Australia burning
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2019
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Australia’s annual wild fires have started early this year, drought is a factor but to what extent is ‘Bush fire weather’ influenced by climate change?
A two million year old fossil tooth reveals some biological answers to who its owner was.
Why Climate change may have killed off the world’s first superpower
And a hologram produced from sound waves.
Can machines read our minds? We go in search of the latest efforts to connect brains to computers. We learn how researchers are combining brain scans with machine learning to generate large amounts of information. We explore how this technology might be used to help people with serious medical conditions like locked-in syndrome. And discover there are many hurdles to overcome along the way – for example how can scientist develop implants that can access the brain without causing long-term damage? Our listener Daniel wants to know whether we might finally be on the cusp of enabling machines to meld with our minds.
(Image: Firefighters tackle a bushfire to save a home in Taree, Australia. Credit Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might |
| 0:04.7 | like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw. |
| 0:09.2 | And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural |
| 0:14.0 | happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can |
| 0:19.7 | also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and |
| 0:22.6 | live radio. Everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start with |
| 0:29.3 | our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.5 | You've picked up the Science Hour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:37.8 | 60 minutes or so of thoughts, which our recorders have turned into sounds and packaged up as a |
| 0:43.7 | transmissible digital file. But could we send you the thoughts directly? |
| 0:48.2 | As part of the study, I had four microelectrod arrays implanted in my brain, two in the motor cortex and two in sensory. |
| 0:58.8 | Crowd science is looking into the mind-reading potential of machines, their thoughts in half an hour. |
| 1:05.5 | Before that, it'll be science in action with me, Roland P's, and we've some climate lessons from the ancient Assyrian Empire, |
| 1:11.9 | which collapse we've just learned because of a decades-long drought. |
| 1:15.6 | So even this mighty Assyrians, they had, you know, elaborate system of canals and aqueducts. |
| 1:21.6 | But if climate turns sour, sometimes you are unable to cope with the magnitude of change. |
| 1:27.4 | I've been getting my teeth into ancient primate fossils |
| 1:30.7 | and feeling the force of music. |
| 1:34.9 | It's like when you're in a concert, we are a big speaker. |
| 1:37.2 | You sort of feel it in your tummy, right? |
| 1:38.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:39.5 | This is the same only instead of having like a massive speaker. |
... |
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