earlier episode with Dr. Alex Schnell here. 7:00 – Dr. Birch’s 2017 book, from an earlier chapter of his career during which he focused on kin selection and social behavior. 11:00 – A paper by Dr. Birch on the UK government’s response to the pandemic. 16:00 – A classic 1958 paper on sentience by the philosopher Herbert Feigl. 20:30 – Read Dr. Birch’s general audience essay on the case of live-boiling crabs. 28:30 – Advocates of the idea that regions of the midbrain support sentience include Antonio Damasio, Jaak Panskepp (whose work we discussed in this earlier episode), and Bjorn Merker (whose work we discussed in this earlier episode).  31:30 – A discussion of the possibility of sentience in plants, with former guest Paco Calvo. 34:30 – Peter Godfrey Smith’s recent book, Metazoa. 35:30 – A paper by Dr. Birch and colleagues titled ‘Dimensions of animal consciousness.’ 39:30 – A study reporting conditioned place avoidance in octopuses. 40:30 – A study reporting anxiety-like states in crayfish. 42:00 – A primer on "nociception" (which Kensy mispronounces in this segment). 44:00 – A popular article by Dr. Birch and colleagues arguing against octopus farming. 47:00 – A paper about welfare concerns in farmed insects. 49:00 – A paper showing that bees will selectively groom an antenna that was touched with a heat probe. 51:00 – The OpenWorm project. 1:02:00 – A recent piece by Dr. Birch and former guest Kristin Andrews about developing better markers for understanding AI sentience. The question of defining “markers” of conscious experience was also a central topic of our recent episode with Tim Bayne.   Recommendations Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka Justice for Animals, Martha Nussbaum   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).