Approximately 70,000 years ago, humankind began talking, and hasn’t stopped since. In this fascinating program, a diverse group of experts—an evolutionary linguist, a neurologist, a geneticist, a neuropsychologist, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, and an Oxford professor of communication—discuss the birth, development, and transmission of the mysterious phenomenon called language. Topics explored include the ability of language to express abstractions; the role of evolution in the development of languages; language as an innately guided behavior in unborn babies, infants, and toddlers; the parts of the brain involved in language; the relationship between genes and language disorders; and the isolation of the Speech 1 gene. (29 minutes)