Poor Dan is in a droop. No lemons, no melon. Won’t lovers revolt now?

Is this some weird experimental novel? No, every one of those sentences is palindromic — they read the same forward and backward. Palindromes aren’t just fun; they have some surprising historical significance.

Linguist Daniel Midgley is too hot to hoot on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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195: Palindromes

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Promo

Promo with Kylie Sturgess, 2015-03-10: Palindromes

Show notes

Gender-neutral communication: how to do it
https://theconversation.com/gender-neutral-communication-how-to-do-it-38383

Faceoff: ‘he’, ‘he or she’, ‘he/she’, ‘s/he’ versus ‘they’
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/06/he-or-she-versus-they/

How to use singular they
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/dictionary/dos-and-donts-for-singular-they/

David Crystal: “The best texters are always the best spellers”
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/nation/inside.asp?section=nationgeneral&xfile=/data/nationgeneral/2015/March/nationgeneral_March42.xml

Palindromic song title from band with palindromic name? ABBA: SOS
http://www.everyhit.com/record7.html

Some palindromic sentences collected by Ralph Griswold.
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/oddsends/palinsen.htm

Jim Kalb’s Palindrome Collection
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~js248325/zsyp/texty/palindromes.txt

Jim Kalb’s Palindrome Connection
http://jkalb.freeshell.org/palindromes/

A really big palindrome list
http://www.palindromelist.net/

List of 886 Palindromes
http://nowthatsnifty.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/giant-list-of-palindromes.html

Ancient Amulet Discovered with Palindrome Inscription
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/ancient-amulet-discovered-with-palindrome-inscription-150105.htm

The SATOR square
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sator_Square

Required reading: The Palindrome Game of the Enigma Codebreakers
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/the-palindrome-game-of-the-enigma-codebreakers/

Professor Peter Hilton: Bletchley Park code-breaker who became one of the most influential mathematicians of his generation
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-peter-hilton-bletchley-park-codebreaker-who-became-one-of-the-most-influential-mathematicians-of-his-generation-2154811.html

BLETCHLEY PARK: Could you do better than the 51-character palindrome which Peter Hilton came up with during the Second World War?
http://www.mkweb.co.uk/BLETCHLEY-PARK-better-51-character-palindrome/story-26106861-detail/story.html

AIM A TOYOTA TATAMI MAT AT A TOYOTA, MIA.
http://ken-jennings.com/messageboards/viewtopic.php?p=66828

Peter Norvig’s 17,826 word palindrome
http://norvig.com/pal17txt.html

Dammit I’m Mad – a poem by Demetri Martin
https://mixedlollies.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/dammit-im-mad-a-poem-by-demetri-martin/

‘Ride-share’ and ‘unboxing’ added to Oxford dictionary
http://www.itworld.com/article/2889875/rideshare-and-unboxing-added-to-oxford-dictionary.html

500 Australian English words added to Oxford Dictionaries
http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/500-australian-english-words-added-to-oxford-dictionaries/

Ernie, doing some vishing: “Heeeere fishy fishy FISHY FISHY FISHY!”

Palindromes aren’t that hard.
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/011213/palindromes-are-hard.gif


Image credit: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/9a/d8/66/9ad866beb44613968f83ca3fb1647c9d.jpg