Why Do We Dot Our i's?
As a guest on The Late Show, John told Stephen Colbert that there was nothing especially interesting to say about the word "I." Well, he takes that back — there is, it turns out, much to say. Visit...
19 Juli 202234min
You Are SO Articulate. Really.
Do you remember learning — in grade school most likely — the difference between a count noun and a mass noun? Probably not, and yet chances are that you use them correctly. That’s because you’ve maste...
6 Juli 202241min
When Words Collide
We are frequently asked — often by young listeners who are fascinated by language — how English could possibly accumulate the many thousands of words that make up its vast vocabulary. It’s a topic tha...
22 Juni 202244min
The Haphazard History of C
The letters C and K can both represent what we might call a Hard C — as in Cosmo Kramer or Calvin Klein. Not to mention Q, which usually indicates that same sound. Why does the English alphabet have t...
7 Juni 202234min
JFK's Most Famous Sentence
On Jan. 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered — to an audience seated both outside at the U.S. Capitol and at home in front of their televisions — his inaugural address. Millions were stirred ...
25 Maj 202246min
The Evolution of Woke
What does it mean to be woke? Has the word problematic become problematic? John McWhorter talks with Banished host Amna Khalid about the fraught vocabulary of modern censorship. Visit ...
10 Maj 202233min
Reviving Dead Languages
More than half the world’s approximately 7,000 languages will have no speakers left in the coming decades. Some are working feverishly to preserve or maintain them. Others are asking: Why bother? Vis...
28 Apr 202240min
Let Sleeping Dogs Lay
Did you know that the past participle of the intransitive verb lie is lain and that its past tense is lay, not to be confused with the present tense of the transitive verb lay? Oh, and did you know th...
12 Apr 202230min
