Many Minds
Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
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Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Many Minds episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Many Minds for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Many Minds episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
The five portals of cognitive evolution
Many Minds
08/10/23 • 64 min
Welcome back all! So, this episode is a first for us. Two firsts, actually. For one, it features our first-ever repeat guest: Andrew Barron, a neuroscientist at Macquarie University. If you're a long-time listener, you might remember that Andy was actually the guest on our very first episode, 'Of bees and brains,' in February 2020. And, second, this episode is our first-ever "live show." We recorded this interview in July at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute in St Andrews, Scotland.
Andy and his colleagues—the philosophers Marta Halina and Colin Klein—just released an ambitious paper titled 'Transitions in Cognitive Evolution.' In it, they take a wide-angle view of mind; they zoom out to try to tell an overarching story of how brains and cognition evolved across the tree of life. The story, as they tell it, is not about a smoothly gradual evolution of cognitive sophistication. Rather, it's a story built around five major transitions—fundamental changes, that is, to how organisms process information.
In this conversation, Andy and I discuss their framework and how it takes inspiration from other transitional accounts of life and mind. We lay out each of the five stages—or portals, as we refer to them—and talk about the organisms that we find on either side of these portals. We discuss what propels organisms to make these radical changes, especially considering that evolution is not prospective. It doesn't look ahead—it can't see what abilities might be possible down the road. We talk about how this framework got its start, particularly in some of Andy's thinking about insect brains and how they differ from vertebrate brains. And, as a bit of a bonus, we left in some of the live Q & A with the audience. In it we touch on octopuses, eusocial insects, oysters, and a bunch else.
Speaking of major transitions, I will be going on parental leave for much of the fall. So this is, in fact, the final episode of Season 4 and then the podcast will go on a brief hiatus. Before we get started on Season 5, we'll be putting up some of our favorite episodes from the archive.
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Andrew Barron, recorded live at DISI 2023. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – For further information about the “major transitions” project, see the project’s web page here.
7:00 – Many transitional accounts of evolution draw inspiration from the classic book The Major Transitions in Evolution.
8:00 – One influential previous transitional account of the evolution of cognition was put forward by Dennett in Kinds of Minds. Another was put forward by Ginsburg and Jablonka in The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.
12:45 – A brief introduction to cnidaria.
18:00 – The idea of cellular memory has been garnering more and more attention—see, e.g., this popular article.
21:00 – The idea of “reflective” systems is also used in computer science.
26:00 – The scala naturae, or Great Chain of Being, was the notion that organisms could be arranged on a scale of sophistication, with humans on the top of the scale.
30:00 – The “teleological fallacy” as Dr. Barron and colleagues describe it in their paper is the fallacy of “appeal[ing] to later benefits to explain earlier changes.”
34:00 – A brief introduction to the phylum gastropoda.
37:00 – For an overview of Dr. Barron’s work on the neuroscience of honey bees, see our previous episode.
48:30 – It’s commonly observed in popular coverage of octopuses that their brains are “decentralized” (e.g., 1 Listener
05/17/23 • 62 min
You know the feeling. You're trying to read or write or think through a project, maybe even just respond to an email, when your attention starts to drift. You may not even notice it until you've already picked up your phone or jumped tabs, until your mind has already wandered way off-piste. This problem of distraction has become a bit of a modern-day obsession. We now fret about how to stay focused, how to avoid time-sucks, how to use our attention wisely. But it turns out this fixation of ours—contemporary as it may seem—is really not so new.
My guest today is Dr. Jamie Kreiner, Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Jamie is the author of a new book titled The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell us about Distraction. In the book, Jamie shows that Christian monks in late antiquity and the early middle ages were—like us—a bit obsessed with attention. And their understanding of attention fit within a broad and often remarkably detailed understanding of the mind.
