Grace Tierney is back with another great book about the word origins, this time “Words Christmas Gave Us"! She regales us with festive stories and we talk about some of the fun traditions and treats of the winter holidays.

It’s been a long, unintended break since our last episode, but we’re happy to be back at it, in time to wish everyone very happy holidays!

Wordfoolery website

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We spoke with Dr. Anne Curzan about her new book, “Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares about Words”. We talk about language change, inner grammandos, the benefits of learning the rules of texting from one’s students, and of course, surprising connections!

Also, please check out the Defeat Depression fundraising event, and the Sudbury Walk/Run on May 25.

Anne Curzan’s website

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Buried deep under volcanic ash lie hundreds of burnt scrolls containing texts from the first century. A new project is driving the work to try to read these chunks of carbon, to uncover new works and open new doors into the past. We spoke to one of the leaders of this project, Dr. Stephen Parsons, about the Vesuvius Challenge, the technical aspects of ‘virtual unrolling’, the possibilities of new classical texts, the development of new ways of doing scholarship, and more.

Also, please check out the Defeat Depression fundraising event, and the Sudbury Walk/Run on May 25.

The Vesuvius Challenge

Kaitlyn Hill’s books

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We talked to Dr. Karen Carr about the global history of swimming — in myth, folktale, and history. Who swam, who didn’t, and how do the stories different cultures told reflect these patterns? We also talked a bit about Dr. Carr’s next book, all about silver, women, and textiles.

Dr. Carr’s academic website

Dr. Carr’s history website and blog, Quatr.us

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We discuss the language and history of the ecological sciences, all the way back to the ancient Greeks, and the development of the food chain and food web models of ecological systems. And apologies for the unscheduled hiatus!

Golden Chain Cocktail

Food Web video

Cuckold video and podcast

Frank N. Egerton. “A History of the Ecological Sciences: Early Greek Origins”, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 82.1 (2001): 93-97

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 2: Aristotle and Theophrastos”, BESA 82.2 (2001): 149-152

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 3: Hellenistic Natural History”, BESA 82.3 (2001): 201-205

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 4: Roman Natural History”, BESA 82.4 (2001): 243-246

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 5: Byzantine Natural History”, BESA 83.1 (2002): 89-94

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 6: Arabic Language Science—Origins and Zoological Writings”, BESA 83.2 (2002): 142-146

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 7: Arabic Language Science—Botany, Geography, and Decline”, BESA 83.4 (2002): 261-266

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 8: Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Amateur Avian Ecologist and Behaviorist”, BESA 84.1 (2003): 40-44

———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 9: Albertus Magnus: a Scholastic Naturalist”, BESA 84.2 (2003): 87-91

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We talk to Melanie Racette-Campbell about her new book, “The Crisis of Masculinity in the Age of Augustus”, and discuss why Roman elite men were particularly vulnerable to a societal transformation that changed their role in the state. What did it mean to be a good man in ancient Rome, and how and why did that change?

Melanie’s book is available here

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The word “chauvinism” is an unlikely eponym, but it turns out that the story behind it has all sorts of interesting connections. And our discussion of those connections also leads us into the long history of misogyny in the western world, from Eve and Pandora to the Virgin Mary, courtly love, and Victorian womanhood.

Cocktail: Pandora’s Jar, from Nectar of the Gods

“By Jingo” song

Hesiod’s Works and Days

Hesiod’s Theogony

Semonides 7

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We look at the history of English’s conceptualization of time, and update Mark’s research on spatiotemporal metaphor. Also, words for arrows, the surprising origin of ‘toxic’, and a bit of Latin poetry!

Blue Arrow cocktail

Bow and Arrow cocktail

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We spoke to Dr. Valerie Fridland about her new book, “Like, Literally, Dude!” and talked about the fascinating role that many ‘errors’ in English speech actually play in communication. We discuss the never-ending changes that English has gone through, the surprisingly sophisticated rules behind our use of ‘um’ and ‘uh’, and much more.

Dr. Valerie Fridland’s website

Like, Literally, Dude!

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It’s Part 2 of our mega-episode on spelling! This time, we get into some of the notorious mismatches between English spelling and modern English pronunciation. Explaining them takes us all the way back to Phoenician — several times — but maybe, just maybe, some bits of this odd language will make more sense to you when we’re done!

The XYZ Cocktail

Our video on “Spelling”

Christopher Upward & George Davidson, The History of English Spelling (2001)

David Sacks, Letter Perfect (2003)

Kevin Stroud, The History of the Alphabet (audiobook)

NativLang “Thoth’s Pill - an Animated History of Writing”

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