Many Minds Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

Welcome back friends! Today we've got a first for you: our very first audio essay by... not me. I would call it a guest essay, but it's by our longtime Assistant Producer, Urte Laukaityte. If you're a regular listener of the show, you've been indirectly hearing her work across dozens and dozens of episodes, but this is the first time you will be actually hearing her voice. 
Urte is a philosopher. She works primarily in the philosophy of psychiatry, but also in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and neighboring fields. She's particularly interested in a colorful constellation of psychiatric phenomena—phenomena like hypnosis, mass hysteria, psychogenic conditions, and (the topic of today's essay) the placebo effect.  
There's almost certainly more to placebo than you realize—it's a surprisingly many-layered phenomenon. Here, Urte pulls apart those layers. She talks about what placebo can and cannot do, the mechanisms by which it operates, the ethical dimensions of its use, its evil twin nocebo, how it is woven through the history of medicine, and a lot more. She argues that, though we've learned a lot about the placebo in recent decades, we have not yet harnessed its full potential. 
As always, we eagerly welcome your comments about the show. Feel free to find us on social media, or send us a note at manymindspodcast@gmail.com. We would love to hear your suggestions for future episodes, your constructive criticisms, really your feedback of whatever kind.
Alright friends, now on to our audio essay—'Rehabilitating placebo’—written and read by Urte Laukaityte. Enjoy!
A text version of this episode will be available soon.
 
Notes and links 
3:30 – A research paper describing the FIDELITY trial.
8:00 – For a neuroscientific overview of placebo research, see this review article. The landmark 1978 study is here.
9:00 – The study using naloxone in rats.
10:30 – A review of placebo effects in Parkinson’s disease.
13:00 – The study showing placebo effects in allergy sufferers. For more on placebo and conditioning in the immune system, see here. 
13:30 – An overview of the results on whether placebo “can replace oxygen.” 
16:00 – For the “milkshake” study, see here. 
20:00 – A perspective piece on open-label placebos. A review of the efficacy of open-label placebos. 
22:00 – A review of nocebo-induced side effects within the placebo groups of trials. 
24:00 – On the idea of “good placebo responders,” see here.
27:30 – The book Medical Nihilism, by Jacob Stegenga.
28:00 – A review and meta-analysis of the use of placebo by clinicians. 
29:30 ­– A paper on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and placebo. 
30:30 – A review of factors modulating placebo effects.
34:00 – For the “signaling theory of symptoms,” see here.
 
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It 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.

 They tend to move under the cover of darkness. As night descends, they come for your gardens and compost piles, for your trash cans and attic spaces. They are raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. And if you live in urban North America, they are a growing presence. Whether you consider them menacing, cute, fascinating, or all of the above, you have to grant that they are quite a clever crew. After all, they've figured out how to adapt to human-dominated spaces. But how have they done this? What traits and talents have allowed them to evolve into this brave new niche? And are they still evolving into it?
My guest today is Dr. Sarah Benson-Amram. Sarah is Assistant Professor of Forest and Conservation Sciences and Zoology at the University of British Columbia; she also directs the Animal Behavior & Cognition Lab at UBC. Sarah's research group focuses on the behavioral and cognitive ecology of urban wildlife. They ask what urban wildlife can teach us about animal cognition more generally and try to understand ways to smooth human-wildlife interactions. 
Here, Sarah and I talk about her work on that trio I mentioned before: raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. These three species are all members of the mammalian order of carnivora, a clade of animals that Sarah has focused on throughout her career and one that has been underrepresented in studies of animal cognition. We discuss the traits that have allowed these species—and certain members of these species—to thrive in dynamic, daunting urban spaces. We also talk about the big picture of the evolution of intelligence—and how urban adapter species might shed light on what is known as the cognitive buffer hypothesis. Along the way, we touch on: the neophilia of raccoons and the neophobia of coyotes, puzzle boxes, the Aesop's fable task, hyenas and elephants, brain size, individual differences, human-wildlife conflict, comparative gastronomy, and the cognitive arms race that might be unfolding in our cities.  
 If you have any feedback for us, we would love to hear from you. Guest suggestions? Topics or formats you'd like to see? Blistering critiques? Effusive compliments? We're open to all of it. You can email us at manymindspodcast at gmail dot com. That's manymindspodcast at gmail. Though, honestly, if it's really an effusive compliment, feel free to just post that publicly somewhere. 
Alright friends, on to my conversation with Sarah Benson-Amram. Enjoy!
 
A transcript of this episode is available here.
 
