133: Why We Talk Funny (with Valerie Fridland)
We all have an accent — or several! And we use them to communicate things about us, and highlight aspects of our identity. So what's going on with the accents we hear? Are we losing some accents, or a...
26 Feb 2h 27min
132: WotY 2025, the Final Word (with Kelly Wright)
We're talking to Dr Kelly Wright, friend of the show and data czar for the American Dialect Society. They run the biggest and most prestigious Word of the Year event, and she was there when the 2025 W...
17 Feb 1h 29min
131: Words of the Week of the Year 2025 (live with friends)
Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/Mqf05kN-TaI It's Word of the Year season, and we're counting down our Words of the Week of the Year! In the time-honoured tradition, we gathered them all up fr...
20 Dec 20251h 31min
130: Back to the FTR (with Séan Roberts, Cole Robertson, and Annemarie Verkerk)
You know the story. The language you speak doesn't determine your savings. If your language has a future tense, there's no impact on the way you see or describe the future. Language and perception are...
6 Dec 20252h 53min
129: They Started It: Children and Language Evolution (with Madeleine Beekman)
We've asked linguists about how language began, but what would an evolutionary biologist tell you? Prof Madeleine Beekman says it's part of a complex web of body, brain, and community, and at the hear...
19 Nov 20252h 25min
128: Across the Universe (with Natan Last)
Among so many great word games, crosswords still reign supreme. How have they survived — and even expanded — in our digital age? What goes into a good puzzle, and will computer techniques take over? D...
22 Okt 20252h 7min
127: Oh (with Maia Chao, Kelly Wright, and Caitlin Green)
The "Oh" show was an experimental linguistics performance lecture. It happened in June 2025 at Creative Time HQ in New York City. Actors, musicians, and audience came together (with at least one lingu...
10 Okt 20252h 15min
