Some parts of the world are packed with languages. Others not so much.

Is there a reason that some places are linguistically dense? Researchers are turning up connections between biological ecology and language ecology.

Xia Hua studies language diversity, and we’re talking to her on this episode of Talk the Talk.

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Promo

TtT promo 2019-09-03 with Tom Reynolds: F Storm

Chatting ahead of the show. Daniel mentions a few tweets about literally. Tom wonders whether censoring the name of a band on air is the right thing to do.

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/29675906

Video promo

Which regrettable linguistic celebrity inspired this rant? When it comes to literally, no one does it better than Ben.

Literally

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZFjzt6Le0rg

Full interview

Interview with Xia Hua (complete)

Daniel and Hedvig team up to interview Xia Hua, a mathematical biologist at the Australian National University. When there’s a lot of biological diversity in an area, there are also a lot of human languages, and Xia’s been finding out why.

Thanks to Xia, to the Australian National University, and to the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language for making this interview possible.

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/interview-with-29577995

Leave That In!

Leave That In! 376: Hotspots

What Ben and Daniel liked about Arrival. Well, it wasn’t talking in the middle of the movie, because Ben does not do that.

Also: bedbugs and so much more.

Real or Fake? GoPro Survives Fall from an Airplane, Crash Lands in a Pigpen
https://petapixel.com/2014/02/12/real-fake-gopro-survives-fall-airplane-land-pigpen/ 

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/29724754

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Show notes

Decimate does not mean to kill one in every 10 – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-03/decimate-does-not-mean-to-kill-one-in-every-10/11459980

The Shape of Your Mouth Affects How You Talk And Gets Amplified Across Generations
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/08/23/the-shape-of-your-mouth-affects-how-you-talk-and-gets-amplified-across-generations/

Climate a driver of language diversity  – ANU
https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/climate-a-driver-of-language-diversity

The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity | Nature Communications
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09842-2

How Language and Climate Connect | JSTOR Daily
https://daily.jstor.org/how-language-and-climate-connect/

Rate of language evolution is affected by population size.  – PubMed – NCBI
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25646448

Parliament suspension: Queen approves PM’s plan – BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49493632

Bedbugs are tiny torturers that ruin lives – no wonder Bret Stephens was upset | Brigid Delaney | Media | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2019/aug/28/bedbugs-are-tiny-torturers-that-ruin-lives-no-wonder-bret-stephens-was-upset

World War II and the Ingredients of Slaughter
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/world-war-ii-anniversary.html

Stunned Twitter Critics Swat Bret Stephens’ Bedbug Link To Nazis In NYT Column | HuffPost Australia
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/bret-stephens-bedbug-nazi-column_n_5d69e2f0e4b0cdfe05704bf5

Here’s why it’s ok for Taylor Swift to use literally, figuratively | David Shariatmadari | Music | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/27/taylor-swift-literally-steven-pinker

The 300-Year History of Using “Literally” Figuratively
https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/the-300-year-history-of-using-literally-figuratively.html

Quotation Marks | Punctuation Rules
https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp

Transcript

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