Many Minds
Our world is brimming with beings—human, animal, and artificial. We explore how they think, sense, feel, and learn. Conversations and more, every two weeks.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest episodes
Cognitive offloading and its consequences (opens the original)
Read excerpt
For thousands of years—maybe for as long as we've been human—we've offloaded our thinking. We've counted on our fingers. We've carved tallies into bone. We've invented a long series of tools to help us reason, remember, and manage information—tools like abacuses, calendars, writing systems, calculators, smartphones, and many, many more. So cognitive offloading is hardly new—but the questions around it seem newly urgent. As cognitive technologies accumulate, as opportunities for offloading tempt
Coming of age in Ngogo (opens the original)
Read excerpt
It's a familiar story in many ways. A child is born, and for years afterward is adored and indulged and anchored to home and family. But then the child grows up and starts crossing that long threshold into adulthood. The transition proves—to say the least—a bit turbulent. Now when I say this story is familiar, I don't just mean familiar to us as human beings. After all, a similar story has long played out among our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. My guest today is Dr. Rachna Reddy . Rachna co-
The natural history of linguistic diversity (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Thousands of languages are used around the world today, and this linguistic diversity is a precious part of our human heritage. But it's also more than that. Linguistic diversity provides clues—a vast crazy quilt of clues—about how language works, about how history has unfolded, about the dynamics of culture, and about the nature of the human mind. My guest today is Dr. Damián Blasi . Damián is an ICREA Research Professor based at the Center for Brain & Cognition at the Pompeu Fabra University i
From the archive: Electric ecology (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Hi friends! We're still taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back at the end of August—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [ originally aired September 19, 2024 ] There's a bit of a buzz out there, right now, but maybe you haven't noticed. It's in the water, it's in the air. It's electricity—and it's all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of re
From the archive: Varieties of childhood (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Hi friends! We're taking a bit of a summer pause. We'll be back soon—in the meanwhile, enjoy this listener favorite from our archives! ----- [originally aired July 10, 2025] 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, an
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Not enough subject data for this period yet.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.