Urte Laukaityte

Cautionary Tales – The Nazis, the Bomb, and the Woman that Science Forgot Lise Meitner has fought for her entire life to be seen as a scientist, slowly building a career as a nuclear physicist in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler rises to power, the small gains she’s made …

I so wish the medal would have been given a different name, in light of Otto Hahn's actions during the Nazi era and especially his treatment of Lise Meitner, e.g. timharford.com/2025/06/caut...

Consider reading my new piece on the history and science of the nasogenital cure! Incidentally, that's not exactly what the theory was and not quite what the episode reveals. Bizarre tales sound rather less bizarre in context - possibly, our own tales in our own context, too.

On train home after Method & Convergence 2025. I got so much food for my work! Slide is from @laukas.bsky.social nice ”PR talk” on synthetic phil… 🔥

Consider reading this funky piece of mine from 2018! Featuring cameos from Ben Franklin, Marie Antoinette, and Stephen Jay Gould.

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Applications for the 2025 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

Conceptual: Honorable Mention - Ursa Majeure [photography duo] (Austria)

A new project got a shout-out at the Monochrome Photography Awards 2024 - see the shot here.

Thanks for a great 2024, friends!

We put out 21 new episodes this year (19 interviews, 2 essays). The top 5 were...

(in chronological order)

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Cool! I haven't come across too many people that share my interests - Bluesky seems like it might change that.

Slime Mould and Philosophy Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - Slime Mould and Philosophy

My new book, Slime Mould and Philosophy, is now available — and for the next month, you can download it for FREE here: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Thanks to everyone who made this book come to life and shared the rather intense journey with me. Enjoy!

A Drive to Survive now has a cover! Thanks to my friend Toby Logan saving the day with his design skills.

Unfortunately the release has been delayed another two months, but the pre-print can be downloaded here osf.io/preprints/ps... or I’m happy to email a PDF to anyone interested!

People: Portrait - honorable mention - Ursa Majeure [photography duo] (Austria)

Chuffed to be 'honourably mentioned' at the ND Photography Awards this year - in case anyone else might enjoy seeing the shot, here it is.

I think this might be the wrong Matteo Colombo?

Delusion and inference | 38 | The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Delusions are commonly defined as beliefs based on incorrect inference. But the term ‘inference’ is used in different fields with a lot of variation, which has

A (provocative) new chapter. If "cognition all the way down" holds up when things go right with capacities like perception, learning, memory, etc., it should also apply when things go awry. What could taking the idea of scale-free psychiatry seriously teach us about our own cognitive (dys)function?

Thanks! Really glad to hear.

How should we think about IQ? - Many Minds podcast Exploring our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives.

The Many Minds podcast has an episode with him discussing the book through the lens of IQ - for anyone interested, it could be worth checking out disi.org/how-should-w...

Evolutionary psychology!

A magazine liked a piece I turned in enough to want to include it in their print issue, not just on the web, as originally planned. It needed to be shortened for that and they had me cut it down myself. I only got paid for the number of words in the shorter version.

From Borch-Jacobsen, M. (2021). Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives. Reaktion Books.

From Shorter, E. (1992). From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era. The Free Press.

Rehabilitating placebo - Many Minds podcast Exploring our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives.

New episode!! 📣📣

An essay by our Assistant Producer, @laukas.bsky.social.

We often hear about placebo treatments as controls—points of comparison for "real" treatments. But placebos are much more than that. Is it time we harnessed their power?

Listen: disi.org/rehabilitati...

From Few, M. (2005). Chocolate, Sex, and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth and Early-Eighteenth-Century Guatemala. Ethnohistory 52(4), pp. 673–687.

From Carnwath, T., Smith, I. (2002). The Heroin Century. Routledge.

From Wuthnow, R. (2017). American Misfits and the Making of Middle-Class Respectability. Princeton University Press.

From Weatherford, J. (2010). The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire. Crown Publishers.

From Wilkins, B. S. (2002). The Spleen. British Journal of Haematology 117(2), pp. 265-274.

From Park, S. K., Lee, E. J., Park, J. W. (2016). Visual History with Choson Dynasty Annals. Leonardo 49(4), pp. 334–341.

From Kotchemidova, C. (2005). From Good Cheer to “Drive-By Smiling”: A Social History of Cheerfulness. Journal of Social History 39(1), pp. 5-37.