Notes and links
8:50 – A study of manual dexterity in raccoons. 
11:30 – A video featuring raccoon chittering, among other vocalizations.
12:00 ­– A recent academic paper on the categorization of wildlife responses to urbanization—avoider, adapter, exploiter—with some critical discussion. 
14:00 – A study of how animals are becoming more nocturnal in response to humans.
18:00 – An encyclopedia article on the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, by one of its originators, Richard Byrne. A recent appraisal of how the hypothesis has fared across different taxa. 
18:30 – A recent review article by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues surveying carnivore cognition.
25:00 ­– On the question of urban vs rural animals, see the popular article, ‘Are cities making animals smarter?’
28:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues using puzzle boxes to study behavioral flexibility in captive raccoons. See also her follow-up study, conducted with a large team of neuroscience collaborators, examining the brains of raccoons who successfully solved the puzzle boxes. 
34:30 – An earlier study by Dr. Benson-Amram on innovative problem solving in hyenas.
36:30 – Our earlier episode on animal personality with Dr. Kate Laskowski.
39:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram and colleagues exploring raccoons’ ability to solve the Aesop’s Fable task. She has also used this task with elephants. 
44:00 – A study by Dr. Benson-Amram

Hi friends, we're busy with some spring cleaning this week. We'll have a new episode for you in two weeks. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives!
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[originally aired Nov 30, 2022]
When we talk about AI, we usually fixate on the future. What’s coming next? Where is the technology going? How will artificial intelligences reshape our lives and worlds? But it's also worth looking to the past. When did the prospect of manufactured minds first enter the human imagination? When did we start building robots, and what did those early robots do? What are the deeper origins, in other words, not only of artificial intelligences themselves, but of our ideas about those intelligences? 
For this episode, we have two guests who've spent a lot of time delving into the deeper history of AI. One is Adrienne Mayor; Adrienne is a Research Scholar in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and the author of the 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Our second guest is Elly Truitt; Elly is Associate Professor in the History & Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the 2015 book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. 
In this conversation, we draw on Adrienne's expertise in the classical era and Elly's expertise in the medieval period to dig into the surprisingly long and rich history of AI. We discuss some of the very first imaginings of artificial beings in Greek mythology, including Talos, the giant robot guarding the island of Crete. We talk about some of the very first historical examples of automata, or self-moving devices; these included statues that spoke, mechanical birds that flew, thrones that rose, and clocks that showed the movements of the heavens. We also discuss the long-standing and tangled relationships between AI and power, exoticism, slavery, prediction, and justice. And, finally, we consider some of the most prominent ideas we have about AI today and whether they had precedents in earlier times.
This is an episode we've been hoping to do for some time now, to try to step back and put AI in a much broader context. It turns out the debates we're having now, the anxieties and narratives that swirl around AI today, are not so new. In some cases, they're millennia old. 
Alright friends, now to my conversation with Elly Truitt and Adrienne Mayor. Enjoy!
 
A transcript of this episode is available here.
 
Notes and links
4:00 – See Adrienne’s TedEd lesson about Talos, the “first robot.” See also Adrienne’s 2019 talk for the Long Now Foundation.
7:15 – The Throne of Solomon does not survive, but it was often rendered in art, for example in this painting by Edward Poynter.
12:00 – For more on Adrienne’s broader research program, see her website; for more on Elly’s research program, see her website.
18:00 – For more on the etymology of ‘robot,’ see here.
23:00 – A recent piece about Aristotle’s writings on slavery.
26:00 – An article about the fact that Greek and Roman statues were much more colorful than we think of them today.
30:00 – A recent research article about the Antikythera mechanism.
34:00 – See Adrienne’s popular article about the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha.
38:45 – See Elly’s article about how automata figured prominently in tombs.
47:00 – See Elly’s recent video lecture about mechanical clocks and the “invention of time.” For more on the rise of mechanistic thinking—and clocks as important metaphors in that rise—see Jessica Riskin’s book, The Restless Clock.
50:00 – An article about a “torture robot” of ancient Sparta.
58:00 – A painting of the “Iron Knight” in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
 
Adrienne Mayor recommends:
The Greeks and the New, by Armand D’Angour
Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, edited by Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens
In O

