About this episode
Alright, friends—we've come to the end of the 2025 run of Many Minds! Our final episode of the year is an audio essay by yours truly. This is a classic format for the show, one that we only do every so often. Today's essay is about names. It's about the question of whether animals have something like names for each other. And it's also about a deeper question: What even is a name? How do humans use names? How does the historical and ethnographic record kind of complicate our everyday understanding of what names are. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I do hope you enjoy it. Now, the holiday season is a time when people might be shopping around for new podcasts to listen to. That makes it a great time to recommend us to your friends and family and colleagues. You can think of it as an especially thoughtful gift, one that's absolutely free, and that keeps on giving throughout the year. Speaking of gifts, as an addendum to this episode you'll find a little stocking stuffer after the credits. It's a reading of a poem that figures prominently in today's essay. Without further ado, here is my essay—'In search of names.' Enjoy! A text version of this essay is available here. Notes 2:00 – The text of 'The Naming of Cats' by T.S. Eliot is here. See also the full collection, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The lines about cats' taste preferences and cats having different kinds of minds comes from another poem in the collection, 'The Ad-Dressing of Cats.' 3:00 – The 2019 study finding that cats know their names, and the 2022 study showing that cats know the names of their friends. 4:00 – For an overview of research on dolphin "signature whistles," see here. 5:00 – For the 2024 study reporting name-like rumbles in elephants, see here. 6:00 – For the 2024 study reporting vocal labels for individuals in marmosets, see here. A critical response to the study is here; the authors' response to the critici
