A podcast about languages and the people who speak them.
Who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies? Why are so many of them not really fortunes at all? Why did some fortunes turn ominous for a...
Latest episodes:
With the Scripps National Spelling Bee back after a Covid-enforced year off, we conduct our very own spelling quiz. Also, Kavita Pillay...
The German word “Volk” usually translates as “people,” but it means a whole lot more than that. In 1989 as Germans...
In 2012, a children’s book in Sweden sparked a nationwide debate— not about the book’s content but a three-letter word used by the main...
If you’re under the impression that encyclopedias and dictionaries in the West were always organized from A to Z, think again. We have...
Japan is an ethnically homogenous nation where everyone speaks Japanese, right? Not exactly. Other groups including the Ainu also have...
Will technology make Braille obsolete as a primary reading tool for blind people? Will talking apps and audiobooks win out over embossed...
You may not have heard of Frisian, but it’s spoken by about 500,000 people. Once upon a time, an older form of the language was...
Digital consultant Ivanka Majic was such an early user of Twitter that she was able to snag the handle @Ivanka. Which was great, until the...
In our upcoming season, we have stories on notorious names, the future of Braille, a history of alphabetical order and much more. Look out...
Here’s a guest episode from our friends at A Better Life?, a podcast from Feet in 2 Worlds about the immigrant experience in the time...
Tina Tobey was born and raised in Texas. She’s used to non-Texans expecting her to know all about oil-drilling and ranching. And of...
Why doesn’t Ciku Theuri sound Black? Her friends wanted to know. Eventually, she wanted to know. Ciku tells the story of how she came...
Verónica Zaragovia lives in Miami but she was born in Colombia. Although she has a Colombian passport, her Spanish doesn’t sound...
We are how we speak, right? Well, it’s complicated— enough so to spend Subtitle’s next four episodes on this question...
In 1986, Nicaraguan officials invited American linguist Judy Shepard-Kegl to observe a group of Deaf children. The kids were using an...
Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. So why is sisu the word that best describes Finns? Associated with war...
In unsettled times, we reach for metaphors. They help us make sense of the nonsensical—or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. In...
Joe Wong is a brilliant bilingual comedian. In the US, he does standup. In his native China he hosts a popular TV game show. Recently his...
Bilingual comedian Joanna Hausmann (pictured with her mother Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann) is sitting out the lockdown at her Venezuelan...
In this episode, we talk with American medical student Esther Kim (pictured). She’s trying to overcome her suspicion of people with a...
We can’t travel. We can’t hug or visit loved ones. But we can talk our way through this pandemic — and we’re doing just...
Hassnae Bouazza was born in Morocco. She didn’t speak a word of Dutch when she immigrated to the Netherlands, though today it’s...
If there are extraterrestrials out there, what kind of messages might they be sending us? How might we decipher those messages? And should...
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of New Orleanians. Many never returned to the city. Others have since moved in...
In folklore and fiction there’s a rich tradition of trees that talk, from Greek mythology to The Wizard of Oz. But that’s make...
Susanna Zaraysky, speaker of nine languages, is one of those people who seem able to pick up French or Portuguese almost overnight. In...
Stereotypes about Mormon missionaries tend to overshadow their great success in foreign language learning. Why is the Church of Jesus...
There’s a new language class on offer at Harvard. Gullah Geechee is a creole language developed by enslaved Africans and still spoken...
‘Real’ or ’synthetic’? ‘Authentic’ or ‘lab-grown’? ‘Bloodstained’ or ‘green’? The highly-regulated words that...
Are you repelled by certain words? Do you get that fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling when someone says ‘moist,’...
Want to say or write something anonymously? Or pretend you’re someone else? Good luck. Linguists are using evermore sophisticated...
Coming up in the first season of Subtitle with Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay: Words we love and hate. Words that solve crimes. Words we...
Ever wondered why language simultaneously unites and divides us? Mystifies and delights us? Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay tell the stories...