One afternoon you decide to snub your responsibilities and go for a hike. You spend a few hours in the woods or the mountains. You study the bark of trees, you bathe in birdsong, you let your eyes roam along a distant ridgeline. And you come back feeling better, restored somehow—like you have more energy, more patience, more bandwidth. We've all, I'm guessing, had experiences like this. But what's behind these effects? Why would nature restore us? What's the evidence that it really does? And what is even being restored, actually?

My guest today is Dr. Marc Berman. Marc is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago where he directs the Environmental Neuroscience Lab. Marc is also the author of a new book, Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being.

Here, Marc and I talk about Attention Restoration Theory—the idea that nature experiences restore our limited capacity for directed attention. We discuss the broader field of "environmental neuroscience," which Marc helped kickstart and continues to lead. We range across studies from Marc's lab that show nature's beneficial effects—on attention, on mood, and on health. We talk about what the active ingredients in nature seem to be. And we discuss the field's prospects for understanding how nature impacts not just the mind, but the brain itself. Along the way, Marc and I touch on: soft versus harsh fascination; the elusive concept of "mental energy"; trees, wood, fire, and rain; the architect and theorist Christopher Alexander; the value of fake plants; fractalness in space and time; curvature and spirituality; and how nature tends to steer our thoughts in certain directions.

Needless to say, we're stoked to be kicking off a new season of Many Minds. If you're new to the show, welcome! If you're already a fan, perhaps you'd consider leaving us a rating or a review on your platform of choice. It really does help us reach new listeners.

Alright friends, on to my conversation w/ Dr. Marc Berman. Enjoy!

Notes and links

7:00 – For more on Attention Restoration Theory and the distinctions it makes between directed attention and involuntary attention, see this paper by Dr. Stephen Kaplan. For more on the construct of “directed attention” in general, see this paper by Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Berman.

12:00 – For an overview of the aims and scope of “environmental neuroscience,” see this paper by Dr. Berman and colleagues. 

17:00 – The 1989 book by Dr. Stephen Kaplan and Dr. Rachel Kaplan, The Experience of Nature 

21:30 – For the “walk in the park” study that kickstarted Dr. Berman’s research on environmental neuroscience, see here.

25:30 – For some of Dr. Berman and colleagues’ work on nature sounds, see here and here.

27:00 – For a study on the possible benefits of nature for children with ADHD, see here. 

30:00 – For more on the Garden of the Phoenix (aka the Osaka Garden) in Chicago, see here. For a news article about the benefits of “tiny forests,” see here. 

34:00 –  See here for the follow-up to the “walk in the park” study with people experiencing depression. 

38:00 – For the study on the relationship between tree cover and cardiometabolic health in Toronto, see here. 

44:00 – For the classic study by Dr. Roger Ulrich on how the view from one's hospital room may impact recovery, see here.

47:00 – For more on the link between crime and nature in apartment complexes in Chicago, see here. 

49:00 – A preprint by Dr. Berman and colleagues on the “compressibility” and memorability of natural images is here.

55:00 – For some of Dr. Berman’s earliest work on the "low-level" visual features of natural scenes, see here. 

57:00 – For the work, led by Kathryn Schertz, on how natural (or non-natural) images with curved edges direct our thoughts, see here. 

1:01:00 – The firelight talk paper is here. 

1:02:30 – For the study by Dr. Schertz, Dr. Berman, and colleagues comparing thoughts in the conservatory and at the mall, see here.

1:05:00 – For the study on a historical increase in the use of the generic term “tree” in English, see here.

1:06:00 – Christopher Alexander, the architect and theorist, is perhaps best known for his (co-authored) book, A Pattern Language. For the study by Alex Coburn, Dr. Berman, and colleagues, see here.

1:09:30 – To get a visual flavor of La Sagrada Familia, see here.

1:18:00 – The study on whether people can reliably predict how much they will enjoy a walk in nature. 

1:20:00 – For some of Dr. Berman and colleagues’ initial work on temporal “fractalness” in the brain, see here.

Recommendations

Greg Bratman et al., ‘Nature and human well-being: The olfactory pathway’

Kim Doell et al., ‘Leveraging neuroscience for climate change research’

Lucia Mason et al., ‘Short-term exposure to nature and benefits for students’ cognitive performance: A review’

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.

