Many Minds

著者： Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute — Kensy Cooperrider
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  • A podcast that explores our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives
    Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute 2020
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A podcast that explores our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives
Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute 2020
科学
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  • From the archive: Fermentation, fire, and our big brains

    From the archive: Fermentation, fire, and our big brains
    2025/03/19
    Hi friends, We're taking care of some spring cleaning this week. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! - The Many Minds team ––––––––– [originally aired February 22, 2024] Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky. My guests today are Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper titled 'Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.' In it, they argue that fermented foods could have provided the caloric boost that allowed our brains to expand. Here, we talk about how the human body differs from the bodies of other great apes, not just in terms of our brains but also in terms of our bowels. We discuss the different mechanisms by which fermented foods provide nutritional benefits over unfermented foods. We consider how fermentation—which basically happens whether you want it to or not—would have been cognitively easier to harness than fire. Along the way, we touch on kiviaq, chicha, makgeolli, hákarl, natto, Limburger cheese, salt-rising bread, and other arguably delectable products of fermentation. This is a fun one friends. But before we get to it: a friendly reminder about this summer's Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This a yearly event in St Andrews, Scotland; it features a rich program of lectures and events devoted to the study of cognition, mind, and intelligence in all its forms. If you have a taste for cross-disciplinary ferment and bubbly conversation, DISI may be for you. The application window is now open but is closing soon. You can find more info at DISI.org. That's D-I-S-I.org. Alright, friends, on to my conversation with Erin Hecht and Katherine Bryant. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread. 6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places. 11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees. 12:30 – A recent article by Dr. Hecht and colleagues on the evolutionary neuroscience of domestication. 13:00 – For discussions of the encephalization quotient (aka EQ) and of human brain evolution, see our previous episodes here and here. 15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” 22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire. 26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago. 31:30 – A paper on how fermenting cassava reduces its toxicity. 38:30 – There have been various claims in the ethnographic literature that the control of fire has been lost among small groups, such as in Tasmania. See footnote 2 in this article. 44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq. 45:00 – The article from the New Yorker, by Rebecca Mead, about the foodways of the Faroe Islands. 53:00 – For more discussion of the so-called drunken monkey hypothesis, see our previous episode about intoxication. 1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark. Recommendations The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz “How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts...
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    1 時間 6 分
  • Howl, grunt, sing

    Howl, grunt, sing
    2025/03/06
    The tree of life is a noisy place. From one branch come hoots and howls, from another come clicks and buzzes and whines. And coming from all over you hear the swell of song. But what is all this ruckus about? Why do so many animals communicate with sound? What kinds of meaning do these sounds convey? And—beyond the case of human speech—do any of these sounds merit the label of “language”? My guest today is Dr. Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at Cambridge University. Arik is an expert on vocal communication across the animal kingdom and the author of the recent book Why animals talk: The new science of animal communication. Here, Arik and I talk about why the acoustic medium is a popular choice for complex communication. We sketch a key difference between forms of communication that are purely expressive and forms that are also referential. We discuss, in turn, Arik's field research on wolves, hyraxes, and gibbons—and talk about what makes each of these animals such a revealing case study. We evaluate our prospects for quote unquote "translating" different kinds of animal communication, and we speculate about what communication systems could look like on other planets. Along the way, Arik and I touch on: noisy versus tonal sounds; short-range versus long-range communication; chorusing and duetting; simplicity and complexity; syntax and meaning; entropy; alarm calls; dolphins, orcas, and cuttlefish; and how you can tell that wolves take a certain pleasure in howling. Without further ado, here’s my chat with Dr. Arik Kershenbaum. A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 6:30 – In the human case, of course, our most elaborated form of communication—language—comes in both spoken and signed forms. For more on the different modalities of human language, see, e.g., our earlier episode with Dr. Neil Cohn. 7:30 – The distinction between expressive and referential communication is perhaps most strongly associated with the linguist Roman Jakobson—see, for instance, this essay. For more on the question of whether animal communication systems involve reference, see this recent (philosophical) discussion. 9:00 – For a classic example of work on predator alarm calls in vervet monkeys, see here. 13:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on wolf (and other canid) howls, see here. The study provides evidence for howling “dialects.” 24:30 – An example of coyote chorusing can be heard here. 27:00 – A study showing that human listeners overestimate the size of a coyote group. 29:00 – For an example of Dr. Kershenbaum’s work on hyrax song, see here. An example of hyrax song can be heard here. 34:00 – For a primer on syntax in animal acoustic communication, see here. 40:00 – Examples of gibbon song can be heard here and here. 45:00 – For a paper on the syntax and complexity of gibbon songs, see here. 48:30 – A paper by Dr. Kershenbaum and colleagues on entropy and Zipf’s law in animal communication. 57:30 – A paper on Darwin’s theory of “musical protolanguage.” 59:30 – An example of research on orca communication. 1:00:00 – For more about Project CETI, see here. 1:07:00 – See Dr. Kershenbaum’s other book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. Recommendations The Reign of Wolf 21, by Rick McIntyre Through a window, by Jane Goodall Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).
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    1 時間 14 分
  • The development of evolution

