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by Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute
Our world is brimming with beings—human, animal, and artificial. We explore how they think, sense, feel, and learn. Conversations and more.
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- 1 weeks ago1h 32m
Is Man the Hunter just a myth?
There's a story about of our past that you know well. It goes like this: At some point earlier in human evolution, we started to hunt. Men in particular—perhaps channeling some deep-seated aggressive impulses—began to seek out big game. This new food source, this bonanza of calories, was what allowed our brains to expand. It changed our bodies and our societies and sent our species off on a whole new track. In short, Man the Hunter made us human. This story—told in different versions, with different points of emphasis—has circulated for decades. It's been debunked and revived, rejected and reimagined. What is the history behind the Man the Hunter idea? How does it square with our current understandings of evolution? Is it, in fact, pure fiction? My guest today is Dr. Vivek Venkataraman. Vivek is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Calgary, and an editor-in-chief of the journal Hunter Gatherer Research. He and his collaborators recently published an article on the different layers and meanings of the Man the Hunter idea. Here, Vivek and I lay out those meanings. We talk about how the phrase refers, first, to that popular myth about our evolution, but also to a landmark scientific conference in the 1960s, and to a major finding of research on contemporary hunter-gatherer groups—namely, that men generally do do most of the hunting. We do a little crash-course on the field of hunter-gatherer research, including the kinds of questions it asks and frameworks it uses. We dig into some of the key ingredients of the Man the Hunter myth: the idea that we have aggressive tendencies, the idea that only men hunt, and the idea that hunting played a transformative role in our evolution. We walk through three recent, high-profile studies challenging Man the Hunter ideas in various ways. And we talk about the ever-present danger of projecting our current norms and ideals back in time. Along the way, Vivek and I touch on 2001: A Space Odyssey; reasons why contemporary hunter-gatherers may differ from the hunter-gatherers of long ago; giant sloths; extractive foraging; the case of the Agta, a society in which women do engage in big-game hunting; the forest people and the fierce people; risk and cooperation in sexual divisions of labor; persistence hunting and endurance activities; caregiving and cognition; and honey. Alright friends, I think you'll enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Dr. Vivek Venkataraman. Notes 3:30 – The article by Dr. Venkataraman and colleagues, 'The Meaning and Dividends of Man the Hunter.' Commentaries on the article can be read here. A recent popular essay by Dr. Venkataraman on the same ideas. 5:00 – Raymond Dart's "killer ape" was originally laid out in a 1953 article 'The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man' (unavailable online) and then developed in Robert Ardrey's book, African Genesis. 8:30 – The "dawn of man" scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 16:00 – The 1966 conference titled 'Man the Hunter' resulted in a 1968 volume of the same name. 27:00 – A philosophical discussion of the use of the "ethnographic analogy" in reconstructions of the past. The <a href= "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american
- 3 weeks ago1h 18m
Babies, dogs, and the riddles of word learning
It's kind of astonishing, really, that kids ever learn words. Each one poses a little riddle. Does this sound string refer to a person? A category of things? Or maybe some other feature of the blooming, buzzing world? And yet word learning happens. In fact, we now know it begins earlier in infancy than we realized. And we now know, further, that dogs (or at least some dogs) understand words as well. So how does this happen? What do babies and dogs really know about words? And how might we go about figuring this all out? My guests today are Dr. Elika Bergelson and Dr. Claudia Fugazza. Elika is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, where her lab studies how infants learn language. Claudia is a Researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, where she and her collaborators study dogs who are especially gifted word learners. In this conversation, Elika, Claudia, and I talk about the thorny question of what it means to understand a word—and whether there are different degrees or kinds of understanding. We consider the challenges posed by different types of words—by nouns, by names, by verbs, by function words, size terms, and more. We discuss why it is that some dogs are so good at learning words, and why infants of a certain age seem to get so much better at it. We talk about learning in different contexts and situations. And we circle the question of how different word learning really is in dogs and babies. Alright friends, before we get to it, one tiny ask: If you've been enjoying Many Minds, you can help us grow by leaving a review or comment or a rating, or by sharing us with a friend or colleague. We would greatly appreciate the support! Without further ado, on to my interview with Claudia Fugazza and Elika Bergelson. Enjoy! Notes 3:30 – A paper on infants' understanding of proper nouns like "Mommy." 