Many Minds

Have you ever pondered the letter P, or maybe reflected on the letter R? As in, thought about their structures, their shapes, and how they came to be. I, to be honest, had not. I have never given these letters—or any other letters—much thought. But that's what we're up to today. In this episode, we're looking across the world's hundred plus scripts and asking some basic questions: How are they alike? How do they differ? And why do they have the shapes that they do? My guests are Dr. Yoolim Kim and Dr. Olivier Morin. Yoolim is a Psycholinguist at the Korea Institute at Harvard University, and Olivier is director of the Minds and Traditions research group (aka 'The Mint') at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. Olivier and Yoolim, along with other colleagues, have recently launched a new online game called Glyph. You can play right now. It asks players to help describe, break down, and classify the characters of dozens of writing systems around the world. Here, we talk about Glyph and what Yoolim and Olivier hope to learn from it. We do a bit of 'Writing Systems 101' and shine a spotlight on two scripts with fascinating origin stories: Hangul, the Korean script which was devised in the 15th century and Vai, a script invented in Liberia in the 19th century. We also talk about how universal cognitive factors shape writing systems and about whether the writing system you use shapes how you think. Finally, we discuss the earliest writing systems and what they were used for; the myth that the alphabet is the most advanced type of writing system; and the understudied—but not uncommon!—phenomenon of "biscriptalism." If you enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Glyph. It sounds super fun and engrossing—and I'll definitely be playing it myself! On to my conversation with Dr. Yoolim Kim and Dr. Olivier Morin. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 2:30 – You can sign up to play Glyph and watch a video about the game here. 6:30 – The International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. 10:00 – In addition to writing, Dr. Morin's group at the MPI has also studied coin designs and other aspects of visual culture. 16:30 – A paper by Dr. Morin and colleagues about writing as one of many kinds of "graphic codes." 18:40 – An explanation of the international laundry symbols. 19:50 – A video about how Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded. A website where you can see your name written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. 24:50 – An article laying out five major types of writing system, distinguished by the linguistic unit they encode. 27:40 – More information about Hangul and Vai. 33:00 – A pioneering early paper by Mark Changizi and colleagues about the origins of letter shapes. 34:00 – A research paper by Dr. Morin about how cognitive biases for cardinal shapes and vertical symmetry shape letter forms. 37:30 – A cuneiform tablet, which shows how the script has a distinctive three-dimensional "wedge-shaped" quality. 41:30 – A research paper by Dr. Morin and colleagues on how the Vai script seems to have gotten simpler over its short history. A general audience treatment of the same study by co-author Piers Kelly. 42:00 – A research paper by Dr. Helena Miton and Dr. Morin about what determines the complexity of written letters. 45:00 – The Ogham script, which may have needed to grow more complex over time rather than simplify. 46:00 – An article on the origins of writing in different parts of the world. An article on the rebus principle. 48:30 – Our earlier essay on footprints, which discusses the idea that bird tracks inspired the Chinese writing system. 50:00 – A paper in which Dr. Morin and colleagues discuss the role of early writing in "recitation practices". 52:00 ­– The idea that literacy profoundly affects cognition was famously articulated by Jack Goody in The Domestication of the Savage Mind. A paper by Stanislas Dehaene and a colleague about the "Visual Word Form Area" and how it becomes rapidly specialized for reading. 55:00 – Korean readers are often "biscriptal" in that they are familiar with both Hangul and Hanja. 57:30 – A paper by Dr. Kim and colleagues on whether Hanja shapes the mental lexicon of Korean speakers. 59:00 – A research paper examining some of the effects of biscriptalism. 1:03 – A paper by Isabelle Dautriche and colleagues about how word forms are clustered in the lexicon. Dr. Kim recommends: In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent Highly Irregular, by Arika Okrent Frindle, by Andrew Clements Dr. Morin recommends: The Greatest Invention, by Silvia Ferrara Stories of Your Life, by Ted Chiang Codes of the Underworld, by Diego Gambetta You can read more about Dr. Morin's lab on the Mint website and follow him on Twitter. You can read more about Dr. Kim's research here. