Radiolab Episode Analysis

I chose a Radiolab episode titled “Hello”. The show featured women who had a similar affinity for dolphins. The first guest, Margaret Lovett, stumbled upon an experiment about communicating with dolphins and wound up living in a flooded apartment with her new aquatic roommate. The second guest, Denise Herzing, founded the Wild Dolphin Project, that focused on developing a middle ground for human-dolphin communication.
I chose this particular episode mostly because I like animals and everyone loves dolphins. I train retired racehorses and can relate to the struggle of trying to communicate with animals. This is something I’ve focused much on in my own life and thought it would be interesting to see how scientists approached the topic. I thought it could potentially help me with my own work or provide me with a new perspective.
The segment on Margaret Lovett was interesting, but a bit unnerving. The entire experiment was shrouded in controversy and received very negative feedback from the public. This episode, however, made an effort to only expose the positive components of the experiment. I only found the controversy after doing independent research.
Lovett left college after her first year and moved to St Thomas where she noticed a research lab. She was advised to stay away from the lab, but ignored all warning and ended
Her objective was the teach humans to communicate with dolphins or to find a mutual language, instead of teaching the dolphins english. She explained how dolphins have signature whistles and can call each other, like we do with names. With the help of other scientists, she developed a machine that could replicate these whistles to call the dolphins by their names. I thought this was the most interesting part of her interview. Humans name their pets and never think that the animal can have their own way of identifying themself aside from the name we assign