Cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach, and his later book I Am a Strange Loop but today’s episode is a talk Hofstadter gave at Stanford in 2006 about how analogies are the “interstate freeway system of cognition” (to use his analogy).

In this fascinating and humous lecture, Hofstadter shows how our use of analogy in language and the way we sometimes get tripped up and mix metaphors or blend words together points to the deep role analogy plays in our cognition. He suggests that perhaps it might be analogy all the way down.

In a future episode we will further explore the role of analogy in Hofstadter’s “strange loop” concept and how building up a series of analogies eventually leads us to having a sense of “self”. But for today, enjoy this talk about how analogy plays a deep role in our thinking process.

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