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can 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 (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Right now, as I'm recording this, there's an astonishing spectacle unfolding in the forests of Tennessee. Every June, vast swarms of Photinus carolinus fireflies light up the night there. The members of this particular species don't just blink erratically and independently. They sync up; they flash in a dazzling unison, creating waves of light that seem to propagate through the forest. But how do they do it? How do these tiny creatures pull off such a brilliant display? My guest today is Dr. Orit Peleg. She's an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute, at the University of Colorado – Boulder. Though a physicist by training, Orit and her lab focus on the dynamics of living systems, and they have recently taken up the puzzle of firefly synchrony. Here, we talk about what it's like to do fieldwork on fireflies. We discuss the colorful history of research in this area and how the phenomenon of firefly synchrony was originally contested and explained away. We talk about what Orit and her team have learned about the mechanisms of this synchrony—and about their methods, which include rich in-the-wild recordings, experiments involving tents and LEDs, and a fair bit of modeling and math. We also touch on the firing of neurons, the pulsing of heart cells, the clapping of hands, and other examples of synchronization in the natural world. As always, if you're enjoying the show, we would really appreciate a rating or review or a recommendation to a friend. Thanks so much in advance for your support. Alright, friends, on to my chat with Dr. Orit Peleg. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 2:30 – A video of firefly synchrony, produced by the Peleg lab from their own data, is available here. Other videos are here and here. A general audience essay about firefly synchrony that Dr. Peleg wrote is here; another general audience essay about the Peleg lab's work on fireflies is here. Firefly photography is an entire genre these days. 3:15 – Dr. Peleg and collaborators have conducted fieldwork on fireflies (different species) in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arizona. 8:00 – The website of the mathematician and popularizer Steven Strogatz. 11:00 – An example of Dr. Peleg's work on bee swarms. A popular article she wrote on the topic. 13:30 – An example of an early report on firefly synchrony in Science magazine. Pioneering earlier work by Buck & Buck on the topic. An interview with Lynn Faust. 20:00 – Our previous episode on bat signals also discussed the issue of a congested signalling channel. 24:00 – Dr. Peleg and her lab have put out a number of studies on firefly synchrony in recent years—see here, here, and here (preprint). 32:00 – An academic review of the "integrate and fire" model. 34:00 – A video of an audience applauding and eventually syncing up. 40:00 – An article about the work of Todd Oakley on bioluminescence in sea fireflies. Edith Widder's book, Below the Edge of Darkness. 42:30 – An article by Dr. Peleg and a colleague on dung beetle navigation. Dr. Peleg recommends: Silent Sparks, by Sara Lewis Sync, by Steven Strogatz David Attenborough's Life that Glows You can read more about Dr. Peleg's work at her website and follow her on Twitter. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can 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 (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

When we think about ancient humans, we often imagine them doing certain kinds of things. Usually very serious things like hunting game and making tools, foraging for food and building fires, maybe performing the occasional intricate ritual. But there was definitely more to the deep past than all this adulting. There were children around, too—lots of them—no doubt running around and wreaking havoc, much as they do today. But what were the kids up to, exactly? What games were they playing? What toys did they have? What were their lives like? My guest today is Dr. Michelle Langley, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Michelle grapples with questions about children, play, and childhood in the deep past. In recent work, she draws on ethnographic reports to assemble a picture of what children have in common all across the globe. She then uses that understanding to cast new light on the archaeological record, to make fresh inferences about what kids must have been doing, making, and leaving behind. In this conversation, Michelle and I talk about the kinds of basic activities that have long been a mainstay of childhood everywhere—activities like playing with dolls, keeping pets, collecting shells, and building forts. We discuss how archaeologists often assume that hard-to-interpret objects have ritual purpose, when, in fact, those objects could just as easily be toys. We talk about how children seek out and engineer "secret spaces". We also touch on how a male-centric bias has distorted archaeological discussions; how the baby sling may have been the primordial container; and how otters stash their favorite tools in their armpits. This is a super fun one, folks. But first a tiny bit of housekeeping: in case you missed the news, we have new newsletter. Seriously, who wouldn't want a monthly dose of Many Minds right in their inbox? You can find a sign-up link in the show notes. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Michelle Langley. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 2:30 – A 15,000 year old horse figurine from Les Espélugues cave in France. 6:00 – A classic paper by Conkey & Spector that helped initiate a wave of feminist archaeology. 7:30 – Dr. Langley's first paper to examine children's leavings in the archaeological record. 8:30 – See here for discussion and examples of perforated batons or bâton percés. 9:30 – Dr. Langley's paper, co-authored with Mirani Litster, 'Is it ritual? Or is it children?' 14:00 – An influential discussion of ethnographic analogies in archaeology. 18:30 – A paper on the interpretation of Dorset miniature harpoon heads. 23:30 – An article on the Neanderthal ornamental use of raptor feathers. 29:00 - Dr. Langley's paper on identifying children's secret spaces in the archaeological record. 30:30 – A book by David Sobel on children's special spaces. 34:00 – A website about the site of Étiolles. 40:00 – A figure showing the layout of the Bruniquel Cave, including the secondary structures. 41:00 ­– More information about the mammoth bone huts of Ukraine. 44:00 – A paper by Dr. Langley and Thomas Suddendorf on bags and other "mobile containers" in human evolution. 47:00 – A video showing a sea otter using their underarm "pocket" to store objects. 50:00 – The "carrier bag theory of evolution" was proposed by Elizabeth Fisher in Women's Creation. This later inspired Ursula Le Guin to propose the "carrier bag theory of fiction." 51:30 – An experimental study by Dr. Langley and colleagues on children's emerging intuitions about the use of containers and bags. 55:30 – A paper by Dr. Langley and colleagues on early symbolic behavior in Indonesia. Dr. Langley recommends: Growing up in the Ice Age, by April Nowell You can read more about Dr. Langley's work at her website and follow her on Twitter. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. **You can 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 (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

This audio essay uncovers our deep-rooted fascination with what makes humanity unique. It dives into the historic debates surrounding the hippocampus and what truly distinguishes us from other species. The complexities of defining our cognitive abilities are explored, revealing how this obsession has sparked scientific discoveries across species. Expect a blend of engaging history and contemporary science, sprinkled with intriguing speculation!

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 give them an escape route. The thing is, there's also something else vying for your attention at the moment: a chunk of chocolate. So what do you do? Do you first nab the chocolate and then free your friend? Turns out that most rats in this position—that's right, rats—will first free their friend and then go for the chocolate. This is one of many studies that have raised profound questions about whether animals are moral beings, about whether they are capable of things like care and empathy. Such studies are doing more than raising questions about animal morality, though; they're also reshaping our understanding of what animal minds are capable of. My guests today are not one but two philosophers: Dr. Kristin Andrews, Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto and Dr. Susana Monsó, Assistant Professor in the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science at UNED in Spain. Both Susana and Kristin have emerged as central figures in the new conversations and debates that springing about animal minds and animal morality. We cover a lot of ground in this episode. We talk about rats and empathy. We discuss the role of philosophy in the crossdisciplinary study of animal cognition. We talk about Kristin's most recent book, which is a critical consideration of how scientists are trained to study animals, and Susana's book, which is an extended investigation into animals' understandings of death. We zoom in on the "animal morality debate"—about whether animals should be considered moral beings. We consider how touch might inform the debate and social norms and morality are deeply enmeshed than you may realize. As we navigate these lofty ideas, we also touch on the use of thermography to study emotions in marmosets, planning in orangutans, tongue-biting in orcas, and playing dead in possums. This is basically a double episode. It features two amazing guests. It takes on two big topics—the study of animal minds in general and the animal morality debate in particular. It's also a tad longer than our usual fare, but I promised its packed with useful frameworks, provocative findings, and a bunch of open questions. I think it also picks up steam as we go—so be sure to stick with it, through to the second half. Alright folks, as always, thanks so much for listening. And be sure to send us your guest and topic ideas, your glowing reviews, and your crotchety comments. You can reach us on Twitter or by email at manymindspodcast@gmail.com. Now for my conversation with Dr. Susana Monsó and Dr. Kristin Andrews. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 5:00 – An essay by Dr. Andrews & Dr. Monsó in Aeon magazine, about how rats deserve ethical protections. 7:30 – A popular article about findings that vervet monkeys socially learn food preferences. The original research paper is here. 9:10 – A popular article on the findings that rats can learn to play hide-and-seek. 22:00 – Dr. Andrews' most recent book is How to Study Animal Minds. Her earlier book, The Animal Mind, is now out in a second edition. 24:00 – Morgan's Canon has been widely discussed and criticized in recent decades (see here, here, and here). 27:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews on the role of folk psychology in animal cognition research. 33:00 – A paper by Dr. Andrews discussing the idea of "anthropectomy." 34:00 – The paper by Dan Dennett that makes the distinction between "romantics" and "killjoys." 35:20 – Dr. Monsó's recent book (in Spanish) translates as Schrödinger's Opossum. See also: her essay in Aeon about the phenomenon of "playing dead" and what it tells us about predator cognition; and her recent philosophical papers on the same topic (here, here). 49:30 – See the recent chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews on "animal moral psychologies." See also a paper by Dr. Monsó and colleagues, 'Animal morality: What it means and why it matters.' 51:30 – A classic article by Frans de Waal, 'Putting the altruism back into altruism.' 53:40 – An "appreciation and update" to Tinbergen's four questions. 58:00 – For a review of some of the "rat empathy" studies, see the "animal moral psychologies" chapter by Dr. Monsó & Dr. Andrews. This line of work began with a paper by Bartal and colleagues in 2011. A skeptical take can be found here. 1:01 – A popular article on how chimpanzees pass the "marshmallow test." 1:04:00 – A paper on (the apparent absence of) "third-party punishment" in chimpanzees. 1:06:00 – A recent paper using thermography to gauge whether marmosets understand each other's "conversations." 1:08:00 – One of the now-famous "ape suit" studies by Chris Krupenye and colleagues. 1:11:30 – A recent paper by Dr. Andrews on the possibility of animal social norms. 1:17:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Monsó on "how the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate." 1:21:00 – A recent paper by Filip Mattens on touch—and the "vigilance" function of touch in particular. 1:25:20 – A video of "eye-poking" in capuchins, which Susan Perry has studied. 1:28:00 – On the WEIRD issue, see our essay on first decade of the acronym. Dr. Andrews recommends: The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Dr. Andrews & Jacob Beck 'Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds,' by Richard Moore Chimpanzee Memoirs, edited by Stephen Ross* & Lydia Hopper Dr. Monsó recommends: The Animal Cognition entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka (forthcoming) An Immense World, Ed Yong (forthcoming) You can read more about Dr. Andrews' work at her website and follow her on Twitter. You can read more about Dr. Monsó's work at her website and follow her on Twitter. * Sadly, shortly after this episode was recorded, Stephen Ross died unexpectedly. Read an obituary here. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome back friends and happy spring! (Or fall, as the case may be.) Today's show takes on a disarmingly simple question: What is language for? As in, why do we say things to each other? What do words do for us? Why do our languages label some aspects of the world, but not others? My guest today is Dr. Nick Enfield. He's Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Nick has authored or edited more than a dozen books on different aspects of human language and communication—books on word meaning, gesture, conversation, social interaction, the languages of Southeast Asia, and more. His latest book, just published by MIT press, is titled Language vs Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. In it, Nick argues that language is pretty awful at capturing reality—but actually that's fine, because capturing reality isn't the primary reason we use it. The real reason, in his view, is to coordinate with others. In this conversation, Nick and I flesh out this way of thinking about language as foremost a social coordination tool. Along the way, we talk about the two "reductions" that happen as brute reality gets transmuted into words. We discuss the economist Thomas Schelling and so-called Schelling maps. We talk about color words and plant names, salt and spoons, the insights of Benjamin Lee Whorf, the idea of "verbal overshadowing," and a bunch of other phenomena and thinkers. As I say in the interview, Nick has one of the most expansive views of human language of anyone I know. He draws on anthropology, economics, primatology, developmental psychology, not to mention decades of his own fieldwork in Laos. That expansive—one might say, "many minded"—perspective is on full display here. Briefly, before we get to the conversation: if you have any ideas for future guests or topics—or want to lodge some criticisms—you can reach out to us at manymindspodcast@gmail.com. That's manymindspodcast@gmail.com. We're always eager to hear from listeners. Alright friends, now to my conversation with Dr. Nick Enfield. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 10:00 – Dr. Enfield's 2002 edited book on "ethnosyntax." Here is a brief overview of serial verb constructions. 15:30 – Dr. Enfield has another book coming out later this year, with Jack Sidnell, titled Consequences of Language. 20:00 – The website of the influential semanticist Anna Wierzbicka, one of Dr. Enfield's early mentors. 22:45 – Roger Brown's classic 1958 paper 'How shall a thing be called?' 24:30 – Daniel Dor's 2015 book, The Instruction of the Imagination. 25:40 – A popular article about the contributions of the economist Thomas Schelling. Another article on his notion of "focal points." 37:00 – The classic treatment of color terms across languages is Berlin & Kay's 1991 book Basic Color Terms. 40:00 – Dr. Enfield spent a large portion of his early career at the MPI for Psycholinguistics. 44:45 – The classic treatment of plant names across cultures is Berlin's book, Ethnobiological Classification. 49:30 – Dr. Enfield has been documenting Kri, an indigenous language in Laos. 53:00 – The classic study on "verbal overshadowing" was done by Schooler & Engstler-Schooler in 1990. 58:20 – A classic paper by Krebs and Dawkins on signaling in nonhuman animals. 1:00:00 – The website of the influential (late) linguist Wallace Chafe. 1:08:30 – A widely-circulated 2013 paper by Dr. Enfield and colleagues on whether "huh" is a universal word. Spoiler: it seems to be. 1:10:00 - The researcher Jim Hurford has written several influential books on the evolution of language. Dr. Enfield recommends: Origins of Human Communication, by Michael Tomasello Social Intelligence and Interaction, edited by Esther Goody Language, Thought, and Reality, by Benjamin Lee Whorf You can read more about Dr. Enfield's work at his website and follow him on Twitter. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Friends—we're busy with some spring cleaning this week, but will be back in mid-April. In the meanwhile, here's a favorite audio essay from our archives. Enjoy! ______ Welcome back folks! Today is a return to one of our favorite formats: the audio essay. If you like your audio essays short, concise, and full of tidbits, then this one will not disappoint. We take a look at a 140-year-old idea but very much a radical one—the root-brain hypothesis. It was proposed by Charles Darwin in a book published in the twilight of his career. The idea, in short, is that plants have a structure that is, in some ways, brain-like—and it is located underground, at their roots. We talk about how Darwin and his son Francis arrived at this idea, why it was ignored for so long, and how it's recently stirred to life. Enjoy! A text version of this essay is available here. Notes and links 2:15 – The last page of Darwin's The Power of Movement in Plants (1880). 3:25 – The 2009 paper by Dr. Baluška and colleagues about the history and modern revival of the "root-brain hypothesis." 6:00 – The tinfoil hats experiment—and its influence—is discussed in this 2009 paper. 8:00 – The dust-up between Darwin and Sachs is described in this 1996 paper. 8:47 – The 2011 paper listing many of the environmental variables plants are now known to be sensitive to. 9:28 – Dr. Gagliano and colleagues' paper on associative learning in plant and on plants' use of sounds to find water. The possibility of echolocation is discussed here. 9:45 – For broader context surrounding the question of plants may have something like a brain, see Oné R. Pagán's essay titled 'The brain: A concept in flux.' 9:57 – The 2006 paper that inaugurated the field of "plant neurobiology." 10:34 – Discussions of the "transition zone" of the root can be found in the 2009 paper by Baluška and colleagues, as well as in this more technical paper from 2010. 11:00 – The response letter to the original "plant neurobiology" paper, signed by 36 plant biologists. 12:00 – Michael Pollan's 2013 article 'The Intelligent Plant' in The New Yorker. 12:05 – Anthony Trewavas's letter, highlighting the power of metaphors in science. 12:26 – The 2020 paper about pea tendrils in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Correction: The audio version of this episode misstates the publication year of Darwin's final book, about worms. The correct year is 1881, not 1883. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