In this conversation, Jamie and I talk about why monks in this era cared so much about distraction. We discuss how they understood the relationship between mind and body; how they conceptualized memory, meditation, and mind-wandering. We discuss some of the mnemonic techniques they used, some of the graphical and textual devices that helped keep them focused, and some of the metaphors and visualization techniques they innovated. Along the way we also touch on fasting, sleep, demons and angels, the problem of discernment, the state of pure prayer, the Six Wings mnemonic device, metacognitive maneuvering, and much more.
I’ll just say I really enjoyed The Wandering Mind. As Jamie and I chat about here, the book illuminates an earlier understanding of human psychology that feels deeply familiar in some ways, and delightfully strange in others. I think you definitely get a sense of that in this conversation.
Alright friends, on to my chat with Dr. Jamie Kreiner. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – A webpage devoted to the Ark of Hugh of Saint Victor.
6:30 – For a detailed (and positive) review essay about The Wandering Mind, see here.
11:30 – The Redwall books, by Brian Jacques, are well known for featuring elaborate feasts. An article about some of the best of these.
18:30 – For more on how the body was understood in the early Christian world, see The Burden of the Flesh.
26:30 – Text written continuously is known as scripta continua.
27:30 – Articles that celebrate medieval marginalia can be found here, here, and here.
40:00 – An article about the Six Wings mnemonic. For more on mnemonic techniques in the medieval world, see Mary Carruthers’ book.
53:00 – On the idea of “pure prayer,” see the book, The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings.
57:30 – Dr. Kreiner’s next book, which comes out in January 2024, is a translation of some of John Cassian’s work on distraction.
Dr. Kreiner’s book recommendations can be found in a recent article here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy ...
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Of chimps and children
Many Minds
07/12/22 • 44 min
Welcome back, friends! Apologies for the brief delay in getting this episode out. We’re now happily back on track and super stoked for what we have coming up—starting with today’s episode.
My guest is Dr. Michael Tomasello, a voraciously interdisciplinary thinker, an incredibly productive scientist, and a pioneer in the systematic comparison of chimpanzee and human capacities. Mike is a Distinguished Professor in the department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, where also holds appointments in Evolutionary Anthropology, Philosophy, and Linguistics. He is the author of growing list of influential books, including the recent Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny and a new book coming out this fall titled The Evolution of Agency.
In this conversation, Mike and I talk about how he came to study both children and chimpanzees. We discuss the challenges of working with each of these groups—and the challenges of comparing them. We talk about some of the key concepts that have figured prominently in Mike’s work over the years—like joint attention and false belief—and well as some of the concepts he’s been elaborating more recently—including norms, roles, and agency. We also discuss Vygotsky and Piaget; how humans got started down the path toward intense interdependence and cooperation; and what Mike thinks he got wrong earlier in his career.
Lots in here, folks—let’s just get to it. On to my conversation with Dr. Michael Tomasello. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – Early in his career, Dr. Tomasello was affiliated with the storied Yerkes Primate Center.
5:00 – Major works by Lev Vygotsky (in translation) include Mind in Society and Thought and Language.
7:00 – A video about some of the early work of Wolfgang Kohler.
10:30 – Dr. Tomasello is the Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
17:00 – A chapter outlining some key results of “looking time” (or “preferential-looking”) experiments in developmental psychology.
21:00 – A recent article by Cathal O’Madagain and Dr. Tomasello about “joint attention to mental content.”
25:00 – A paper by Holger Diessel on demonstratives and joint attention.
25:00 – A video describing work that Dr. Tomasello and colleagues have carried out on chimpanzee theory of mind. A 2019 general audience article summarizing the state of this research.
28:00 – Dr. Tomasello’s book on child development, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny, was published in 2018.
31:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Tomasello on the importance of roles in human cognition and social life.
34:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Tomasello on the psychology behind the human sense of obligation.
35:00 – A paper of Art Markman and C. Hunt Stillwell on “role-governed categories.”
36:00 – A paper by Christophe Boesch on “cooperative hunting roles” among chimpanzees.