6:00 – For our earlier audio essay on names across the animal kingdom, see here. 11:00 – For Dr. Bergelson's early study showing that 6-month-old infants already understand the meanings of some words, see here. 13:30 – For more on the "comprehension boost" in infants after age one, see Dr. Elika's paper here. 16:30 – For Dr. Fugazza and colleagues' first studies on gifted word-learning dogs, see here and here. 20:00 – See earlier studies on Rico and Chaser. 24:00 – For more on the qualitative changes that infants may undergo as they learn to learn words, see a paper by Dr. Bergelson and a colleague here. 30:00 – A study by Dr. Fugazza and colleagues comparing personality profiles and playfulness of gifted word learner dogs and typical dogs. 31:30 – A recent New York Times
- May 7, 20261h 10m
The inner life of the hand
Newton saw in the human hand proof of the divine; Darwin saw a key to our species' success. Many others, too, have described the hand in hyperbolic terms, as a paragon of design, a cornerstone of human uniqueness, an engine of our achievements. But what makes the human hand so powerful? Is it the proportions of the fingers? Is it the opposability of the thumb? Or, could it be none of this? Could it be that the real power of our hands lies—not in the physical design—but elsewhere, out of sight? My guest today is Dr. Matt Longo. Matt is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London. He's the author of the recent book, The Invisible Hand, a wide-ranging tour of the human hand and how it's geared into the brain. Here, Matt and I talk about the difference between the "visible hand"—that is, its physical structure—and the "invisible hand"—its representation in the brain. We consider the evolution of the visible hand and whether there really is anything truly distinctive or impressive about it. We talk about the biology of touch. We tour the invisible hand, discussing how—through cortical magnification—the hand becomes over-represented in the brain's sensory maps. We catalogue a fews ways that the hands can go awry. And we talk about whether we should feel any nostalgia for all the hand-based activities and crafts that we're losing. Along the way, we also touch on star-nosed moles and raccoons; tetrapods and the primitive archetype; hand dominance; the parallel between a horse's knee and a human's wrist; tool use, plasticity and abstraction; homunculi; the rubber-hand illusion; supernumerary fingers; the Third Thumb project; and the question of what it might unlock if dolphins had hands. Alright, friends, this is a fun one. On to my interview with Dr. Matt Longo! Notes 3:00 – For discussion of the many traits and behaviors that have been proposed as uniquely human, see our earlier audio essay. 5:00 – For an example of the "if only dolphins had hands" thought experiment, see here. 8:00 – See The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand by Frederic Wood Jones. 10:30 – Dr. Longo's book, The Invisible Hand, is available open access here. 16:00 – For discussion of how—in horses and other species—the five digits have been reduced or otherwise tweaked over evolution, see here. For an image showing examples of homology between the human forelimb and the forelimbs of other creatures, see here. 19:00 – For a brief discussion of "thumb opposability" see here. For an influential discussion of hand morphology and human hand grips, see work by Mary Marzke here. 30:00 – For our earlier episode on the brain's many maps, see here. 34:00 – For a discussion of Penfield's work and the idea of a "homunculus" in the brain, see here. 42:00 – For an illustration of a "homunculus" wit
- Apr 22, 20261h 33m
From the archive: The cuttlefish and its coat of many colors
Hi friends! We're skipping a beat to take care of some spring housekeeping tasks. We will be back in May! In the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired April 30, 2025] We humans have a hard time becoming invisible. For better or worse, we're basically stuck with the skin and body we have; we're pretty fixed in our color, our shape, our overall appearance. And so we're fascinated by creatures that aren't—creatures that morph to meet the moment, that can functionally disappear, that can shape-shift on a dime. And no creatures are more skilled, more astonishing, more bedazzling in their abilities to do this kind of thing than the cephalopods. But how do they do this exactly? What's going on in their skin? What's going on under their skin? And what's going on in their brains that makes this all possible? My