How does the mighty Oxford English Dictionary decide what makes it into its databse?

We take punctuation as a given today, but for most of its history, text was mostly un-punctuated.

The band Vampire Weekend once asked, who gives a f*** about an Oxford comma? This episode proves the answer is: a lot of people.

A crash course on some of the characters and methodologies behind the Simplified Spelling movement, from Benjamin Franklin to today.

An exploration of Proto-Indo-European — the lost ancestor of hundreds of modern languages — and the surprisingly unknown story of how it shaped much of the modern world.

An exploration of how accents shape identity, perception, and belonging—where they come from, why they change, and what our speech reveals about us.

The English alphabet is a direct descendent of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. By unpacking this lineage, light may be shed on the state of the alphabet as it exists today.

What can we learn about the nature of translation by comparing a mundane warning message in hundreds of different languages?

Rhetoric has a bad reputation, but in reality, it’s much more than political gibberish and snake oil.

“Bad” English might not be as bad as we think. In fact, it’s just language change in action.

Is it really harder for adults to learn new languages than it is for children? What goes into designing language learning curricula? In this episode, we explore these questions and more.

As Lead Language Researcher at Grammarly, Courtney Napoles is building AI systems to help the world better communicate.

Have you ever wondered about the name of your home country or the one you’re visiting––what it means and how it came to be?

Why do we some languages have gender while others don’t? What is it that makes some nouns “feminine” and others “masculine?”

The etymology of trivia is in plain sight: tri-via, “three roads.” But what could three roads have to do with obscure and useless information?

In this episode, linguist and author Tracey Weldon discusses the emergence of AAE, the role of code switching within AAE speech communities, AAE’s contributions to mainstream English, and more.

What does “standing under” have to do with “understanding?” Nothing, really, which is why it’s easy to overlook the fact that “understand” is actually compound comprising the words “under” and “stand.” But why?

In Old English, “world” referred not to a place, but to time. Weorold, comprising the roots wer (man) and ald (age), literally meant “the age of man”.

In this conversation with Silvia Ferrara, we discuss the invention of writing, the various writing systems that exists (and have existed) throughout the world, and methods for deciphering ancient scripts.

The etymology of grotesque is hiding in plain site: “grotto-esque”. But what does a grotto, or a small cave, have to do with being grotesque?