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 this episode, we hear from linguist Elena Semino, editor of a crowd-sourced publication called the Metaphor...
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 comedy has become more political: he is confronting US racial tensions head-on. In quarantine, Joe is writing a...
Bilingual comedian Joanna Hausmann (pictured with her mother Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann) is sitting out the lockdown at her Venezuelan parents’ New England home. She tells us of her love of outdated Venezuelan slang; also about parenting her...
In this episode, we talk with American medical student Esther Kim (pictured). She’s trying to overcome her suspicion of people with a particular accent, one that she’s come to associate with racist taunts. The COVID-19 wave of anti-Asian...
Hassnae Bouazza was born in Morocco. She didn’t speak a word of Dutch when she immigrated to the Netherlands, though today it’s effectively her mother tongue. The Dutch government now insists that would-be immigrants like Bouazza pass a...
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of New Orleanians. Many never returned to the city. Others have since moved in, bringing with them different languages and dialects. Some locals now wonder if they have lost...
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-believe, right? Well, maybe. Many ecologists now believe that trees are in constant communication with their...
Susanna Zaraysky, speaker of nine languages, is one of those people who seem able to pick up French or Portuguese almost overnight. In reality, it’s not so effortless—but is she cognitively predisposed to attaining fluency in so many languages...
‘Real’ or ’synthetic’? ‘Authentic’ or ‘lab-grown’? ‘Bloodstained’ or ‘green’? The highly-regulated words that describe diamonds define their narrative — and maybe even their value. We take you to New York’s Diamond...
Are you repelled by certain words? Do you get that fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling when someone says ‘moist,’ ‘dollop’ or ‘fascia’? In this week’s episode Kavita Pillay, who has some word aversions of her...