SoT 303: The Elf Who Could Not Love

Hosts: Ed Brown, Lucas Randall, Daniel Midgely

00:01:18 Billed as having "mastered sign language", Koko The Gorilla has passed away. But was she all she was cracked up to be?

• Koko's First Interspecies Web Chat: Transcript
• Project Nim: the chimp who was brought up like a child
• Clever Hans
• It’s time to stop exposing people to the dangers of Facilitated Communication
• Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

00:29:43 An international team has discovered a galaxy unlike any other. Smaller than the Milky Way, the mysterious galaxy appears to have very little dark matter - possibly none at all.

00:41:00 Artificial Intelligence is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our lives. But a Wall Street Journal report finds that many of the big tech companies are using humans where computer bots fall short.

This episode contains traces of a report about Koko's death on CBC News.

Daniel Midgley is a linguist at the University of Western Australia and presenter on the weekly podcast and radio show Talk the Talk.