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: [email protected].

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Hi friends!

We're taking a much-needed summer pause—we'll have new episodes for you later in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!

-------

[originally aired June 1, 2023]

There's a common story about the human past that goes something like this. For a few hundred thousand years during the Stone Age we were kind of limping along as a species, in a bit of a cognitive rut, let’s say. But then, quite suddenly, around 30 or 40 thousand years ago in Europe, we really started to come into our own. All of a sudden we became masters of art and ornament, of symbolism and abstract thinking. This story of a kind of "cognitive revolution" in the Upper Paleolithic has been a mainstay of popular discourse for decades. I’m guessing you’re familiar with it. It's been discussed in influential books by Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari; you can read about it on Wikipedia. What you may not know is that this story, compelling as it may be, is almost certainly wrong.

My first guest today is Dr. Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, where she heads the Pan-African Evolution research group. My second guest is Dr. Manuel Will, an archaeologist and Lecturer at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Together, Eleanor and Manuel are authors of a new paper titled 'The revolution that still isn't: The origins of behavioral complexity in Homo sapiens.' In the paper, they pull together a wealth of evidence showing that there really was no cognitive revolution—no one watershed moment in time and space. Rather, the origins of modern human cognition and culture are to be found not in one part of Europe but across Africa. And they’re also to be found much earlier than that classic picture suggests. 

Here, we talk about the “cognitive revolution" model and why it has endured. We discuss a seminal paper from the year 2000 that first influentially challenged the revolution model. We talk about the latest evidence of complex cognition from the Middle Stone Age in Africa—including the perforation of marine shells to make necklaces; and the use of ochre for engraving, painting, and even sunblock. We discuss how, though the same complex cognitive abilities were likely in place for the last few hundred thousand years, those abilities were often expressed patchily in different parts of the world at different times. And we consider the factors that led to this patchy expression, especially changes in population size.  

I confess I was always a bit taken with this whole "cognitive revolution" idea. It had a certain mystery and allure. This new picture that’s taking its place is certainly a bit messier, but no less fascinating. And, more importantly, it’s truer to the complexities of the human saga. 

Alright friends, on to my conversation with Eleanor Scerri & Manuel Will. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:30 – The paper by Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will we discuss in this episode is here. Their paper updates and pays tribute to a classic paper by McBrearty and Brooks, published in 2000.

6:00 – The classic “cognitive revolution” model sometimes discussed under the banner of “behavioral modernity” or the “Great Leap Forward.” It has been recently featured, for instance, in Harari’s Sapiens.

11:00 – Dr. Scerri has written extensively on debates about where humans evolved within Africa—see, e.g., this paper. 

18:00 – A study of perforated marine shells in North Africa during the Middle Stone Age. A paper by Dr. Will and colleagues about the use of various marine resources during this period. 

23:00 – A paper describing the uses of ochre across Africa during the Middle Stone Age. Another paper describing evidence for ochre processing 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave in South Africa. At the same site, engraved pieces of ochre have been found.

27:00 – A study examining the evidence that ochre was used as an adhesive.

30:00 – For a recent review of the concept of “cumulative culture,” see here. We discussed the concept of “cumulative culture” in our earlier episode with Dr. Cristine Legare. 

37:00 – For an overview of the career of the human brain and the timing of various changes, see our earlier episode with Dr. Jeremy DeSilva.

38:00 – An influential study on the role of demography in the emergence of complex human behavior.

41:00 – On the idea that distinctive human intelligence is due in large part to culture and our abilities to acquire cultural knowledge, see Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success. See also our earlier episode with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna. 

45:00 – For discussion of the Neanderthals and why they may have died out, see our earlier episode with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes. 

Recommendations

Dr. Scerri recommends research on the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, found in Morocco and described here, and new research on the evidence for the widespread burning of landscapes in Malawi, described here. 

Dr. Will recommends the forthcoming update of Peter Mitchell’s book, The Archaeology of Southern Africa.

See Twitter for more updates from Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will.

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: [email protected].

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Hi friends!