38:00 – A very recent paper by Dr. Tomasello, “What is it like to be a chimpanzee?”
39:15 – A study<...
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Myths, robots, and the origins of AI
Many Minds
11/30/22 • 64 min
When we talk about AI, we usually fixate on the future. What’s coming next? Where is the technology going? How will artificial intelligences reshape our lives and worlds? But it's also worth looking to the past. When did the prospect of manufactured minds first enter the human imagination? When did we start building robots, and what did those early robots do? What are the deeper origins, in other words, not only of artificial intelligences themselves, but of our ideas about those intelligences?
For this episode, we have two guests who've spent a lot of time delving into the deeper history of AI. One is Adrienne Mayor; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Our second guest is Elly Truitt; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art.
In this conversation, we draw on Adrienne's expertise in the classical era and Elly's expertise in the medieval period to dig into the surprisingly long and rich history of AI. We discuss some of the very first imaginings of artificial beings in Greek mythology, including Talos, the giant robot guarding the island of Crete. We talk about some of the very first historical examples of automata, or self-moving devices; these included statues that spoke, mechanical birds that flew, thrones that rose, and clocks that showed the movements of the heavens. We also discuss the long-standing and tangled relationships between AI and power, exoticism, slavery, prediction, and justice. And, finally, we consider some of the most prominent ideas we have about AI today and whether they had precedents in earlier times.
This is an episode we've been hoping to do for some time now, to try to step back and put AI in a much broader context. It turns out the debates we're having now, the anxieties and narratives that swirl around AI today, are not so new. In some cases, they're millennia old.
Alright friends, now to my conversation with Elly Truitt and Adrienne Mayor. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:00 – See Adrienne’s TedEd lesson about Talos, the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s 2019 talk for the Long Now Foundation.
7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in this painting by Edward Poynter.
12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her website; for more on Elly’s research program, see her website.
18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see here.
23:00 – A recent piece about Aristotle’s writings on slavery.
26:00 – An article about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today.
30:00 – A recent research article about the Antikythera mechanism.
34:00 – See Adrienne’s popular article about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha.
38:45 – See Elly’s article about how automata figured prominently in tombs.
47:00 – See Elly’s recent video ...
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The ritual species
Many Minds
10/05/22 • 61 min
From one perspective, rituals are pure silliness. They might involve us waving our hands in a certain way and saying these exact words, in this exact order; we might put on a funny costume, or eat specific foods, or even subject ourselves to considerable amounts of pain. And we don't just perform these rituals once either—we tend to do them over and over again, year after year. Seen in this way, rituals are frivolous, expendable, and mind-numbingly repetitive. And yet they’re also central. Rituals are found in abundance in all human cultures; they're a fixture of every historical period. So what's the story? How can we reconcile the apparent silliness of rituals with their centrality to our species?
My guest today is Dr. Dimitris Xygalatas. He is Associate Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He’s also the author of the new book, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. In the book, Dimitris makes the case that rituals are far from extraneous sideshows: they’re enormously valuable, both for individuals and for groups, and they form a core part of what it means to be human.
Here, Dimitris and I talk about some of the extreme rituals that he's studied, in particular, fire walking. We discuss the methods he uses to study these kind of traditions, especially unobtrusive physiological measures like heart rate monitoring. We also touch on: ritual-like behaviors in other species; what OCD behaviors have in common with certain ritual behaviors; why collective traditions often involve pain and synchronized movement; and how rituals serve to strengthen social bonds and enhance our well-being.
If you enjoy this convo, be sure to check out Dimitris's book—I can recommend it heartily. And if you're enjoying Many Minds, perhaps consider posting a review or leaving us a rating. Or maybe telling a friend, or three.
Alright folks, on to my chat with Dimitris Xygalatas. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
3:30 – Dr. Xygalatas wrote a previous book about firewalking in Greece. For his papers on various aspects of firewalking, see here, here, and here, among others.
14:00 – The website for the Experimental Anthropology lab at UConn.
