Michael Rosen talks to Ben and David Crystal about the Shakespeare quotes we use every day, without even realising.

We’ve all heard someone roll their eyes and say “the lady doth protest too much, me thinks” - or head back to their desk muttering “once more unto the breach!” Shakespeare had a way with words that makes his writing extremely relatable, even today. Ben and David Crystal tell Michael why so many of the bard’s sayings have slipped into our everyday chat.

Producer: Alice McKee, BBC Audio Bristol

Susie Orbach talks to Michael Rosen about the use and misuse of “therapy speak”. With the rise of mental health awareness, it seems to have leaked out of the therapist’s office and into our homes. Instead of saying someone’s getting on our nerves, we talk about “boundaries”; instead of accusing someone of lying, we call them a “gaslighter”; instead of telling someone we’re listening, we say we’re “holding space”.

Producer: Alice McKee, BBC Audio Bristol

There's lots of 'birging' in this week's programme. For those not in the know - that's short for Basking In Reflected Glory and it's something football fans in particular do when they talk about their team's triumphs using the 'extended we'. Michael Bond author of 'Fans' talks to Michael about the words and language different fan groups have as a shared means of communication. Whether it's being a superfan of sport, film or music there are words and phrases that show you belong to a particular fandom.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

Michael Rosen talks to journalist Sheela Banerjee about the family and cultural histories revealed by our names. In her book What’s in a Name? Friendship, Identity and History in Modern Multicultural Britain, she takes a deep dive into her own personal and family names and those of her friends. Names turn out to be excellent prisms through which to view history and the stories she uncovers are surprising and poignant.

Lonny Evans audio describes in theatres and museums, and Terry James, who is vision impaired, trains audio describers. They talk to Michael about their work.

Producer Sally Heaven

Irina Morgan is a high level interpreter. Being bi-lingual in Russian and Ukrainian means she's in demand whenever Vladimir Putin or President Zelensky give a press conference requiring simultaneous interpretation. Irina talks to Michael about the language do's and don'ts of live translation, and about how she puts herself into the mindset of someone like President Putin in order to give an accurate representation of his distinct man-of-the-people hard man linguistic style. By contrast Volodymyr Zelensky is a linguistic free-styler - like following jazz, Irina says.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

Michael Rosen is learning Yiddish. Every Sunday, he joins other adults in an evening class, conjugating verbs and practising rhymes.

For this episode of Word of Mouth, he invites his teacher, Tamara Micner, to join him in the studio. The pair have fun swapping family stories and sharing how they were first exposed to Yiddish. Tamara explains where the language came from and how it's evolved, and they discuss its connections to English. We also hear what Michael is like in class as a new learner, as he wraps his head around the pronunciation and patterns of this language which links him to his family history.

Producer: Eliza Lomas, BBC Audio in Bristol.

Michael is joined by Emily M Bender, Professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington and co-author of the infamous paper ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots’.

Cutting through the recent hype, she explains how chatbots do what they do, how they have become so fluent and why she thinks we should be careful with the terminology we employ when talking about them.

Presented by Michael Rosen and produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Ellie Richold.

Michael Rosen speaks with Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor at Yale University to discuss the language of fascism. They discuss propaganda, slogans and ‘vermin terminology’ as well as how fascist language changes according to culture, geography and time.

Dr Jenni Nuttall talks to Michael about the words used by and about women since the beginnings of language. Including some words we should never have lost.