At a moment when Americans can’t agree on much of anything, one unlikely institution still commands broad trust: Wikipedia. Ian Bremmer sits down with Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales to ask why the crowdsourced encyclopedia remains one of the most visited and relied-upon sites in the world, even as trust in media, government, and tech companies continues to collapse.

That trust, Wales argues, comes from Wikipedia’s decentralized model and its refusal to speak with a single authoritative voice on contested issues. “We don’t try to answer the question or take a side,” Wales says. “What we do is describe the debate.” But that principle is under strain. Wales addresses recent backlash over Wikipedia’s handling of politically sensitive topics, including Gaza, where he says the site crossed an important line by adopting language that lacked broad consensus. “For Wikipedia to speak in its own voice requires an extremely high bar,” he explains.

Bremmer and Wales also explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the information ecosystem. While AI systems are already trained on Wikipedia’s content, Wales says the platform is moving cautiously, prioritizing transparency, open source tools, and independence over partnerships with big tech. “Wikipedia’s biggest liability is also its biggest strength,” Wales says. “No one owns it.” In an internet increasingly dominated by centralized platforms and opaque algorithms, Wales makes the case that Wikipedia’s model, messy, imperfect, and community-driven, may be more necessary than ever.

Host: Ian Bremmer

Guest: Jimmy Wales

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In late 1960s England, the young Robertson family is struggling to make ends meet on their farm. They decide to give it all up, sell the farm, and sail round the world. Against all odds, they are making their wild dream a reality. But in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, catastrophe strikes. 

Adrift is an Apple Original podcast, produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

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Heath and Clark get lost backpacking in Yellowstone National Park on the trail of wolves with Doug Smith, one of the top wolf experts in the world. Along the way, Smith shows listeners how the return of wolves has changed the iconic park’s landscape.

A transcript of this podcast episode is available.

In this month’s podcast episode, countertenors Hugh Cutting and Iestyn Davies discuss finding their voices, musical inspirations, programming, and more.  

Both Hugh and Iestyn have residencies at Wigmore Hall this Season, including a weekend-long celebration of John Dowland’s quartercentenary, baroque festivities, and more.  

Alright, friends—we've come to the end of the 2025 run of Many Minds!

Our final episode of the year is an audio essay by yours truly. This is a classic format for the show, one that we only do every so often. Today's essay is about names. It's about the question of whether animals have something like names for each other. And it's also about a deeper question: What even is a name? How do humans use names? How does the historical and ethnographic record kind of complicate our everyday understanding of what names are. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I do hope you enjoy it.

Now, the holiday season is a time when people might be shopping around for new podcasts to listen to. That makes it a great time to recommend us to your friends and family and colleagues. You can think of it as an especially thoughtful gift, one that's absolutely free, and that keeps on giving throughout the year.

Speaking of gifts, as an addendum to this episode you'll find a little stocking stuffer after the credits. It's a reading of a poem that figures prominently in today's essay.

Without further ado, here is my essay—'In search of names.' Enjoy!

A text version of this essay will be published shortly.

Notes

2:00 – The text of 'The Naming of Cats' by T.S. Eliot is here. See also the full collection, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The lines about cats' taste preferences and cats having different kinds of minds comes from another poem in the collection, 'The Ad-Dressing of Cats.'

3:00 – The 2019 study finding that cats know their names, and the 2022 study showing that cats know the names of their friends.

4:00 – For an overview of research on dolphin "signature whistles," see here.

5:00 – For the 2024 study reporting name-like rumbles in elephants, see here.

6:00 – For the 2024 study reporting vocal labels for individuals in marmosets, see here. A critical response to the study is here; the authors' response to the criticism is here.

12:00 – For overviews of cross-cultural variation in names and naming practices, see here, here, here, and here. Richard Alford's 1988 study, published in book form, is here.

13:30 – The study reporting name signs in Kata Kolok is here.

15:00 – For research on expectations based on the sounds of people's names, see here and here.

16:00 – For recent work on the "face-name matching effect," see here. For the study on "nominative determinism" in the medical profession, see here. (Note that, while this latter study does report empirical data, its rigor is questionable. And, yet, at least one other study has reported similar findings.)

17:30 – For the example of over-used names in Scotland, see here.

19:30 – For discussion of names in New Guinea, see here. For examples of research on "teknonymy," see here and here. For discussion of Penan "necronyms," see here.

20:30 – For an overview of name taboos, see here. For more on "alexinomia," see here.

22:30 – For an example of recent work on "name uniqueness," see here.

23:00 – William Safire's column on dog names is here. The study of gravestones in the world's oldest pet cemetery is here.

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.

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This chat is all about the animals on @hackneycityfarm_official as Poppy and Shanti show me round. We hear about the beauty of goats, the intelligence of pigs, and the habits of some of the characters who live there. "Our donkeys go to Westminster Cathedral every year... for the Nativity... they stand at the front and thousands of children from local schools come and see... Clover is quite a seasoned professional, she fell asleep". #otherlivesareavailable #podcast #eastlondon #hackneycityfarm

On today’s episode, Selby Kiffer, Sotheby's Senior International Specialist of Books and Manuscripts, tells the story of an original copy of the Declaration of Independence found in a flea market and the meticulous process of authentication that brought it to auction. Over the last half century, he has overseen the sale of many of the most celebrated private libraries offered at auction. A lecturer and expert, with a unique knowledge of Americana, he has also handled significant letters by Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin.

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My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Jonathan C. Slaght, whose new book is Tigers Between Empires: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction. He tells me about these remarkable animals, the remarkable people who studied them, and how their fates have been entwined with the shifting politics of post-Soviet Russia.

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A lot of us will remember collecting stamps or football stickers or stationary or something of that ilk as a child.

But, is that a modern phenomenon, or is it something inherent that we have seen throughout history?

James Delbourgo is Professor of History at Rutgers University and author of ‘A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now’. He joins Seán to discuss.