We're taking a much-needed August pause—we'll have new episodes for you in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!

_____

[originally aired February 8, 2024]

Where do memories live in the brain? If you've ever taken a neuroscience class, you probably learned that they're stored in our synapses, in the connections between our neurons. The basic idea is that, whenever we have an experience, the neurons involved fire together in time, and the synaptic connections between them get stronger. In this way, our memories for those experiences become minutely etched into our brains. This is what might be called the synaptic view of memory—it's the story you'll find in textbooks, and it's often treated as settled fact. But some reject this account entirely. The real storehouses of memory, they argue, lie elsewhere. 

My guest today is Dr. Sam Gershman. Sam is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and the director of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab there. In a recent paper, he marshals a wide-ranging critique of the synaptic view. He makes a compelling case that synapses can't be the whole story—that we also have to look inside the neurons themselves. 

Here, Sam and I first discuss the synaptic view and the evidence that seems to support it. We then talk about some of the problems with this classic picture. We consider, for example, cases where memories survive the radical destruction of synapses; and, more provocatively, cases where memories are formed in single-celled organisms that lack synapses altogether. We talk about the dissenting view, long lurking in the margins, that intracellular molecules like RNA could be the real storage sites of memory. Finally, we talk about Sam's new account—a synthesis that posits a role for both synapses and molecules. Along the way we touch on planaria and paramecia; spike-timing dependent plasticity; the patient H.M.; metamorphosis, hibernation, and memory transfer; the pioneering work of Beatrice Gelber; unfairly maligned ideas; and much, much more.

Before we get to it, one important announcement: Applications are now open for the 2024 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (or DISI)! The event will be held in beautiful, seaside St Andrews, Scotland, from June 30 to July 20. If you like this show—if you like the conversations we have and the questions we ask—it's a safe bet that you'd like DISI. You can find more info at disi.org—that's disi.org. Review of applications will begin on Mar 1, so don't delay. 

Alright friends, on to my conversation about the biological basis of memory with Dr. Sam Gershman. Enjoy!

Notes and links

4:00 - A general audience article on planarian memory transfer experiments and the scientist who conducted them, James V. McConnell. 

8:00 - For more on Dr. Gershman’s research and general approach, see his recent book and the publications on his lab website. 

9:30 - A brief video explaining long-term potentiation. An overview of “Hebbian Learning.” The phrase “neurons that fire together wire together” was, contrary to widespread misattribution, coined by Dr. Carla Shatz here.

12:30 - The webpage of Dr. Jeremy Gunawardena, Associate Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard University. A recent paper from Dr. Gunawardena’s lab on the avoidance behaviors exhibited by the single-celled organism Stentor (which vindicates some disputed, century-old findings).  

14:00 - A recent paper by C. R. Gallistel describing some of his views on the biological basis of memory.  

19:00 - The term “engram” refers to the physical trace of a memory. See recent reviews about the so-called search for the engram here, here, and here.  

20:00 - An article on the importance of H.M. in neuroscience. 

28:00 - A review about the phenomenon of spike-timing dependent plasticity.

33:00 - An article, co-authored by former guest Dr. Michael Levin, on the evidence for memory persistence despite radical remodeling of brain structures. See our episode with Dr. Levin here.

35:00 - A study reporting the persistence of memories in decapitated planarians. A popular article about these findings. 

36:30 - An article reviewing one chapter in the memory transfer history. Another article reviewing evidence for “vertical” memory transfer (between generations).

39:00 - For more recent demonstrations of memory transfer, see here and here.

40:00 - A paper by Dr. Gershman, Dr. Gunawardena, and colleagues reconsidering the evidence for learning in single cells and describing the contributions of Dr. Beatrice Gelber. A general audience article about Gelber following the publication of the paper by Dr. Gershman and colleagues.

45:00 – A recent article arguing for the need to understand computation in single-celled organisms to understand how computation evolved more generally. 

46:30 – Another study of classical conditioning in paramecia, led by Dr. Todd Hennessey.

49:00 – For more on plant signaling, see our recent episode with Dr. Paco Calvo and Dr. Natalie Lawrence. 

56:00 – A recent article on “serial reversal learning” and its neuroscientific basis. 

