Octopus Arms Have Minds of Their Own

Octopus Arms Have Minds of Their Own

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Radio Archive, Episode 549 , Segment 7

Episode: National Monuments, Sleep and Aging, Practice Crime Scene

  • May 9, 2017 11:00 pm
  • 18:31 mins

Guest: Sy Montgomery, Author, “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” Having an extra hand would certainly be convenient from time to time, but imagine if that extra appendage also had a mind of its own. What if it even had a bit of its own personality – like if it preferred to draw with pen, rather than pencil? That’s bizarre to consider, but for an octopus, it may be true, because the octopus has more than half of its neurons located on its eight arms instead of having them all concentrated in its brain like humans.

Other Segments

Power of Facts

7 MINS

Guest: Richard Coffin, Project Manager for USAFacts.org The spending bill Congress passed last week to keep the government funded through the end of September totals just over one-trillion dollars for six months of government business. If you want to know exactly how all that cash is spent, you’ll need a computer and a lot of patience. There are reams and reams of data available on government agency websites you can sort through. But now, thanks to USAFactsorg, you can just type in a key word like Medicare or military or education and get simple charts built from government data. USAFacts.org is a non-profit, non-partisan civic initiative that launched just a few weeks ago. It’s backed by retired Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Guest: Richard Coffin, Project Manager for USAFacts.org The spending bill Congress passed last week to keep the government funded through the end of September totals just over one-trillion dollars for six months of government business. If you want to know exactly how all that cash is spent, you’ll need a computer and a lot of patience. There are reams and reams of data available on government agency websites you can sort through. But now, thanks to USAFactsorg, you can just type in a key word like Medicare or military or education and get simple charts built from government data. USAFacts.org is a non-profit, non-partisan civic initiative that launched just a few weeks ago. It’s backed by retired Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Standardization of Time

15 MINS

Guest: Richard J. Evans, DPhil, Historian and President of Wolfson College at Cambridge If you wonder aloud, “What time is it?” all the people around you could pull out their smart phones and tell you the exact same time. Smart phones have been around long enough now that we take for granted that they’ll spring ahead for Daylight Saving Time, reset themselves when we cross a time zone, and that the time on your neighbor’s phone will be synchronized with the time on mine.  But, in historical terms, it really wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t feel the need to keep time at all. Many clocks, when they were used, only had an hour hand. So, what changed about us that prompted such a dramatic change in the way we track time?

Guest: Richard J. Evans, DPhil, Historian and President of Wolfson College at Cambridge If you wonder aloud, “What time is it?” all the people around you could pull out their smart phones and tell you the exact same time. Smart phones have been around long enough now that we take for granted that they’ll spring ahead for Daylight Saving Time, reset themselves when we cross a time zone, and that the time on your neighbor’s phone will be synchronized with the time on mine.  But, in historical terms, it really wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t feel the need to keep time at all. Many clocks, when they were used, only had an hour hand. So, what changed about us that prompted such a dramatic change in the way we track time?