    The development of evolution
    2025/02/20
    Evolution is not what it used to be. A lot has changed since Darwin's day. In the first half of the 20th century, evolutionary theory was integrated with an emerging understanding of genetics. Late in the 20th century, biologists started taking seriously the idea that organisms don't just adapt to their environments, they change them. Recently, researchers have started to acknowledge the role of culture in evolutionary processes. And so slowly our understanding of evolution has been reconsidered, updated, expanded. And more updates are underway. But it's not just our understanding of evolution that has changed over time. Evolution itself has changed, too. My guest today is Dr. Kevin Lala. Kevin is an evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Over his long career, Kevin has been at the forefront of key debates about—and updates to—evolutionary theory. He's known, for instance, for his pioneering work on niche construction as well as for his work on gene-culture co-evolution. In a new book titled Evolution Evolving, Kevin and his four co-authors present a new synthesis of evolution, one that places developmental processes front and center. Here, Kevin and I sketch the notion of a "developmental bias" and why it's central to this new understanding of evolution. We talk about the orthodox gene-centric way of thinking about development—and what it gets wrong. We discuss so-called exploratory processes in development. We dig into the increasingly popular, but much debated construct of "evolvability." And we consider what this newest update to evolutionary theory might tell us about the origins of human cognition. Along the way, Kevin and I talk about floppy ears in mammals and fragmented faces in fish; symbionts and soft inheritance; Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Richard Lewontin, and August Weismann; development as an artist and evolution as curator; maps; plants; manual dexterity; brain size; and why evolution is a bit like walking on a trampoline. A final reminder about the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, or DISI. DISI is a three-week long summer institute held in St Andrews, Scotland; it's a place for the wide-ranging, transdisciplinary exploration of ideas about mind, cognition, and intelligence. It's a place where early career scholars get to hobnob with thinkers like Kevin Lala, who was a faculty member with us in 2019. There's still time to apply, but do act fast—review of applications begins March 1st. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Kevin Lala. Enjoy! A transcript of this episode is available here. Notes and links 4:00 – A paper describing so-called domestication syndrome. For more on domestication (and self-domestication), see our earlier episode with Dr. Brian Hare. 11:00 – A paper describing cavefish as a new model organism in the study of evolution and development. 15:00 – An influential 2015 paper, led by Dr. Lala, describing the “extended evolutionary synthesis.” 22:00 – A 2016 overview of niche construction theory, led by Dr. Lala. 27:00 – An early report on “lobtail feeding” in humpback whales. 33:00 – A paper describing “gaping behavior” in cichlid fishes. 35:00 – A review of “soft inheritance.” The study showing that mice pass on learned associations to offspring. 41:00 – A study on the gut microbes that allow woodrats to digest toxic creosote. 44:00 – See our earlier episode with Dr. Eric Turkheimer. 50:00 – See Winther’s book, When Maps Become the World. 56:00 – A paper reviewing the idea of “exploratory mechanisms” in development, as well as other ideas associated with the concept of “plasticity-led evolution.” 1:05:00 – A classic paper on the notion of “evolvability.” 1:13:00 – For one example of a “major transitions” framework, see our earlier episode with Dr. Andrew Barron. 1:17:00 – A news article about how dogs developed the ability to digest starch, initially by acquiring symbionts. 1:20:00 – For discussion of the evolution of human brain size, see our earlier episode ‘Fermentation, fire, and our big brains.’ 1:28:00 – A recent review of the idea that humans are “self-domesticated.” Recommendations Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, by Mary Jane West-Eberhard Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and ...
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    1 時間 37 分

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