A warm welcome back! On this "mini minds" installment, we tried something a little different. We reached out to former participants in the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)—including grad students, post docs, and faculty—to ask them a couple questions. What we've done for this episode put together a selection of their answers. Here were the questions:

1. What is a book you've read over the last couple months and would recommend—perhaps because it offered insight, comfort, context, or escape?

2. As we start to look beyond the pandemic, what are some changes you think—or hope—may be in store for academic research?These could be changes to your own practices or priorities as a researcher; to your subfield; to academic culture or practices generally; or to the role of science in society.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Contributors

Anna Corwin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Saint Mary's College of California

Nadya Vasilyeva, Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University/ UC Berkeley/ UCLA

Brian Bruya, Professor of Philosophy, Eastern Michigan University

Dániel Czégel, Graduate Student at Eötvös University, Budapest Hungary

Amalia Bastos, Graduate Student in Comparative Psychology at the University of Auckland

Jacob Foster, Founding Co-Director of DISI, Associate Professor of Sociology, UCLA

Colin Conwell, Graduate Student in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University

Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Graduate Student in the Department of Sociology, UCLA

Efrén Cruz Cortés, Eberly Postdoctroal Research Fellow, Penn State University

Chris Krupenye, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, Durham University (UK)

Haleh Yazdi, Graduate Student in the Departments of Psychology, UCSD

Book recommendations

Man Is Not Alone, by Abraham Joshua Heschel

At the Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell

Confucius Beyond the Analects, by Michael Hunter

The Book of Life, edited by Stephen Jay Gould

What is Life, by Lynn Margulus and Dorian Sagan

The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker

Indiscrete Thoughts, by Gian-Carlo Rota

What It's Like to Be a Bird, by David Sibley

Why Fish Don't Exist, by Lulu Miller

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted by Kensy Cooperrider, with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster, and Associate Director Hilda Loury. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/).

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