1:07:00 – A 2010 paper demonstrating a role for methylation in memory.

Recommendations

The Behavior of the Lower Organisms, by Herbert Spencer Jennings

Memory and the Computational Brain, by C. R. Gallistel and Adam Philip King

Wetware, by Dennis Bray

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: [email protected].

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Hi friends!

We're taking a much-needed August pause—we'll have new episodes for you in September. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!

_____

[originally aired May 30, 2024]

Maybe your idea of spiders is a bit like mine was. You probably know that they have eight legs, that some are hairy. Perhaps you imagine them spending most of their time sitting in their webs—those classic-looking ones, of course—waiting for snacks to arrive. Maybe you consider them vaguely menacing, or even dangerous. Now this is not all completely inaccurate—spiders do have eight legs, after all—but it's a woefully incomplete and drab caricature. Your idea of spiders, in other words, may be due for a refresh. 

My guest today is Dr. Ximena Nelson, Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Ximena is the author of the new book, The Lives of Spiders. It’s an accessible and stunningly illustrated survey of spider behavior, ecology, and cognition. 

In this conversation, Ximena and I do a bit of ‘Spiders 101’. We talk about spider senses—especially how spiders use hairs to detect the minutest of vibrations and how they see, usually, with four pairs of eyes. We talk about web-making—which, by the way, the majority of spiders don't do—and silk-making—which all do, but for more reasons than you may realize. We talk about how spiders hunt, jump, dance, pounce, plan, decorate, cache, balloon, and possibly count. We talk about why so many spiders mimic ants. We take up the puzzle of “stabilimenta”. We talk about whether webs constitute an extended sensory apparatus—like a gigantic ear—and why spiders are an under-appreciated group of animals for thinking about the evolution of mind, brain, and behavior.

Alright friends, this one is an absolute feast. So let's get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Ximena Nelson. Enjoy!

 A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:00 – A general audience article about our “collective arachnid aversion” to spiders. 

8:00 – An academic article by Dr. Nelson about jumping spider behavior. 

8:30 – In addition to spiders, Dr. Nelson also studies kea parrots (e.g., here). 

12:00 – A popular article about the thousands of spider species known to science—and the thousands that remain unknown.

16:30 – A popular article about a mostly vegetarian spider, Bagheera kiplingi.

18:00 – For the mating dance of the peacock spider, see this video.

20:00 – A recent study on spider “hearing” via their webs.

24:00 – The iNaturalist profile of the tiger bromeliad spider. 

29:30 – A recent study of extended sensing in humans during tool use. 

33:00 – A popular discussion of vision (and other senses) in jumping spiders. 

40:00 – An earlier popular discussion of spider webs and silk. 

45:00 – For a primer on bird’s nests, see here. 

48:00 – An article describing the original work on how various drugs alter spiders’ webs. 

49:00 – A recent salvo in the long-standing stabilimenta debate.

54:00 – A video about “ballooning” in spiders.

57:00 ­– An article by Dr. Nelson and a colleague about jumping spiders as an important group for studies in comparative cognition.

1:01:00 – A study of reversal learning in jumping spiders, which found large individual differences.

1:07:00 – A study of larder monitoring in orb weaver spiders.

1:10:00 – A study by Dr. Nelson and a colleague on numerical competence in Portia spiders.

1:16:00 – An academic essay on the so-called insect apocalypse.

Recommendations

Spider Behaviour: Flexibility and Versatility, by M. Herberstein

‘Spider senses – Technical perfection and biology,’ by F. Barth

‘Extended spider cognition’, by H. Japyassú and K. Lala

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: [email protected]. s

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

When you hear the word "shaman," I'm guessing a web of associations starts to form in your mind. Perhaps you imagine strange ceremonies and strong substances; maybe you think of an earlier time when magic and superstition reigned. But shamanism is not just some relic of the past, or a curio from exotic lands. It's part of our present, and it will almost certainly be part of our future. This is because the roots of shamanism lie within us all.

My guest today is Dr. Manvir Singh. Manvir is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He's also the author of a new book—Shamanism: The Timeless Religion.