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, some researchers have turned to an especially dramatic case: blindness. What does a life without visual input do to the mind and brain? My guest today is Dr. Marina Bedny, an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. For more than a decade now, Marina has been researching blindness and, in particular, what blindness can tell us much about where our concepts come from and about how our brains get organized. Here, Marina and I discuss how people who have been blind since birth nonetheless develop rich, sophisticated understandings of the visual world. We talk about how the visual cortex in blind folks gets repurposed for other decidedly non-visual functions, like language. We consider the intriguing findings that blind people very often outperform sighted people in certain kinds of tasks. On the way, we also touch on John Locke and the British empiricists; the notion of cortical recycling; the possibility of re-opening the brain's critical periods; and a bunch else. This was a super thought-provoking conversation—I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think you will too. But, before we get to it, a final reminder about the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. This year's DISI will be not only in-person but held in the charming seaside city of St Andrews, Scotland. More details at disi.org. The application window is only open for a little while longer, so better act fast. Alright friends, on to my chat with Dr. Marina Bedny. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 3:30 ­– A popular article and video on the ideas of John Locke and other empiricists. 4:50 – One of the original articles by the philosopher Frank Jackson on Mary the color scientist. 7:35 – The 1985 book by Dr. Barbara Landau and Dr. Lila Gleitman on language acquisition in (a few) blind children. 11:00 – Dr. Bedny's first study involving blind subjects, in collaboration with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Dr. Rebecca Saxe. 15:00 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny's lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing color knowledge in blind and sighted adults. 23:30 – A recent study by Dr. Bedny and collaborators on blind people's understanding of visual verbs like sparkle, glow, peek, and stare. 30:30 – A recent study in Dr. Bedny's lab, led by Dr. Judy Kim, comparing knowledge of animal appearance in blind and sighted adults. 34:00 – Tour an interactive model of the visual cortex—and the rest of the brain—here. 36:00 – A now-classic paper by Dr. Norihiro Sadato and colleagues on how reading Braille activates blind people's "visual" cortex. 37:30– The "metamodal" hypothesis and the "pluripotent" hypothesis are compared in Dr. Bedny's recent article in TiCs. 45:30 – A 2011 paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues about how, in blind people, the "visual" cortex is involved in language processing. 49:00 – A paper showing that "visual" areas in blind people are highly synchronized when listening to stories. A more recent paper in a similar vein. 53:00 – A now-classic paper by Dehaene and Cohen on the "cultural recycling" of certain brain areas. 56:00 – A paper by Dr. Bedny and colleagues on sensitive periods and cortical specialization. 1:01:00 – A recent paper from Dr. Bedny's lab, led by Karen Arcos, showing superior verbal working memory in blind relative to sighted adults. 1:03:30 – Another study from Dr. Bedny's lab showing that blind people are less likely than sighted people to be led astray by garden-path sentences. Dr. Bedny recommends: Her TiCs article on the "pluripotent cortex" Recent papers (e.g. here and here) from her lab led by Dr. Judy Kim A now-classic paper on cortical recycling. You can read more about Dr. Bedny's work at her lab's website. Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

To be a good magician, you have to be a good psychologist. If you want to pull off a really good magic trick, you need to know your audience—what they are likely to attend to or gloss over, what shortcuts they take, what predictions they tend to make. Which all raises a question: Could you get to know a new audience, a very different audience, by seeing which tricks they fall for and which they don't? Could we use magic as a scientific tool, in other words, as a window into minds that may be quite unlike our own? My guest today is Dr. Nicola Clayton. Nicky is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Psychology department at the University of Cambridge. She is this year's winner of the prestigious ASAB medal, awarded by Association for the Study of Animal Behavior. Nicky is perhaps best known for her research on birds—corvids in particular—and how they show evidence of sophisticated cognitive abilities like memory, planning, mental time travel, and even understanding of other minds. Recently, Nicky and her colleagues have been up to something new: showing magic tricks to birds, as a way of probing their impressive mental capacities. Here, Nicky and I talk about why magic is a useful tool for psychologists. We discuss her pioneering earlier work on corvids and, in particular, on how they hide or "cache" vast amounts of food. We talk about how corvids protect their caches from would-be thieves using tactics that, curiously, resemble some of those used by human magicians. We dive into some recent studies from Nicky's lab that involved showing classic magic tricks to Eurasian jays. And, finally, we get a tiny taste of what might be coming up in this line of research. Before we get to it, one quick announcement: Applications are now open for the 2022 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute or DISI. After two years in the Zoomverse, DISI will be back in 3D this summer in St Andrews, Scotland. If you like the topics we talk about on this show, it's a pretty safe bet you'd be into DISI. So check out disi.org for more info. Alright folks, without further hocus pocus, here's my conversation about magic and birds with Dr. Nicky Clayton. