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welcome to the khatkee ride home for Tuesday, December 29th, 2020.

I'm Jackson Bird.

How is it that humans figured out how to read?

New cosmological findings that may finally solve the Hubble tension.

And more monoliths continue to pop up, a look at two of the more interesting ones from

this past week.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

We often point to the usage of tools as not uniquely human, but certainly a sign of more advanced

intelligence among animals. But something that is even more uniquely human is reading, that is,

the written word or picture used to communicate. Though, as academic gnomed barbarian pointed

out in a Twitter thread about how we define and redefine concepts earlier this year, quote,

words are tools, we use them for jobs, we forget in our technological age that language is a technology, a tool, end quote.

So how did we develop these tools and evolve to use them? That is obviously a much

bigger question than a 15-minute podcast can answer, but researcher Lydia Wilson dug into the history

and neuroscience behind the question in a recent column on Nautilus, and I wanted to share some of her

more intriguing insights.

So first, she points out that while some human societies felt the need for more precise communication

...