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150: The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript is 600 years old, written in a strange script, and it’s never been deciphered.

Is it a guide to the universe, a book of secrets, or is it just pages and pages of gibberish? Modern techniques are …

149: Tongue Twisters

Do you like rubber baby buggy bumpers? Or big black bug’s blood?

Tongue twisters are fun, but they’re also a serious area of study. MIT researchers think they may have found the world’s toughest tongue twister. Why are tongue twisters …

148: The Language of Smell

People are great at describing colours, but smells? Not so much.

Could that be because of the language we speak? Just how does language influence our perception?

Linguist Daniel Midgley takes us into a great debate on this episode of …

147: Words of the Year 2013 (featuring Ben Zimmer)

It’s time to look at the words that made the news last year.

Forget twerking, and stop taking selfies, because this year’s winner was truly momentous.

There’s even someone special to take us through it: Ben Zimmer of the American …

146: Gender ID

Language research is turning up some surprising things about how language and gender interact.

It appears that our brains process language differently with male or female speakers. But what about online text? Can you tell whether someone is male or …

145: Esperanto

Esperanto was designed to be simple to learn, and to unite the world.

It has a lot of competition from other artificial languages, but it still tops them all. What is Esperanto like? Will it take over the world, or …

144: Huh? (featuring Simon Tam)

What’s the most common word in the world?

A research team finds that huh? is shared by languages around the globe. But is it really a word? What are words like?

We’re also talking to Simon Tam of the Slants, …

143: Racial Terms

Can offensive terms be reclaimed by the people they’ve been applied to? Or are some words best left alone?

In a related issue, sports teams are facing pressure to change their racially-charged names. Should they?

Linguist Daniel Midgley looks at …

142: Yeah No

Yes and no.

You use these words all the time, but how often do you think about them? They’re not nouns, they’re not verbs, so what are they? Why do we nod our heads yes and shake our heads …

141: Australianisms (featuring Ben Yagoda)

Are you concerned about encroaching Americanism?

Do you worry that words like ketchup and zee will destroy the Australian way of life?

Well, don’t worry; language change works both ways. Americans are picking up words and phrases from Australia. But …

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