January 06, 2014

Can We Talk?

Listen Later

54 minutes

You can get your point across in many ways: email, texts, or even face-to-face conversation (does anyone do that anymore?). But ants use chemical messages when organizing their ant buddies for an attack on your kitchen. Meanwhile, your human brain sends messages to other brains without you uttering a word.

Hear these communication stories … how language evolved in the first place… why our brains love a good tale …and how Facebook is keeping native languages from going extinct.

Guests:

Mark Moffett – Entomologist, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, author of Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

V.S. Ramachandran – Neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego

Clare Murphy – Performance storyteller, Ireland

Mark Pagel – Evolutionary biologist, University of Reading, U.K., and author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

Margaret Noori – Poet and linguist at the University of Michigan, specializing in Ojibwe, and director of the Comprehensive Studies Program

Descripción en español

First released June 11, 2012

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Big Picture Science

By Big Picture Science

4.5

912912 ratings

January 06, 2014

Can We Talk?

Listen Later

54 minutes

You can get your point across in many ways: email, texts, or even face-to-face conversation (does anyone do that anymore?). But ants use chemical messages when organizing their ant buddies for an attack on your kitchen. Meanwhile, your human brain sends messages to other brains without you uttering a word.

Hear these communication stories … how language evolved in the first place… why our brains love a good tale …and how Facebook is keeping native languages from going extinct.

Guests:

Mark Moffett – Entomologist, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, author of Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

V.S. Ramachandran – Neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego

Clare Murphy – Performance storyteller, Ireland

Mark Pagel – Evolutionary biologist, University of Reading, U.K., and author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

Margaret Noori – Poet and linguist at the University of Michigan, specializing in Ojibwe, and director of the Comprehensive Studies Program

Descripción en español

First released June 11, 2012

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

...more

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