Here, Manvir and I talk about his fieldwork with Mentawai shamans in Indonesia. We discuss what makes a shaman a shaman and consider the cognitive building blocks that make shamanism so widespread and so appealing. We discuss the shamanic origins of Abrahamic religions. We consider how, over the course of history, shamanism has repeatedly resurged, despite attempts to snuff it out. And we also talk about the various forms and flavors that shamanism takes in contemporary Western societies. Along the way, Manvir and I touch on: drumming, fasting, and the “dark tent”; Jesus; experimental Edens; witches, prophets, and messiahs; glossolalia; disenchantment and re-enchantment; the rise of neoshamanism; Paleolithic rock art; hedge wizards and tech CEOs; Western exceptionalism; and the routinization of charisma.

If you enjoy this episode, I highly recommend that you check out Manvir's book—it's a captivating blend of narrative and ideas and it goes far beyond what we were able to talk about here. I'll also flag that this is Manvir's second time on Many Minds. Back in July of 2020 we had another conversation—broader in scope—where we talked about shamanism but also Manvir's work on witches, stories, and music. So you might check that one out as well.

Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

4:00 – For video examples of shamanic rituals from around the world, see Dr. Singh’s recent thread on  Bluesky / Twitter.

12:30 – On the idea of “cultural attraction” and “cultural attractors,” see here and here. For a recent treatment of the idea of “super-attractors,” see Dr. Singh’s preprint here.

16:00 – On the case of cultural loss among the Northern Aché, see the recent work by Dr. Singh and a colleague.

17:30 – For more on Dr. Singh’s theoretical framework for understanding shamanism, see his earlier academic paper.

19:00 – The 2005 review of altered states of consciousness by Vaitl et al. For more on psychedelics and altered states, see our recent episode with Chris Letheby.

29:00 – Mircea Eliade’s classic work on shamanism—Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.

34:00 – For the book by Martin Riesebrodt on the nature of religion, see here.

36:00 – For more on the human propensity for ritual, see our earlier episode with Dimitris Xygalatas.

43:00 – For one influential interpretation of Paleolithic rock art as evidence for shamanism, see David Lewis-Williams’ book, Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art.

52:00 – For a discussion of psychedelics and organized religion that touches on the “routinization of charisma,” see this article by Michael Pollan.

54:00 – For more about the case of Alice Auma, see Dr. Singh’s recent piece in The New Yorker.

1:00:30 – For more about neoshamanism and Michael Harner, see the website of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies—www.shamanism.org.

1:04:00 – For the analysis of financial managers by Samuel Johnson, see here. 

1:06:00 – For more on the quasi-shamanic flavor of tech CEOs, see Rakesh Khurana’s book, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs.

1:08:00 – See, again, Dr. Singh’s recent piece in The New Yorker in which he discusses Trump and prophet-like status.

1:13:00 – For Dr. Singh’s work on other complex cultural traditions, see the website for his lab.

Recommendations

The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea, by Gilbert Herdt

The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert

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: [email protected]. s

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

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, teaching, toys, and the enduring question of what childhood is for.

Alright friends, lots to think about here. On to my conversation with Sheina Lew-Levy and Dorsa Amir. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

9:30 – For an overview of work on how culture shapes motor development, see here.

11:00 – The paper by Dr. Lew-Levy’s and a colleague about “walking the forest.”

16:00 – Dr. Amir’s TedX talk, ‘How the Industrial Revolution Changed Childhood.’

17:30 – For some of Dr. Amir’s work on risk across cultures, see here.

35:00 – For a recent paper by Dr. Lew-Levy and colleagues about the evolution of childhood, see here.

39:00 – The popular article by Ann Gibbons, ‘The Birth of Childhood.’

41:00 – For the idea of the “patriarch hypothesis,” see here.

42:00 – For more on the “WEIRD problem” in developmental psychology, see here.

48:00 – A paper by Dr. Lew-Levy and colleagues about toys in hunter-gatherer groups. For more on the material culture of childhood, see our earlier episode with Michelle Langley.

52:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Lew-Levy on the prevalence of “child-to-child” teaching.

56:00 – A paper by Dr. Amir and a colleague about the concept of “adverse childhood experiences” in cross-cultural perspective.

