Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Since the early 20th century, a number of curious (and sometimes ethically dubious) psychological studies have tried to figure out if we can communicate with great apes using language. In the 1970s, the answer was reported to be an unequivocal ‘yes’ after Koko, a female western lowland gorilla, learned to sign at her handler, a graduate student at Stanford University, using a modified version of American Sign Language. But more recent critiques of the Koko studies (and others) dispute the idea that great apes have had truly meaningful two-way language communication with humans. This video from NPR’s Skunk Bear offers a brief survey of the history of ape-human communication research, suggesting that ‘Can we talk with them?’ might be the wrong question to ask.
Video by Skunk Bear
Producers: Ryan Kellman, Adam Cole
video
History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
video
Space exploration
The rarely told story of the fruit flies, primates and canines that preceded us in space
12 minutes
video
Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
video
Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
34 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment
8 minutes
video
Cosmology
The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge
13 minutes
video
Biotechnology
The two women behind a world-changing scientific discovery
14 minutes
video
Medicine
Why surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages
6 minutes