How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:17
• News: 12:40
• Related or Not: 33:34
• Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43
• Words of the Week: 1:41:58
• Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57
• The Reads: 2:08:14
• Outtakes: 2:16:48

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 are they just changing? Dr Valerie Fridland is the author of Why We Talk Funny, and she joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:30
• News: 6:25
• Related or Not: 17:59
• Interview with Valerie Fridland: 36:53
• Words of the Week: 1:50:34
• The Reads: 2:21:21
• Outtakes: 2:26:14

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 WotY votes came in. She's talking us through all the words we missed. Plus we get to some listener feedback.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:41
• The ADS WotYs for 2025: 7:12
• Related or Not: 1:00:51
• Listener comments: 1:09:53
• The Reads: 1:20:28
• Outtakes: 1:27:01

Video version of this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXpfrXdWEW8

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