1:04:00 – The paper by Dr. Amir and Dr. Lew-Levy on “peer cultures” and children as agents of cultural adaptation.

1:08:00 – For more on the idea of children as the "research and development" wing of the species, see our earlier episode with Alison Gopnik.

1:10:00 – For more on the Opies, see here.

1:13:00 – For the work of (past guest) Olivier Morin on children’s culture, see here.

1:23:00 – For the paper by Dr. Camilla Morelli, ‘The River Echoes with Laughter,’ see here.

Recommendations

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, by Iona and Peter Opie

The Gardener and the Carpenter, by Alison Gopnik

The Anthropology of Childhood, by David Lancy

Intimate Fathers, by Barry Hewlett

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: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

AI will fundamentally transform science. It will supercharge the research process, making it faster and more efficient and broader in scope. It will make scientists themselves vastly more productive, more objective, maybe more creative. It will make many human participants—and probably some human scientists—obsolete… Or at least these are some of the claims we are hearing these days. There is no question that various AI tools could radically reshape how science is done, and how much science is done. What we stand to gain in all this is pretty clear. What we stand to lose is less obvious, but no less important.

My guest today is Dr. Molly Crockett. Molly is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. In a recent widely-discussed article, Molly and the anthropologist Dr. Lisa Messeri presented a framework for thinking about the different roles that are being imagined for AI in science. And they argue that, when we adopt AI in these ways, we become vulnerable to certain illusions.

Here, Molly and I talk about four visions of AI in science that are currently circulating: AI as an Oracle, as a Surrogate, as a Quant, and as an Arbiter. We talk about the very real problems in the scientific process that AI promises to help us solve. We consider the ethics and challenges of using Large Language Models as experimental subjects. We talk about three illusions of understanding the crop up when we uncritically adopt AI into the research pipeline—an illusion that we understand more than we actually do; an illusion that we're covering a larger swath of a research space than we actually are; and the illusion that AI makes our work more objective. We also talk about how ideas from Science and Technology Studies (or STS) can help us make sense of this AI-driven transformation that, like it or not, is already upon us. Along the way Molly and I touch on: AI therapists and AI tutors, anthropomorphism, the culture and ideology of Silicon Valley, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, fMRI, objectivity, quantification, Molly's mid-career crisis, monocultures, and the squishy parts of human experience.

Without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Molly Crockett. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

5:00 – For more on LLMs—and the question of whether we understand how they work—see our earlier episode with Murray Shanahan.

9:00 – For the paper by Dr. Crockett and colleagues about the social/behavioral sciences and the COVID-19 pandemic, see here. 

11:30 – For Dr. Crockett and colleagues’ work on outrage on social media, see this recent paper. 

18:00 – For a recent exchange on the prospects of using LLMs in scientific peer review, see here.

20:30 – Donna Haraway’s essay, 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, is here. See also Dr. Haraway's book, Primate Visions.

22:00 – For the recent essay by Henry Farrell and others on AI as a cultural technology, see here.

23:00 – For a recent report on chatbots driving people to mental health crises, see here.

25:30 – For the already-classic “stochastic parrots” article, see here.

33:00 – For the study by Ryan Carlson and Dr. Crockett on using crowd-workers to study altruism, see here.

34:00 – For more on the “illusion of explanatory depth,” see our episode with Tania Lombrozo.

53:00 – For more about Ohio State’s plans to incorporate AI in the classroom, see here. For a recent essay by Dr. Crockett on the idea of “techno-optimism,” see here.

Recommendations

More Everything Forever, by Adam Becker

Transformative Experience, by L. A. Paul

Epistemic Injustice, by Miranda Fricker

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: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Puppies wrestling and mock-biting each other. Toddlers playing hide and seek. Kittens pouncing—repeatedly—on a toy mouse. You've no doubt looked on at scenes like this with amusement. And you've no doubt seen some of those viral videos—of ravens sledding down hills, of bumble bees playing with balls. All these moments make us smile, maybe even giggle. But the scientific questions they raise merit serious attention. Where do we see play in the animal kingdom? Where do we not? What functions does play serve? Do we—and many other creatures—have an elemental need for play?

