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Carrie and Megan talk with Megan C. Reynolds, Dwell magazine editor, about her  book, Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word.

• Putin and Russian

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Carrie and Megan talk with Paulette van der Voet and Martina Terrazzano, PhD students at the University of Umea, about their class called “Linguistics and the Eurovision Song Contest”.

• Top 20 Eurovision songs
• Malta and Estonia

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We talk with Dr Lorna Gibb about her newest book, Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages.

Steven Pinker:

• Harvard Derangement Syndrome
• vs. LSA
• Jews and IQ

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Carrie and Megan talk with Drs Emily M. Bender, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, and Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, out May 13, 2025.

• Virtual Book Launch May 8, 2025, 2-4 PDT
• Bender v. Bubeck
• Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century
• Roxane Gay's anti-AI stance
• The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence 
• The Conduit Metaphor
• Kevin Roose's Conversation with Bing
• Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 

Intro:

• UK ruling on the legal definition of "woman"
• JK Rowling looking smug

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Carrie and Megan talk with Gabe Henry about his new book, Enough is enuf: Our failed attempts to make English eezier to spell.

• Puerto Rico and English as an Official Language

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Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Gerald Roche, Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Cultures at La Trobe University, about his new book, The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, language oppression, solidarity, China and Tibet. 

• LSA's response to the EO on English as the Official Language of the US

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Megan and Carrie talk with Massimiliano Canzanella about the Neapolitan language and how it is perceived in Italy.

• Asian languages and the LA fires

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Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Adam Benkato, Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley, about Arabic.

• codeswitching in incarceration

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Megan and Carrie talk to Dr Ayala Fader, professor of anthropology at Fordham University, and Dr Mike Mena, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, about their new project, the Demystifying Language Project, where academics and high school students work together to rewrite linguistic articles into more accessible versions.

First article: Speech or Silence

Intro from our patron René:

• Barron's: MP makes her first speech in sign language
• Speech of the year

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Carrie and Megan talk to Dr Leonard Cassuto, Professor of English at Fordham University, about his class called "Literature and Psychology of Disgust," which explores how language evokes emotional responses, particularly disgust, and his book Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, which was released in September. 

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