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 from our 2025 shows, and let everyone vote. And we're going to give a mention to everyone else's words as well. We're joined by our friends and patrons, so come see them in chat!

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:31
• Everyone else's words: 5:57
• Related or Not: 34:34
• Our Words of the Week of the Year: 51:35
• Comments: 1:22:04
• The Reads: 1:26:36
• Outtakes: 1:30:50

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 separate.

Well, maybe it's time to revisit this. Séan Roberts and Cole Robertson are finding a cognitive connection, not with how our language makes us talk about the future, but with how our language lets us express uncertainty.

Also, Annemarie Verkerk and Hedvig Skirgård team up to test out language universals. Which ones are getting knocked over?

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:36
• News: 6:08
• Chat with Annemarie Verkerk and Hedvig Skirgård: 23:06
• Related or Not: 49:22
• Interview with Séan Roberts and Cole Robertson: 1:10:38
• Words of the Week: 2:18:09
• Comments: 2:37:20
• The Reads: 2:42:37
• Outtakes: 2:50:05

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 heart of it is (perhaps surprisingly) childcare. Madeleine is the author of The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why.

Timestamps

• Cold open: 0:00
• Intros: 0:42
• News: 9:07
• Related or Not: 30:02
• Interview with Madeleine Beekman: 49:43
• Words of the Week: 1:40:49
• Comments: 2:01:30
• The Reads: 2:08:07
• Outtakes: 2:17:38

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? Daniel chats with author Natan Last about his book Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle.

Timestamps

• Intros: 0:35
• News: 4:42
• Related or Not: 22:13
• Interview with Natan Last: 37:56
• Words of the Week: 1:24:52
• Comment: 1:53:37
• The Reads: 1:55:31
• Outtakes: 2:02:50

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 linguist!) to act out dialogues from conversational analysis, and have fun with language. Are there more ways we can perform linguistics? We're talking with artist and linguistics fan Maia Chao.

Timestamps

• Cold open: 0:00
• Intros: 0:38
• News: 7:16
• Related or Not: 40:03
• Interview with Maia Chao: 55:08
• Words of the Week: 1:30:31
• Bonus chat with Caitlin Green: groyper: 1:54:40
• The Reads: 2:07:48
• Outtakes: 2:14:59

Martha Barnette is one half of the linguistics podcast A Way With Words, and author of the new book Friends With Words: Adventures in Languageland.

Her lifelong love of language has led her through some of the toughest questions lexicography has to offer, and she's answering questions from our live listening audience.

Why do we FALL pregnant? How can we use PRETTY to say something is "pretty ugly"? And once and for all, why do we really say "the whole nine yards"?

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/aPikLncj2xI

Timestamps (audio)

Start: 0:00 Cold open: 0:27 Intros: 2:02 Chat with Martha about Friends With Words: 5:42 On Martha's life and language: 11:10 Related or Not: 36:27 Questions for Martha: 56:25 The Reads: 1:25:40

Creators have to be mindful of what to say and what not to say in their content. This affects the language we're exposed to — and what we say IRL. But it's part of an old process. Popular LingToker Adam Aleksic breaks it down. He's the author of the new book Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:42
• News: 12:25
• Related or Not: 29:59
• Interview with Adam Aleksic: 44:07
• Words of the Week: 1:15:10
• Comment: 1:37:56
• The Reads: 1:39:56

We've all seen style guides that tell us what to say and what not to say. Has a style guide ever asked you what you wanted to say? Or challenged you to examine your thinking? This one does. It's the Conscious Style Guide by Karen Yin, and she joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

• Cold open: 0:00
• Intros: 0:35
• News: 5:52
• Related or Not: 31:13
• Interview with Karen Yin: 48:43
• Words of the Week: 1:30:10
• Comments: 1:44:07
• The Reads: 1:47:45
• Outtake: 1:54:06

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 chamber where everything happens. We're having a chat with linguistic lion Stephen Levinson, author of The Interaction Engine.

Timestamps

• Introductions: 0:19
• These fascinating facts about language will make you (or Dr Levinson) a hit at any party: 3:47
• The mechanics of speech production: 06:01
• What's going on when we're talking or listening? 8:46
• Cultural differences in conversational norms: 20:33
• Universals of interaction: 22:10
• Metaphors of space may have been a motivator for language: 25:53
• The role of gesture in language development: 28:47
• Cooperation and empathy in language: 34:59
• What one thing explains the most about language?: 45:56

Disclosure: Hedvig is employed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, where Dr Levinson is an emeritus director.

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 — pairings of form and meaning that we use to make language. And here to discuss it with us is constructionist pioneer and linguistic legend, Professor Adele Goldberg.

Timestamps

• Intros: 1:14
• News: 7:13
• Related or Not: 34:18
• Interview with Adele Goldberg: 46:40
• Words of the Week: 1:38:19
• The Reads: 1:56:50
• Bonus chat with Adele Goldberg: 2:03:16
• Outtakes: 2:13:11