My guest today is Dr. Gordon Burghardt. Gordon is a longtime Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. For decades now, Gordon has been a pioneer in the study of animal play, with a particular focus on play in reptiles and other animals not usually considered playful. His 2005 book, The Genesis of Animal Play, remains a landmark in the field.

Here, Gordon and I talk about the major types of play: locomotor play, object play, and social play. We discuss the five criteria he has proposed for recognizing play across animal taxa. We survey several of the functions of play that have been proposed over the decades, and discuss how—in the end—play doesn't seem to have just one function. We also talk about human play—about what sets it apart, and about the possibility that play lies at the root of many of the capacities and institutions we think of as distinctively, impressively human. Along the way, Gordon and I touch on play in bears, pythons, turtles, fruit flies, and octopuses. We consider play between members of taxonomically distant species. We talk about “self-handicapping”; the surplus resource theory of play; the importance of "risky play" and "free play"; the immersive quality of play; bodily and vocal play signals in mammals; and whether human play is increasingly endangered. 

Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Gordon Burghardt. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:00 – A news article on the finding of “play-like” behavior in fruit flies. The original study.

4:30 – For recent reviews of play by Dr. Burghardt and colleagues, covering the three major types of play, the five criteria for recognizing play, and many other topics, see here, here, and here.

12:00 – For more on Dr. Burghardt’s early research and hand-rearing of black bears, see here.

23:30 – For the recent study on ball play in bumble bees, see here. 

26:00 – For an example of studies examining self-handicapping, see this study on belugas. 

27:00 – For a video of a bull and goat butting heads, see here. For more on cross-species play, see this recent paper by Dr. Burghardt and a colleague.

31:00 – For more on the “relaxed open mouth expression” and “play face,” see our previous episode on the origins of the smile.  For a recent study about such expressions possibly attested in dolphins, see here.

44:00 – For the book by Johan Huizinga, see here. For some of Dr. Burghardt’s ideas about the connections between play and certain aspects of human culture, see here. 

54:00 – For research on the value of “risky play,” see work by Dr. Ellen Sandseter. For an article connecting “free play” and children’s mental health, see here.

Recommendations

Kingdom of Play, by David Toomey

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: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

If you've heard anything about the study of human personality, you've probably heard about the “big five.” This is a framework that attempts to characterize human personality in terms of five broad factors or dimensions—neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The big five framework has been enormously influential, generating heaps and heaps of data, and study after study on the stability of personality, on the factors that shape our personalities, on how our personalities predict success and satisfaction. But is the big five really the best we can do? What does it miss? What does it mask? Where should the science of human personality go next?

My guest today is Dr. René Mõttus. René is Professor of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and a leading researcher in the scientific study of human personality. He’s also one of the hosts of the Personality Psychology Podcast.

Here, René and I talk about the history and colossal success of the “big five.” We consider whether personality is ultimately rooted in our biology—and, if so, how. We dwell on each of the five factors and dig into the facets and nuances within them. These are, actually, technical terms in the field for the more granular aspects of personality that sit within each of these broad dimensions. We talk about personality change across the lifespan, and what factors seem to be driving it. We talk about personality and occupation, personality and birth order, personality and gender. Along the way, René and I touch on the Myers-Briggs; an alternative to the Big 5 known as the HEXACO model; the power of explicit questionnaires over experiments; the concept of "personality age"; the social investment theory; honesty, humility, humor, jealousy; life satisfaction; gene-environment correlations; and why evolutionary stories about personality seem to fail.

Alright friends, I think you'll like this one. On to my conversation with Dr. René Mõttus. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

5:30 – For a popular discussion of the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests, see here. For a book-length treatment of the history of the Myers-Briggs test, see here.

11:30 – For Dr. Mõttus’s preprint on “personality age,” see here.

17:00 – For our episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski, see here.

18:00 – For Dr. Daniel Nettle’s book on personality, see here.

22:00 – See Dr. Mõttus’s blog post on the genetic basis of personality.

25:00 – For our episode with Dr. Eric Turkheimer about IQ, see here. For Dr. Turkheimer’s “phenotypic null hypothesis” about personality, see here.