20:00 – A paper in which Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues examined heart-rate synchrony in the context of a fire-walking ritual.
26:00 – A popular article about the concept of “over-imitation”—the idea that children will copy adults’ actions with high fidelity, even if those actions have no clear causal effect.
27:00 – A research article discussing imitation and over-imitation in chimpanzees and human children.
28:00 – A research article about children’s ritualistic behaviors and obsessive compulsive disorder.
31:00 – A popular article on the “waterfall display” originally described by Jane Goodall. A video about the display, put out by the Jane Goodall Institute.
34:00 – A recent study by Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues about pre-free-throw rituals in basketball players.
36:00 – A theoretical article on the “compensatory control model.”
40:00 – See this paper by Dr. Xygalatas and colleagues about the Thaipusam festival and how it promotes prosociality.
45:00 – For a classic exploration of synchronized movement, see the book, 1 Listener
The allure of stories
Many Minds
02/22/23 • 80 min
Once upon a time there was a king and a bishop...
No, I'm not actually going to tell you a story right now. I just wanted you to notice something: As I started into that, your mind likely shifted into a different mode. You might have started mentally salivating as you anticipated a coming morsel of fiction. That’s because stories are special; they work a kind of magic on us. Humans everywhere—in every known society, starting from a very young age—seem to hunger for narratives. But why? What makes them so palatable and powerful? What do they do to us and for us?
This week I’m joined by two guests who research stories and the human mind. The first is Dr. Raymond Mar, Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto. His work explores a bunch of different aspects of the psychology of stories, including the relationship between fiction reading and social cognition. My second guest is Dr. Jamie Tehrani, Professor of Anthropology at Durham University in the UK. His research examines the cultural evolution of stories, including questions about why certain stories spread and stick around (sometimes for millennia).
In this conversation, Raymond, Jamie, and I talk about why stories are so powerful. We discuss what makes something a story, and what makes something a good story. We talk about findings that reading fiction may boost our ability to understand other minds. We consider the origins and diversification of folktales by zooming in on one in particular—Little Red Riding Hood. We talk about why stories are easier to remember than essays, and we examine a few of the ingredients that make certain stories especially memorable. Finally, spoiler alert: we also do a bit of good old-fashioned story time.
This is an episode that has been on our wish list forever. Over the past few years there's been so much buzz about stories and storytelling—both in popular media and across different academic disciplines—we thought the topic deserved an extended treatment. And so here you have it: without further ado, my conversation with Jamie Tehrani and Raymond Mar. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
5:00 – Many thinkers have alluded to the function of stories in expanding our experiences. As T.S. Eliot put it, “We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.”
11:30 – A brief popular discussion of the dramatic principle known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun.’
14:00 – See Lost in a Book, by Victor Nell. For the idea of “narrative transportation,” see the work of Richard Gerrig, especially the book Experiencing Narrative Worlds.
26:00 – In a recent paper, Dr. Mar has outlined the two routes through which reading fiction may boost social abilities. See also his recent review of work in this area.
29:00 – See Dr. Mar’s earlier review on the cognitive neuroscience of fiction reading. See also his lab’s recent review of published studies on the question of whether brief exposure to fiction can improve social ability.
34:00 – For a review of work using the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task, see here.
36:00 – On the relationship between the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task and oxytocin, see this influential study. See also this attempt to replicate those findings.
37:00 – The study by Robin Dunbar and colleague...
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WEIRD: Adventures of an acronym
Many Minds
07/01/20 • 12 min
Welcome to our 10th episode! Today’s show is another in our ‘mini minds’ series. We’ve been experimenting with different formats for our minis, as you may have noticed, but today we’ve got another in the classic blogpost style.
The topic is the acronym WEIRD—maybe you’ve heard it used. It stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It’s become a shorthand for the idea that people in WEIRD societies are a bit unusual relative to the rest our species. The term was first introduced 10 years ago. On this episode I talk about its origins and the far-reaching influence it’s had since.
