Many Minds podcast

If you're a Many Minds listener—even just an occasional one—we would love to hear from you!

Many Minds podcast – Listener survey A brief survey for listeners of the Many Minds podcast.

Happy 6th anniversary to us!! 🎉🎉

Thanks for spending time with us, old friends and new! As we celebrate this milestone, we've launched a short audience survey to get your thoughts on the show (and its future).

We would be most grateful for your participation!

Link: forms.gle/AnJSopuX8Cho...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

A conversation w/ @melaniemitchell.bsky.social about metaphors and AI.

Are current AI systems like human minds? Or more like alien intelligences, role players, mirrors, libraries, or stochastic parrots? And does our choice of metaphor matter?

Listen: disi.org/manyminds/

The metaphors of artificial intelligence A few months after ChatGPT was released, the neural network pioneer Terrence Sejnowski wrote about coming to grips with the shock of what large language models (LLMs) could do: “Something is beginning...

This is a companion to our recent episode with @sflusberg.bsky.social. Here, we take AI as an case study in how metaphors reflect and shape understanding.

The discussion centers around @melaniemitchell.bsky.social's excellent essay in @science.org: www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

A conversation w/ @melaniemitchell.bsky.social about metaphors and AI.

Are current AI systems like human minds? Or more like alien intelligences, role players, mirrors, libraries, or stochastic parrots? And does our choice of metaphor matter?

Listen: disi.org/manyminds/

📣📣📣

Applications for the 2026 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!!

Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply!

More info: disi.org

This is really good

If you enjoyed our recent essay on names in the animal kingdom, you might be interested in this new paper!

(by former guests @laurasimonelewis.bsky.social and @chriskrupenye.bsky.social, among others)

big fan of the pod, can't wait to listen to this episode

Many Minds: 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 c...

I enjoyed talking with @kensycoop.bsky.social on the Many Minds podcast about the metaphors we use to conceptualize AI.

manyminds.libsyn.com/seven-metaph...

The "premastication" of food for babies—also called "kiss feeding"—is widespread in apes and humans. Could it have been an evolutionary stepping stone to the romantic kiss?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @matildabrindle.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/origins-of-t...

The "premastication" of food for babies—also called "kiss feeding"—is widespread in apes and humans. Could it have been an evolutionary stepping stone to the romantic kiss?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @matildabrindle.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/origins-of-t...

Animal cultures matter for conservation, but also to animals - Learning & Behavior A growing acceptance that many nonhuman animal communities have distinct cultures – group-variable patterns of behavior and information sustained over time by social learning – is beginning to reshape...

"Animal cultures matter first and foremost because they matter to the animals themselves."

If you enjoyed our recent episode on the value of animal cultures, you may be interested in this new paper by @simonfitzpatrick.bsky.social & @kristinandrews.bsky.social!
link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Origins of the kiss - DISI Exploring our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives.

My interview with @manymindspod.bsky.social! Come for a deep dive into the evolution of kissing 💋, stay for the earth-shattering insights 🤯

"fish don't run" 🐠🏃

"monkeys tend to loll around quite a lot" 🙈

"chimps have moved on to grass-in-bumhole behaviour" 🍑🌱

disi.org/origins-of-t...

A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing Kissing can be observed across the animal kingdom. This presents an evolutionary puzzle, since the fitness benefits of kissing are unclear. We use a n…

The paper that we discuss in this episode, led by @matildabrindle.bsky.social, is here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Kissing may seem like a frivolous topic—and it is, of course, a fun one!—but there's a reason scholars across the social/behavioral sciences have now started to pay it serious attention.

To really puzzle out the origins the kiss, we may need to think about...

Analogy and metaphor galore!

I was interviewed by the @nightsciencepod.bsky.social podcast about metaphor and analogy in science:

open.spotify.com/episode/1hqU...

Pairs well with @sflusberg.bsky.social's interview on metaphor on the @manymindspod.bsky.social podcast
disi.org/the-aura-of-...

Thoroughly enjoyed this podcast about metaphor as a linguistic and cognitive phenomenon, not just a literary device.

I think I see metaphor as considerably more integral to (and hence frequent in) language than Kensy does, though: there are often many metaphors hidden in a single everyday sentence.

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

A conversation w/ @matildabrindle.bsky.social about the evolution of kissing.

Kissing is not just a quirk of human behavior. It's found across the animal kingdom and in most of our closest primate relatives. What functions could it be serving?

Listen: disi.org/origins-of-t...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️

A conversation w/ @matildabrindle.bsky.social about the evolution of kissing.

Kissing is not just a quirk of human behavior. It's found across the animal kingdom and in most of our closest primate relatives. What functions could it be serving?

Listen: disi.org/origins-of-t...

The late philosopher Daniel Dennett had a notable penchant for metaphor—but he rarely used just one. Instead, he often engaged in what @sflusberg.bsky.social calls "metaphorical triangulation."

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode!

Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

The late philosopher Daniel Dennett had a notable penchant for metaphor—but he rarely used just one. Instead, he often engaged in what @sflusberg.bsky.social calls "metaphorical triangulation."

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode!

Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

We can all agree that metaphors are nice. But are they also sometimes necessary? Could there be ideas we simply can't approach literally, thoughts we can't think without metaphors?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @sflusberg.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

Surely one of the most timelessly alluring questions in all of metaphor research. Was excited to hear @sflusberg.bsky.social's take on this one!

(which I won't spoil)

Why Metaphors Are Necessary and Not Just Nice1 Click on the article title to read more.

Metaphors nerds will know that the above alludes to a classic paper in the field: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We can all agree that metaphors are nice. But are they also sometimes necessary? Could there be ideas we simply can't approach literally, thoughts we can't think without metaphors?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @sflusberg.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

A wave of recent research has reported name-like phenomena in dolphins, elephants, and marmosets. But as the search for animal names intensifies, we would do well to ask ourselves: What even is a name?

Our recent audio essay from @kensycoop.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/in-search-of...

I really enjoyed the podcast. Many of the discussion points remind me of Mary Hesse's work on the role of metaphors in epistemology - if you are interested in these topics, I highly recommend her papers, e.g. dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781...

In search of names Cats have three names — or so writes T. S. Eliot in his 1939 poem, “The Naming of Cats.” First, Eliot tells us, there’s a cat’s “sensible…

A text version of this episode is now available here: manymindspod.medium.com/in-search-of...

A wave of recent research has reported name-like phenomena in dolphins, elephants, and marmosets. But as the search for animal names intensifies, we would do well to ask ourselves: What even is a name?

Our recent audio essay from @kensycoop.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/in-search-of...