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Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

A weekly programme looking at the science that's changing our world.

A weekly programme that illuminates the mysteries and challenges the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.

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BBC Inside Science: Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling

Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling

BBC Radio 4 - BBC Inside Science, Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling

Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, the Science of Storytelling

Dr Adam Rutherford on a new technique for translating thoughts into speech, a global citizen science project for spotting wildlife, and Will Storr on the Science of Storytelling.

Patients who suffer neurological impairments preventing them from speaking potentially face a severely limited existence. Being able to express yourself in real time is a large part of our identity. In the journal Nature this week, scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, report a new technique for synthesising speech based on measurements of neural signals taken from the brain. Author Dr Gopala Anumanchipalli tells Adam about how this proof of principle could one day form the basis for a speech prosthesis for patients who have lost the ability to converse. 

Around the world this weekend (April 26th-29th 2019) people are being encouraged to participate in the City Nature Challenge, a global effort to catalogue urban wildlife using a free mobile app. Reporter Geoff Marsh travelled to the California Academy of Sciences, home of the initiative, to meet those behind it and how we might all take part.

The third act in our drama is a chat with journalist and writer Will Storr about his new book - the Science of Storytelling - which explores the structure of stories with relation to our evolution and brain structure. Primeval instincts of expectation, subversion and causation intertwine with camp-fire sagas from the beginning of conversation. What can this science of storytelling contribute to the art of telling stories about science? A ripping yarn indeed.

Producer: Alex Mansfield

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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BBC Inside Science

Thought-to-speech machine, City Nature Challenge, Science of Storytelling

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