122: The Interaction Engine (with Stephen Levinson)
How did language start? What do all languages have in common? How does language really work? Many answers have been posed to these questions, but one thing is for sure: interaction is the combustion c...
12 Juli 202555min
121: Learning from LLMs (with Adele Goldberg)
How do large language models (LLMs) do their thing, and it is anything like how we do our thing? What can we learn about human language from this software? The answer might involve constructions — pai...
29 Juni 20252h 22min
120: Gesture! ✨👐✨ (with Lauren Gawne)
Gesture is everywhere. We wave our hands when we talk, even if we're alone. Signed languages are, of course, full languages that use gesture. And it could even be argued that emoji are the online equi...
10 Juni 20251h 54min
119: Eurovision Goes to Uni (with Paulette van der Voet and Solveig Bollig)
It's Eurovision season! We love to talk about what we can learn about language from this international song contest, but even we didn't realise that there was so much to learn. Language choice, langua...
18 Maj 20252h 15min
118: The A.I. Con (with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna)
Artificial intelligence (so-called) is typified by its boom and bust cycles, and we're in a boom now. But as more and more money pours in with decreasing returns, we're going to see a shakeout, and hy...
12 Maj 202551min
117: Sometimes It Feels Like I'm the Only One Trying to Fix English Around Here (live with friends for LingFest25)
Video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/wxGeXMzlwng If you repeat something twice, how many times did you do it? Can more than one dinner be "the perfect dinner"? And what does "every other" m...
5 Maj 20251h 47min
116: Enough Is Enuf (with Gabe Henry)
Spelling reform in English: a constant failure? Or a secret success? Waves upon waves of optimists have tried to make English spelling reflect its sound and escape its etymological origins, but have n...
19 Apr 20252h 7min
114: Bye Bye I Love You (with Michael Erard)
First words and last words get a lot of attention. But how did words get to have such a place of prominence? What would we see if we focused on interaction instead? A new book looks at words, gestures...
25 Mars 20251h 56min