As with all episodes, be sure to check out the show notes for a smorgasbord of links and tidbits. There was a lot I had to leave on the cutting room floor with this one. But I swept some of it up and put it in the notes for anyone who’s interested.
Enjoy!
A text version of this "mini" is readable here.
Notes and links
2:00 – The birthplace of the acronym: ‘The weirdest people in the world?’
2:44 – A 2008 paper by Jeffrey Arnett that provided key support for the first part of Henrich et al.’s two-part argument.
3:35 – The visual illusion in question is the Müller-Lyer Illusion.
3:52 – These cultural differences in spatial conceptualization were first widely reported by Stephen Levinson and colleagues. See his book for the full story (or see a popular article of mine for a much shorter version).
4:33 – See the commentary by Meadon and Spurrett titled ‘It’s not just the subjects – there are too many WEIRD researchers.’
4:45 – See the commentary by Rozin titled ‘The weirdest people in the world are a harbinger of the future of the world.’ For an expansion of Rozin’s argument, with more examples, see my article on “global WEIRDing”.
5:45 – See David F. Lancy, The Anthropology of Childhood. (Note that only the second edition came out after the WEIRD article was published.) One part of child development that proves unexpectedly variable across cultures is learning to walk and other motor milestones.
6:30 – The intersection of smell and WEIRD-ness is discussed in a recent special issue—see the editorial introduction here. Long-standing ideas about the impoverished nature of human olfaction are discussed here.
6:48 – A study comparing olfactory sensitivity in Tsimane people and Germans.
6:55 – For discussion of the idea that odors are ineffable, see this article. The same article was also among the first to characterize the elaborated and consistently applied odor lexicon of a hunter-gatherer group. Other papers have since built on this work.
7:23 – See the paper titled ‘WEIRD bodies: Mismatch, medicine, and missing diversity.’ Foot flatness and flexibility in “conventionally shod” populations are discussed in
What is language for?
Many Minds
04/13/22 • 77 min
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 [email protected]. That's [email protected]. 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 anim...
Rehabilitating placebo
Many Minds
05/02/24 • 39 min
Welcome back friends! Today we've got a first for you: our very first audio essay by... not me. I would call it a guest essay, but it's by our longtime Assistant Producer, Urte Laukaityte. If you're a regular listener of the show, you've been indirectly hearing her work across dozens and dozens of episodes, but this is the first time you will be actually hearing her voice.
Urte is a philosopher. She works primarily in the philosophy of psychiatry, but also in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and neighboring fields. She's particularly interested in a colorful constellation of psychiatric phenomena—phenomena like hypnosis, mass hysteria, psychogenic conditions, and (the topic of today's essay) the placebo effect.
There's almost certainly more to placebo than you realize—it's a surprisingly many-layered phenomenon. Here, Urte pulls apart those layers. She talks about what placebo can and cannot do, the mechanisms by which it operates, the ethical dimensions of its use, its evil twin nocebo, how it is woven through the history of medicine, and a lot more. She argues that, though we've learned a lot about the placebo in recent decades, we have not yet harnessed its full potential.
As always, we eagerly welcome your comments about the show. Feel free to find us on social media, or send us a note at [email protected]. We would love to hear your suggestions for future episodes, your constructive criticisms, really your feedback of whatever kind.
Alright friends, now on to our audio essay—'Rehabilitating placebo’—written and read by Urte Laukaityte. Enjoy!
A text version of this episode will be available soon.
Notes and links
3:30 – A research paper describing the FIDELITY trial.
8:00 – For a neuroscientific overview of placebo research, see this review article. The landmark 1978 study is here.
9:00 – The study using naloxone in rats.
10:30 – A review of placebo effects in Parkinson’s disease.
13:00 – The study showing placebo effects in allergy sufferers. For more on placebo and conditioning in the immune system, see here.
13:30 – An overview of the results on whether placebo “can replace oxygen.”