guest today is Dr. Tessa Montague. Tessa is a neuroscientist in the Axel Lab at Columbia University; she studies the brain and behavior of the dwarf cuttlefish, with a special focus on the biology of their dynamic skin behaviors. Here, Tessa and I talk about how cuttlefish and other cephalopods exhibit the most impressive camouflaging abilities on the planet. We discuss how they change their skin's appearance with remarkable speed and fidelity—and not just when trying to blend in, but also when hunting, courting, fighting, and more. We talk about whether these behaviors are flexible and whether they're voluntary. We linger on the cruel irony that cuttlefish seem to be colorblind. We talk about the idea that a cephalopod's skin is kind of a window into their brain. We lay out the cells and organs in the cephalopod skin the make these behaviors possible—especially the tiny pigment-bearing structures called "chromatophores." And of course we also dive deep into the cephalopod brain and its sometimes bizarre and poorly understood structures. Excited to share it with you friends—I think you'll enjoy it. Without further ado, here's my chat with Dr. Tessa Montague. A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 3:00 – For more on Dr. Montague's recent expeditions to the Philippines, including photos, see here. 7:30 – Dr. Montague has published two recent reviews of dynamic skin behaviors in cephalopods—see here and here. We previously discussed cephalopod intelligence in a 2021 episode with Dr. Alex Schnell and a 2023 episode with the novelist Ray Nayler. 18:30 – For discussion of a recent "renaissance" in new model organisms, see here. 20:30 – For more on how chameleons change color, see this video. 25:00 – A video primer on cuttlefish camouflage, featuring the researcher Dr. Robert Hanlon. 30:30 – A recent paper on the details of pattern matching in cuttlefish camouflage. 31:00 – For more on the mimicking plant Boquila trifoliolata, see this popular article. See also our earlier episode with Dr. Paco Calvo and Dr. Natalie Lawrence. 35:00 – A video about the so-called mimic octopus. 40:00 – For the hypothesis about color discrimination via chromatic aberration and pupil shape
- Apr 9, 20261h 25m
Illuminating cave art
Deep in our past, in the dark depths of caves, our ancestors did something strange and beautiful. Working by firelight, some doodled little designs. Others made hand stencils. Some saw a bulge of rock, or a crack in the wall, and thought to turn it into a horse or a bison. Why did they did they make this art? What did it mean to them? Who were these artists? These questions are old—very old—but thanks to new methods and new interpretive frameworks, archaeologists are beginning to see them in a new light. My guest today is Dr. Izzy Wisher. Izzy is an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, specializing in Paleolithic art. Here, Izzy and talk about why we in the present are so drawn to cave art. We lay out the basic timeline, geography, and categories of Paleolithic art. We consider the difference between figurative and non-figurative art, and why it might be that non-figurative art came first. We discuss hand stencils. We talk about an ongoing shift in archaeology as the sensory turn. We dig into some of Izzy's work on the role of pareidolia, palimpsests, and children in cave art. And we touch on an ongoing project she is involved in trying to understand the earliest symbolic marks that our species made—and what they could have been used for. Along the way we touch on the site known as El Castillo, Werner Herzog, hunting magic, why hand stencils are so often missing fingers, graffiti, tectiforms and flutings, why depictions of humans are actually quite rare in cave art, stages in children's art production, the use of virtual reality as a research method, and the idea of archaeology as world-building. I think you'll enjoy this one friends. Who among us—after all—doesn't feel drawn to these caves, to these most enigmatic of human creations? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Izzy Wisher. Notes 3:00 – For more on El Castillo cave, see here and here. 9:00 – Werner Herzog's film—Cave of Forgotten Dreams—is being briefly re-released in April 2026. 12:00 – For some of Dr. Wisher's popular writing on cave art, see here and here. 16:30 – One example of a recent rock art finding in Sulawesi. 20:30 – Our earlier episode with Dr. Eleanor Scerri and Dr. Manuel Will, in which we discuss the mostly-retired idea of a "cognitive revolution" in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic. 22:00 – For more on the recently discovered rock art panel in Colombia, see this news story and this recent academic study. 25:00 – The relative rarity of humans in Paleolithic art has provoked much discussion, both among scholars and the public. 27:00 – On the idea that Venus figurines might be self-representations—made from the perspective of the artist viewing her own body—see here.<
- Mar 26, 20261h 21m
What can AI teach us about the mind?