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 2:45 ­– A recent editorial in Science by Dr. Clayton and colleagues about the promise of using magic to illuminate animal minds. 4:45 – One of Dr. Clayton's primary collaborators on her magic studies is Clive Wilkins, who is an artist, writer, and professional magician. He is a member of the Magic Circle in London. 8:30 – For more on tool use in corvids, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Taylor. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Clayton have collaborated on a number of studies. 10:30 – A 2004 paper in Science by Dr. Clayton and Dr. Nathan Emery on the convergent evolution of intelligence in apes and corvids. A recent paper on physical and social intelligence in ravens. 14:00 – Dr. Clayton has authored a number of influential studies on caching behavior in corvids; see here, here, and here, among others. 17:30 – A paper by Dr. Clayton and a colleague on how caching jays are sensitive to who can hear them caching. 21:30 – A recent paper in PNAS by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, examining three sleight of hand tricks in jays and humans. 24:00 – A recent video profile of Dr. Clayton's line of work on magic includes examples of these sleight of hand tricks. 27:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Clayton and her colleagues, including lead author Dr. Alex Schnell, examining a version of the "cup and balls" trick, also shown to jays. 35:00 – The proposed priming experiment was inspired by a recent paper on subconscious gestural priming in humans. 36:00 – For work on cephalopods, see our prior episode with Dr. Alex Schnell, who has collaborated with Dr. Clayton on the magic work in addition to wave-making studies on cephalopods. Dr. Clayton recommends: A profile of her lab's work on magic in New Scientist Bird Brain, by Nathan Emery Experiencing the Impossible, by Gustav Kuhn You can find Dr. Clayton on Twitter (@nickyclayton22). Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), 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 Cecilia Padilla. Creative support is provided by DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

I have this theory about podcasts—it's almost certainly not original, and it's probably not right. But anyway, I have this theory that what makes for a great podcast episode is really just a few good moments. Sure, it's nice if the conversation has a satisfying arc and good energy; it's great if it's not too dense or repetitive—all that stuff matters. But I think what really makes an interview stick out for us—and stick with us—are these little time slices. Charged little moments that burn a little brighter. On Many Minds, those moments might come when someone is telling us about their big idea or reframe, a sudden realization they had, maybe just a charming factoid. It might come from them transporting us to a recent research trip, or musing on what it's like to be another creature. It really could come from almost anywhere honestly. So on the occasion of our 2nd birthday— okay, fine, I seem to have buried the lead. We have a birthday this week: we are turning two years old. Incredible—I know. It's really gone by in a flash, but also felt like eons and all that. But anyway, on the occasion of our 2nd birthday, we wanted to look back at some of our favorite moments from the first two years. Fair warning, this is a highly selective selection. We weren't able to feature all our episodes—less than half of them, actually. And those that are featured have been reduced to a tiny snippet. So it's a selective and reductive sample but hopefully somehow still a satisfying one. One more thing: some of you will no doubt be wondering what to get us for our birthday. Great question. In lieu of the usual cake or cards or cash, we would happily take a rating or review, a forward to a friend, or a shout out on social media. All that stuff makes us feel good, and ensures that we can keep going and keep growing. Alright friends without further ado, here's a select few of our favorite moments from the show—interleaved with bits of context and commentary. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Episodes excerpted: Bat Signals Clever Crows and Cheeky Keas Our Pranking Primate Cousins The Roots of Rhythm How Do Chimps Communicate? The Scents of Language Of Bees and Brains Architects of the Underworld Cultures of the Deep Intoxication Revising the Neanderthal Story The Savvy Cephalopod From Where We Stand Culture, Innovation, and the Collective Brain Aligning AI with Our Values Babies, Grandmas, and Our Most Human Capacities Born to be Cultured Why Do We Dream? Why is AI So Hard? Mind Everywhere