As a species, we humans have an extra long childhood.

Our closest primate relatives are more or less self-sufficient by about age seven,

nearly a decade before human kids are ready to face the world on their own.

And as any parent or caregiver knows, children are costly.

They take an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and resources to raise.

Children are not simply messier and less sophisticated versions of adults either.

A baby's brain has unusual capabilities.

It's optimized to explore the world and seek new knowledge and experiences.

Knowing this has implications for how we think about the purpose

of childhood and how we raise and educate our children, even how we might develop artificial

intelligence inspired by children's remarkable learning abilities. So why do we humans have such

a long childhood? What's in it for us as a species? What can we learn about our adult selves by looking

at kids' brains? And is there anything we adults can do to become more open, curious, and childlike

in our thinking? How might that be beneficial? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship

podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links

between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills.

Our guest today is Dr. Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and an affiliate professor

of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.

She studies how children learn and come to understand the world around them.

Over her four-decade career, she's published more than 100 journal articles and many books,

including her most recent The Gardener and the Carpenter, what the new science of child

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