Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute #DISI

📣📣📣 Applications for the 2026 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open! Are you interested in intelligence and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars and storytellers—in any field or medium—are encouraged to apply! disi.org

In January 2026, a portal opened between the ivory tower and the numinous unspeakable. For three days at IU Bloomington, scholars from around North America convened for a rare and precious opportunity to explore topics normally forbidden in a university setting: spirits, precognition, magick, and other affairs of the occult and transpersonal were all fair game. Organized by the hosts of @weirdstudies, Phil Ford and @JF_Martel, and IU's Center for Possible Minds (directed by Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of @DivIntelligence), with special guests Jeffrey Kripal, Shannon Taggart, and Cat Hobaiter, and daytime colloquia organized by myself and Emma Stamm, these glorious sessions felt like a watershed moment in the long arc of a decades-long struggle to ask some of the most important and difficult questions available to us in a unusually hospitable setting—and, perhaps, an opportunity to sow the seeds for a new research network of academics and para-academics committed to probing them with rigor and new institutional support. The first night of the week featured an opening for Shannon Taggart's gallery show Séance at IU's McCalla School, where she displayed an extensive collection of her photographic experiments in cataloguing the practice and culture of spirit mediumship. I was honored with the invitation to perform a kind of séance of my own that evening, improvising over an hour of electroacoustic music on electric guitar, synthesizer, and hardware electronics. But the weekend before, the Eastern United States were hit with an historic winter storm that delayed flights and buried Bloomington in several feet of snow. For a moment it looked like the whole thing was off—with my locally-sourced amplification suddenly no longer available, I was encouraged to not make the effort in order to spare myself the trouble of lugging crates of equipment across the country given the likelihood my flights would be delayed and I would miss the opening entirely. But I asked the Tarot what to do and got what felt like a clear signal to pare my kit down to the bare minimum in order to carry my own amp on the plane...so I did. And what followed was an appropriately raw, strange, and heady site-specific "channeling"—a lengthy invention informed by Shannon's gorgeous and haunting photography and the charged atmosphere of the event. Played mostly on the unbranded custom Stratocaster kit build that has accompanied me to highlight gigs at Burning Man, Arcosanti, and the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference, and edited slightly for time and electronic noise reduction, this set miraculously survived a week that—as is so often the case when people try to make recordings of their rites of high strangeness—mysteriously erased the recording of Weird Academia's keynote panel discussion. Maybe it is because I left the unspeakable as such, and carried with me only the traces of the music it left in the room. But who can say? Listening suggestions: candlelight, essential oils, and headphones or a speaker system with analog tubes (which may constitute a wider window for the ingress of otherworldly beings). Photos of dead loved ones. At least one other person to verify that whatever happened actually happened. Divinatory tools only at your own risk... michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/album/s-ance-l…

Update: we've extended our timeline! Review of applications will now begin March 24. Still plenty of time to put together an app! disi.org/apply/

Happy 6th anniversary to us!! 🎉🎉 Thanks for spending time with us, friends! As we celebrate this milestone, we've launched a short audience survey to get your thoughts on the show (and its future). We would be grateful for your participation! forms.gle/Nnd5vdiDMpQkUe…

📣📣📣 Applications for the 2026 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open! Are you interested in intelligence and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars and storytellers—in any field or medium—are encouraged to apply! disi.org

Application review begins in one week (Mar 16)! (Review will continue until all spots are filled.)

@pan_cancer We are currently an in-person program only.

@DivIntelligence Would like to apply. Can this be done remotely or it has to be in-person?

This would be a cool opportunity for #swarmintelligence or #basalcognition folks to attend!

New episode, first of 2026!! 🎉🎙️ A deep dive into metaphor with @steve_flusberg! Metaphors delight, provoke, captivate, shock, and galvanize us. What does it say about the human mind that we can't escape them—and frankly don't want to? Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ An audio essay from @kensycoop all about names. The search for "name-like" symbols in animals is intensifying. But if the enterprise is to succeed, we first need to pause and ask ourselves: What even is a name? Listen: disi.org/in-search-of...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A chat w/ @PBrakes about animal cultures and animal conservation. Culture was once thought to be uniquely human. No longer. We now know it is found throughout the natural world. How does this complicate conservation? Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ A conversation with @aliboyle6 & @JoBMahr about the functions of memory. We may not immediately think of memory as an evolutionary puzzle. But in certain respects it is quite puzzling indeed. Listen: disi.org/what-is-memo...

It was long thought that domestication leads to reductions in brain size. As we understand dog brains better, the truth is proving more complicated—and more interesting. Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @LabHecht! Listen: disi.org/of-breeds-an...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A conversation w/ @LabHecht about the diversity and evolution of canine brains. We've lived with dogs for 15,000+ years, sculpting their brains and bodies along the way. What can we learn from their singular story? Listen: disi.org/of-breeds-an...

New episode!! 🎉😱 A conversation with Surekha Davies & @the_manticore_ about monsters of all kinds. Monsters are everywhere—our myths, our maps, our children's books, our political discourse. What do they tell us about ourselves? Listen: disi.org/monsters-and...

Many fear that AI companions will lead to social "deskilling," particularly in young people. But could we harness these bots for "upskilling" instead? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ Dr. Henry Shevlin (@dioscuri)! Listen: disi.org/the-age-of-soc…

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A conversation with @dioscuri about "social AI." Digital lovers. AI coaches and tutors. Griefbots and artificial friends. What will this mean for our relationships, our social skills, and our society as a whole? Listen: disi.org/the-age-of-s...

Bird brains aren't the same as mammal brains. They took their own twisty evolutionary path. So what can they teach us about brains in general? A lot, it turns out. Discussed in our latest episode, w/ Andrew Iwaniuk & Georg Striedter! Listen: disi.org/brains-of-a-...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ A chat w/ Andrew Iwaniuk & Georg Striedter about avian neuroscience. Birds do some astonishing things. They sing, fly, migrate, cache food, and hunt in total darkness. How do their brains make all this possible? Listen: disi.org/brains-of-a-...