Everyone is talking about AI these days. Often these conversations are about how AI might upend education, or work, or social life, or maybe civilization itself. But among cognitive scientists and psychologists the conversation inevitably drifts toward other questions. What does this latest generation of AI tell us about the human mind? Is it putting old ideas and theories to rest? Is it ushering in new ones? Will AI—in other words—also upend cognitive science? My guests today are Dr. Mike Frank and Dr. Gary Lupyan. Mike is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, where his lab focuses on language learning and cognition in children. Gary is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where his lab studies language and its role in augmenting human cognition. Both Gary and Mike have more recently been thinking a lot about AI and how it is challenging and deepening our understanding of the human mind. In this conversation, we talk about being interested in AI as cognitive scientists—while also being concerned about the technology as people. We discuss the linguistic abilities of frontier LLMs compared to the linguistic abilities of adult humans. We talk about a glaring "data gap" here—the fact that, even though LLMs often rival human abilities, they require orders of magnitude more data to do so. We contrast the capabilities of large language models with so-called BabyLMs. We consider the fact that, as LLMs master language, they also master other abilities—capacities for mathematical reasoning, causal understanding, possibly theory of mind, and more. And we talk about why language might be an especially potent form of input for an AI. Along the way, we touch on reference and the symbol grounding problem, the Platonic Representation Hypothesis, stimulus computability, confabulated citations, pattern matching and jabberwocky, the poverty of the stimulus argument, congenital blindness, Quine's topiary, the limits of in principle demonstrations, the WEIRD problem, and what the astonishing sophistication of disembodied AIs might suggest about the role of bodily experience in human cognition. Before we get to it, one small request: we're currently running a short survey of our listeners. You can find the link in our show notes. If you have a few minutes, we'd really love your input! Alright friends, here's my conversation with Mike Frank and Gary Lupyan. I think you'll enjoy it! Notes 5:00 – For more discussion of "stochastic parrots" and other ways of framing AI systems, see our recent episode with Melanie Mitchell. For the "octopus test," see here. 8:00 – "BabyLMs" are—in contrast to large LMs (aka LLMs)—models that are trained on a more human-scale amount of linguistic input. For more on the BabyLM community, see here. 12:00 – For broad discussion of the use of AIs as "cognitive models," see this paper by Dr. Frank and a colleague. The same paper discusses the idea of "stimulus computability." 18:00 – For Dr. Frank's "baby steps" paper, see here. 20:00 – For more on how Claude understands line breaks, see Anthropic's analysis of the issue here. 23:00 – For work on human-like grammaticality judgments in LLMs, see this paper by a team including Dr. Lupyan. <p class
- Mar 11, 20261h 8m
Mutualisms all the way down
No one is an island. We all depend on each other in critical, often tangled ways. And when I say "we" and "each other" I don't just mean humans. Yes, we humans rely on other humans. But we also rely on bees, yeasts, dogs, bacteria, and countless other creatures big and small. These interspecies dependencies—or mutualisms, as biologists call them—have deflected and inflected our history. And there's no doubt they will also inflect our future. My guest today is Dr. Rob Dunn. Rob is Professor of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, where he studies the creatures and ecologies all around us—in our homes, in our foods, in our belly buttons. He's the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life. This book is the focus of our conversation today. Rob and I talk about the idea of mutualism—in which two or more species benefit each other—and how human life is sustained by mutualisms all the way down. We consider how the benefits of mutualism are measured—whether in terms of biological fitness, or longevity, or pleasure. We talk about the best-documented cases of humans collaborating with other species to find honey or hunt fish. We consider how our liaisons with yeasts have shaped human history—and how we might even say that yeasts domesticated us. We linger on our relationships with dogs and cats and the benefits we get from them, some obvious and some less so. Finally, we talk about what it would mean to more fully embrace our mutualisms, what it would mean to create what Rob calls "a less lonely future." Along the way, Rob and I talk about