28:00 – For a theoretical paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues about “carving personality at its joints” and “big few models”—among many other issues—see here.

31:00 – See here for a classic overview of the “big five.”

38:00 – For an overview of the predictive power of the “big five,” see here.

40:00 – On the topic of “nuances,” see Dr. Mõttus’s recent co-authored paper here.

43:00 – For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues of the personality profiles of different occupations, see here. For an online tool that allows you to explore the data, see here. For an online tool that matches your personality with the personality profiles of different occupations, see here.

47:00 – A classic paper on the HEXACO model of personality.

51:00 – An example of a recent effort to map out the “facets” of personality.

1:11:00 – For a study on the possibility of gene-environment correlations in the area of music, see here. For the study by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on children “becoming less alike” through adolescence, see here.

1:18:00 – For a classic statement of the “five factor theory,” see here.

1:20:00 – The Wikipedia page for the idea of the “gloomy prospect” is here. This is also the name of Dr. Turkheimer’s newsletter.

1:22:00 – The latest installment in the longstanding debate about birth order and personality.

1:27:00 – A paper comparing the “five factor” and “social investment” accounts of personality development.

1:33:00 – For a recent paper by Dr. Mõttus and colleagues on personality and gender, see here.

1:38:00 – A research article on the Estonian Biobank.

Recommendations

‘Life Events and Personality Change: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,’ by Bühler et al.

‘Personality stability and change: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies,’ by Bleidorn et al.

‘Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning,’ by Yarkoni & Westfall

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: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

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 endorsing the use of psychedelics here—just offering a little fuel for your intellectual fires!

Alright friends, on to my conversation w/ Dr. Chris Letheby. Enjoy!

A transcript of this episode is available here. 

Notes and links

4:00 – For a brief historical overview of research into psychedelics, see this paper.

8:30 – For work by an early trailblazer in the philosophy of psychedelics, see Thomas Metzinger’s Being No One.

12:30 – For our earlier episode on the psychology and philosophy of visual illusions, see here. 

18:00 – For a history of the concept of “set and setting,” see here.

19:00 – A 2024 review of “adverse events” in classic psychedelics.

26:00 – A blog post on the history of the term “psychedelic.”

27:00 – A recent review and meta-analysis of the use of psychedelic therapy for depressive symptoms.

31:00 – On mystical experience see Walter Stace’s classic work, Mysticism and Philosophy. On the measurement of mystical-type experiences, see, e.g., Walter Pahnke’s paper here.

36:00 – On the idea of “psychoplastogens,” see here.

39:00 – See our earlier audio essay on placebo effects.

41:00 – For the study using Ritalin as an active placebo, see here. 

44:00 – Michael Pollan’s book on psychedelics is here.

48:00 – On the idea of “idealism,” see here.

50:30 – For the 2021 study on psychedelics’ capacity to alter metaphysical beliefs, see here.

54:00 – For Dr. Letheby and collaborators’ paper about the “mysticism wars,” see here.

1:02:00 – For a popular article on the possibility that psychedelics reduce fear of death, see here.

1:03:00 – For Dr. Letheby’s paper on psychedelics and the fear of death, see here.

1:11:00 – The phrase “comforting delusion” comes from an article by Michael Pollan.

1:15:00 – For the “REBUS model,” see here.

1:20:00 – On the idea that psychedelics could serve as agents of moral enhancement, see the paper by Brian Earp here.

1:21:00 – For Dr. Letheby’s paper on psychedelics and environmental virtues, see here. For his paper on psychedelics and forgiveness, see here.

1:23:00 – On the subfield of “virtue ethics,” see here. On the virtue of “living in place,” see the paper by Nin Kirkham here.

1:28:00 – For the New Yorker article, by Matthew Hutson, on how psychedelics led him to see trees as smart, see here. For the study, led by Sandeep Nayak, on psychedelics leading people to expand their attributions of consciousness, see here.

1:32:00 – For a first paper by Dr. Letheby on the comparison between meditation and psychedelics, see here.

Recommendations

Psychedelic Experience, Aidan Lyon

Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, Robert Masters & Jean Houston

The Antipodes of the Mind, Benny Shanon

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: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).