16:00 – For the “milkshake” study, see here.
20:00 – A perspective piece on open-label placebos. A review of the efficacy of open-label placebos.
22:00 – A review of nocebo-induced side effects within the placebo groups of trials.
24:00 – On the idea of “good placebo responders,” see here.
27:30 – The book Medical Nihilism, by Jacob Stegenga.
28:00 – A review and meta-analysis of the use of placebo by clinicians.
29:30 – A paper on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and placebo.
30:30 – A review of factors modulating placebo effects.
34:00 – For the “signaling theory of symptoms,” see here.
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possib...
From the archive: Bat signals
Many Minds
07/12/23 • 79 min
We're still on summer break, but we wanted to share a favorite interview from our archives. Enjoy!
----
We’ve got something special for you today folks: bats. That’s right: bats.
Ever since Thomas Nagel wrote his famous essay on what it’s like to be a bat, these flying, furry, nocturnal, shrieky mammals have taken up roost in our scientific imaginations. They’ve become a kind of poster child—or poster creature?—for the idea that our world is full of truly alien minds, inhabiting otherworldly lifeworlds. On today’s show, we dive deep into these other minds—and into some of their less appreciated capacities. Bats don’t just echolocate, they also sing. And, as we’ll see, they sing with gusto.
My guest today is Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild. She directs the Behavioral Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. She and her team study bat communication, cognition, and social life; they focus in particular on bat social vocalizations—what we might call bat signals.
Here, we do a bit of Bats 101. We talk about how bats form a spectacularly diverse group, or taxon. We talk about the mechanics of echolocation. We talk about the mind-bogglingly boisterous acoustic world of bats and how they’re able to navigate it. We discuss Mirjam and her team's recent paper in Science magazine, showing that baby bat pups babble much like human infants. And, last but not least, we talk about what it's like to be a bat.
As I say in this conversation, I've always been a bit unnerved by bats, but part of me also knew they were seriously cool. But really, I didn't know the half of it. There's so much more to these creatures than meets the casual eye.
One last thing before we jump in: as a little bonus, for this episode Mirjam was kind enough to share some examples of the bat calls we discuss in the episode. So there’s a bit of an audio appendix at the end where you can hear slowed-down versions.
On to my chat with Dr. Mirjam Knörnschild. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
7:20 – Meet the Honduran white bat, which Knörnschild likens to a “fluffy little white ping pong ball.”
13:50 – Austin, Texas is home to Bracken Cave, which harbors more than 15 million bats.
16:30 – Much of Dr. Knörnschild’s work focuses on the Greater Sac-winged bat, which is a member of the Emballonurid family.
18:00 – See the audio appendix for an example of a Greater Sac-winged bat’s echolocation calls. See also examples on Dr. Knörnschild’s website.
21:10 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues about how echolocation calls serve social functions in addition to navigational functions.
24:00 – A paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the origin and diversity of bat songs.
30:00 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on the correlation between social complexity and vocal complexity across bat species.
37:30 – A brand new special issue on vocal learning in humans and animals, including a review of vocal learning in mammals by Dr. Vincent Janik and Dr. Knörnschild.
40:35 – Dr. Knörnschild’s first scientific paper, in 2006, reported the observation that Greater Sac-winged bats seemed to babble like infants.
47:20 – A recent paper by Dr. Knörnschild and colleagues on territorial songs in male Greater Sac-winged bats.
53:45 – A very recently published paper in Science by Ahana Fernandez, Dr. Knörnschild, and collaborators; see also t...
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The podcast is about Animals, Psychology, Podcasts, Education, Brain, Science, Philosophy, Thinking and Biology.
What is the most popular episode on Many Minds?
The episode title 'The five portals of cognitive evolution' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Many Minds?
The average episode length on Many Minds is 61 minutes.
How often are episodes of Many Minds released?
Episodes of Many Minds are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Many Minds?
The first episode of Many Minds was released on Feb 15, 2020.
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