cheese, worms, and maggots; bread, beer, and honey; face mites and armpits; parasites, inquilines, and commensals; what sauerkraut does to our immune systems; honeyguides and dolphins, leopards and house cats; morbid curiosity; and how dogs might give us a kind of access to our subconscious. This is a fun one folks. But, before we get to it, a couple of announcements. First: Applications are now open for the 2026 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This is a three-week intensive, transdisciplinary exploration of the different forms of mind and intelligence that animate our world. If you like the themes we talk about on this show, you would almost certainly get a kick out of DISI. More info at www.disi.org. That's d-i-s-i. org. Review of applications begins pretty soon, so don't dither! Second: We have just put out our first ever Many Minds audience survey! Whether you're a longtime superfan or just an occasional listener, we would love to hear from you. Your input will help guide the show as we consider our next chapter. Alright, friends—without further ado, on to my conversation with Rob Dunn. Enjoy! Notes 4:00 – For the fuller story of Menocchio, see The Cheese and the Worms, by Carlo Ginzburg. 7:00 – Dr. Dunn's lab has been involved in public-facing projects about fermented foods—see here for a series of webinars. 10:00 – The Sardinian cheese we discuss is called casu martzu. 14:00 – A study by Dr. Dunn and colleagues about human face mites. This is not the only aspect of bodily geography he and colleagues have examined: see also this study of the organisms in our belly buttons.</p
- Feb 26, 202655 min
Seven metaphors for AI
If you wanted a petri dish for understanding metaphors—how they emerge and evolve and jostle with each other—it would be hard to do better than the world of AI. We talk about AI systems variously as coaches or co-pilots, little genies or alien intelligences. Some researchers claim that AIs "grow," that they're entering their phase of "adolescence." Critics deride AI products as slop and dismiss LLMs as a kind of autocomplete on steroids. What's behind these different characterizations? Which ones are accurate and which are unfair? And are our metaphors mostly colorful rhetoric or do they matter? Are they shaping how we understand, adopt, and ultimately regulate these new technologies? My guest today is Dr. Melanie Mitchell. Melanie is a computer scientist and Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the author of the book, AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans, and she writes a Substack by the same name. This episode is a bit of a companion to our recent episode with Steve Flusberg. In that episode, Steve and I attempted a kind of crash course on metaphor and the human mind. Here, Melanie and I sit down for more of an extended case study: how metaphors are guiding, galvanizing, and maybe deceiving us in the contested realm of AI discourse. We unpack seven of the most widely used metaphors in this space. We consider how these metaphors are shaping not only our everyday understandings of AI, but also law and policy. We also talk about the metaphor and analogy capabilities of AI itself. Can these systems reason abstractly in the way that humans can? Along the way, Melanie and I touch on: AI-generated poetry, anthropomorphism, the original sin of AI research, the myth of Narcissus, psychometric testing and its pitfalls, metaphors for AI that are a bit hard to spot, and the question of whether an AI has ever come up with a decent analogy for itself. Longtime fans of the show will know that we've had Melanie on the show once before. We invited her back, not only because she's thought about metaphor and analogy in AI discourse for decades, but because she's a voice of calm insight in an area that's increasingly awash in hype and polemic. Longtime fans of the show may also note that we are now celebrating our 6th birthday at Many Minds. That's right, the show launched in February 2020. If you'd like to support us as we recognize this milestone, you can leave us a rating or a review, recommend us to a friend, or give us a shout out on social media. Your support is always appreciated. Without further ado, on to my conversation with Dr. Melanie Mitchell. Enjoy! Notes 3:30 – For an overview of Douglas Hofstadter's work on analogy, see here. 8:00 – Much of our discussion in this interview draws on Dr. Mitchell's piece on the metaphors for AI in Science magazine. 13:30 – For earlier discussions of anthropomorphism on the show, see our earlier episodes here and here. 16:00 – See here for the original discussion of LLMs as "stochastic parrots." 17:00 – See here for the original discussion of ChatGPT as a "blurry jpeg." 18:30 – See here for the original discussion of LLMs as role players.</sp
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