We've all seen those illusions. The dots seem to dance, when in fact they're completely still. The lines look like they bend, but in reality they're perfectly straight. Here's the thing: It doesn't matter that you know the ground truth of these illusions—the dancing and bending won't stop. And that we see the world one way, even though we know it's actually another way, is a fascinating quirk of our minds—and maybe a telling one. It suggests that there's a chasm between perceiving and thinking, that these may be two independent provinces of the mind. But, if so, we're faced with another question: Where does perception end and thinking begin? 
My guest today is Dr. Chaz Firestone. Chaz is an Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the Perception and Mind lab there. He and his research group study perceiving, thinking, and the interface between the two.
Here, Chaz and I talk about his background in philosophy and how it continues to animate his research. We sketch the differences between perception and cognition and why the two are best considered separate faculties. We consider the idea of so-called "top-down" effects on perception. We discuss the fact that, even if perception and cognition are separate, there's much more to perception than meets the eye. We seem to see things like causes and social interactions; we perceive things like silences and absences. Along the way, Chaz and I touch on the modular view mind, skeletal shapes, the El Greco fallacy, stubborn epistemology, birders and radiologists, retinotopy and visual adaptation, adversarial images, human-machine comparisons, and the case of the blue banana. 
This is a fun one, friends. But before we get to it, one humble request. If you've been enjoying Many Minds, now would be a great time to leave us a rating or review. You can do this on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. It would really help us grow and get the word out! It actually looks like our last review on Apple Podcasts is about 10 months old—so, if you have a minute, that could really use some freshening up.  
Alright folks, on to my conversation with Chaz Firestone. Enjoy!
 
 A transcript of this episode is available here.
  
Notes and links
3:00 – Dr. Firestone’s early paper reporting the Times Square experiment and the “skeletal shape” phenomenon.
8:00 – A visual explanation of the “missing bullet holes” graphic. 
13:00 – Dr. Firestone has collaborated intensively with the philosopher Ian Phillips. 
15:00 – A recent book by Ned Block, The Border Between Seeing and Thinking.
24:00 – Visual illusions are legion, as are inventories of them. See, for instance, this catalogue on Wikipedia or this Reddit thread.
25:00 – An obituary for Jerry Fodor, who died in 2017. The classic book by Zenon Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition. 
28:00 – A paper by Dr. Firestone about the history of the El Greco fallacy. An empirical paper by Dr. Firestone and Brian Scholl showing the El Greco fallacy at work in perception research. 
35:00 – A target article (with commentaries) in Behavioral and Brain Sciences by Dr. Firestone and Dr. Scholl about claims of “top-down” effects on perception. Dr. Firestone has published other work on this theme, e.g., here, here, & here. 
41:00 – A paper with discussion (and illustration) of the classic Dalmation Mooney image. 
45:00 – A study of rapid visual pattern recognition in expert chess players.
50:30 – A paper by J.J. Valenti and Dr. Firestone about the case of the blue banana.
54:00 – A review paper by Alon Hafri and Dr. Firestone reviewing evidence that people actually perceive high-level relations like causality, support, and social interaction. 
56:00 – A study by Martin Rolfs and colleagues about the perception of causality.  
1:02:00 – A study by Liuba Papeo and colleagues about the perception of social interacti

If you want to have a rich social life, you're going to need to know who's who. You'll need to distinguish friend from foe, sister from stranger. And you're going to need to hold those distinctions in your head— for at least a little while. This is true not just for humans but—we have to assume—for other social species as well. But which species? And for how long can other creatures hold on to these kinds of social memories? 
My guests today are Dr. Laura Lewis and Dr. Chris Krupenye. Laura is a biological anthropologist and postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley; Chris is a comparative psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins. Along with a larger team, Laura and Chris recently authored a paper on memory for familiar faces in chimpanzees and bonobos. In it, they show that our closest cousins remember their groupmates for decades.
Here, we chat about the paper and the backstory behind it. We consider the anecdotes about long-term memory in great apes—and how Laura and Chris decided to go beyond those anecdotes. We talk about the evidence for complex social memory across the animal kingdom. We discuss the use of eye-tracking with primates and its advantages over earlier methods. We also talk about why long-term social memory might have evolved. Along the way, we touch on dolphins, ravens, and lemurs; voices, gaits, and names; the different gradations of recognition; and how memory serves as a critical foundation for social life more generally. 
Alright friends, without further ado, here's my conversation with Laura Lewis and Chris Krupenye. Enjoy!
 
 A transcript of this episode is available here.
  
Notes and links
4:30 – Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye worked together in the lab of Dr. Brian Hare, a former guest on the podcast. 
8:30 – The video of Mama and the primatologist Jan van Hooff.
12:00 – For research on the remarkably long social memories of dolphins, see here. 
14:00 – For research on long-term voice recognition in bonobos, see here.
19:30 – Another collaborator on the paper we’re discussing was Dr. Fumihiro Kano, affiliated with the Kumamoto Sanctuary.
29:30 – For more on the use of eye-tracking with primates, see a recent review paper by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye. 
34:00 – For the previous study by Dr. Lewis, Dr. Krupenye, and colleagues about how bonobos and chimpanzees attend to current groupmates, see here. 
41:00 – A popular article reviewing bonobo social behavior. 
54:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by scent in chimpanzees.
55:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by butt in chimpanzees.
 
Recommendations
‘Long-term memory for affiliates in ravens’
‘Decades-long social memory in bottlenose dolphins’
‘Enduring voice recognition in bonobos’
 
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It 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.

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