Many Minds

Welcome back friends and happy spring! (Or fall, as the case may be.) Today's show takes on a disarmingly simple question: What is language for? As in, why do we say things to each other? What do word...

13 Apr 20221h 17min

Friends—we're busy with some spring cleaning this week, but will be back in mid-April. In the meanwhile, here's a favorite audio essay from our archives. Enjoy! ______ Welcome back folks! Today is a r...

30 Mar 202213min

It's an old question: How does experience shape our minds and brains? Some people play the piano; others drive taxis; others grow up trilingual. For years now, scientists have examined how these and o...

16 Mar 20221h 8min

To be a good magician, you have to be a good psychologist. If you want to pull off a really good magic trick, you need to know your audience—what they are likely to attend to or gloss over, what short...

2 Mar 202240min

I have this theory about podcasts—it's almost certainly not original, and it's probably not right. But anyway, I have this theory that what makes for a great podcast episode is really just a few good ...

16 Feb 202228min

You have a big brain. I have a big brain. We, as a species, have pretty big brains. But this wasn't always the case. Way back when, our brains were much smaller; then they went through a bit of growth...

2 Feb 202246min

You've probably seen those lists of the so-called "wonders of the world." Many are works of architecture: the Great Wall, the pyramids, the colosseum, Taj Mahal. But these lists are, in a sense, alway...

19 Jan 202258min

We're on a brief winter break right now, but we'll be back later in January. To tide you over, here's one of our favorite episodes from 2021: a conversation with Dr. Luke Rendell about culture in whal...

7 Jan 20221h 16min