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 bloomin...
22 Mai 1h 18min
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 huma...
7 Mai 1h 10min
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 Apri...
22 Apr 1h 33min
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...
9 Apr 1h 25min
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 psy...
26 Mar 1h 21min
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 o...
11 Mar 1h 8min
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...
26 Feb 55min
Origins of the kiss
Humans do some pretty weird things. Some of us will sit in searingly hot rooms or jump into icy ponds. Others risk their lives trying to climb to new heights or dive to new depths. And every once in a...
12 Feb 1h 1min
