Cognitive Science Society

Over the last decade or so, Damian's emerged as one of the most innovative researchers in the study of language and linguistic diversity.

He's been widely recognized for this work and most recently was awarded the 2026 FABBS Early Career Impact Award from the Cognitive Science Society.

In this conversation, Damien and I talk about why scientists should care about linguistic diversity.

We do a little bit of Linguistic Diversity 101, how many languages there are, how we can enumerate them, how they vary from each other.

Along the way, Damian and I touch on the Tower of Babel, a golden age of linguistic diversity, the human byte configuration, scientific aesthetics, whether children shape language, polygenetic theories of language evolution, schooling, linguistic inequality and behemoth languages, and why Damian thinks that the possibility space of human language might be bigger and wilder than we currently imagine.

This is a special episode of the Many Minds podcast.

As I mentioned, Damien is this year's winner of an award from the Cognitive Science Society in recognition of his outstanding early career contributions to the field.

He recently gave a keynote at the Society's annual conference in Rio de Janeiro, and we've partnered with the Cognitive Science Society to feature this conversation about his work.