The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary w/ Stefan Fatsis
We’re in a paradoxical time for dictionaries, claims Stefan Fatsis. On the one hand, we’re bombarded by words and ways to understand them in this lexically intense, linguistically charged political and cultural moment. On the other hand, the dictionary is struggling. Merriam-Webster—fighting to keep up with AI, machine learning software, and the explosion of voices vying for authority over what words mean—must evolve or compromise on the care put into defining words. But Merriam-Webster isn’t unique, and neither is language, for that matter, in its position within a (political) economy. Competition is healthy. Throughout NYT-bestselling author Stefan Fatsis’ book, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary, readers learn about lexical histories, Merriam-Webster’s backstory, word-enthusiast subcultures, and the importance of a dictionary's measured, apolitical approach to language. As Stefan says, “the demand for life or death information—objective, solid, reality based information that a dictionary like Merriam Webster provides—is critical to the functioning of democracy in a civil society.” So there you have it: the thrill and threat to the modern dictionary. It’s a paradox, hopefully an escapable one.Stefan Fatsis Website (https://www.bystefanfatsis.com/)Unabridged - Grove Atlantic Site (https://groveatlantic.com/book/unabridged/) Is This the End of the Dictionary? - Atlantic OpEd (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/10/dictionary-survival-language-evolution/683976/) American Dialect Society Selects rawdog as 2024 Word of the Year (https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf) Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue Perplexity AI for copyright and trademark infringement (https://www.theverge.com/news/777344/perplexity-lawsuit-encyclopedia-britannica-merriam-webster) True Color by Kory Stamper (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555914/true-color-by-kory-stamper/) Here’s why “fuck” is in the dictionary (https://qz.com/973992/a-lexicographer-explains-why-dictionaries-contain-words-like-fuck)Lindsay Rose Russell (https://english.illinois.edu/directory/profile/russellr) Peter Sokolowski (https://aceseditors.org/peter-sokolowski)Ben Zimmer’s episode on Tomayto Tomahto (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1VlBEyUPyhfzRmAoZe5lV2?si=3639e28fc3564c22) Nicole Holliday’s episode on Tomayto Tomahto
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Language Ideologies w/ Savithry Namboodiripad
“And that’s what ideologies are: the air that you’re breathing, something that feels like it’s common sense.” From start to finish, this episode is about ideologies: their consequences, their makeup, and the struggle to shake their influence. Savithry Namboodiripad, an associate professor of Linguistics at UMichigan leverages her linguistics background to critique ideologies of the native speaker, monolingualism, multilingualism, and more. Her research often proceeds on two separate tracks: studying language (usually syntax or language contact), and studying the field of linguistics: where our received theoretical framings come from, and how to reach stronger conclusions based on multi-disciplinary evidence. In this episode, we discuss how to dismantle pernicious ideologies through better experimental design and theoretical framing, and then we get to questions that are far greater than just the field of linguistics. For instance, why must we always get to the “pure” natural object? How have ideas about language always transcended academic discourse? Throughout, we express a lot of frustration at the academic frameworks that neglect to unsettle eugenicist, misogynistic, or racist ideologies. But it’s important to remember that linguistics is not alone in its failure. Science needs variables, and society provides them. Frameworks make things make sense, so they stay. Linguistics is caught in limbo between formal failures and the impositions of our content: language. Savithry Namboodiripad The ROLE Collective Contact, Cognition, & Change Lab Rejecting nativeness to produce a more accurate and just Linguistics Towards a Decolonial Syntax: Research, Teaching, Publishing | Decolonizing Linguistics Why we need a gradient approach to word order Mother Tongues and Nations: The Invention of the Native Speaker The Emergence of the English Native Speaker: A Chapter in Nineteenth-Century Linguistic Thought
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The AI Con w/ Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
The AI Con may as well be the answer to the question: what happens when a linguist and a sociologist come together to write a book? Co-written by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con isn’t just a book, it’s an instruction manual to guide readers through this era of AI hype. In short, this book does what academic scholarship does best: close read texts, historical patterns, marketing schemes, statistics, politics, and more—and find a way to connect these granular details and examples to broader trends in our society. The AI Con sits along this continuum between close reading and abstraction. It’s a book about “AI” technology, yes, but it’s also about the demands of an economy that values human labor and intelligence less and less. It’s a book about the ideals of democracy conflicting with economic pressures; the mutually determining relationship between worldviews and technology, or technology and institutional priorities; the power of technology if people have autonomy over it; and the problems with western epistemological orientations when they are imposed via technology onto populations and individuals who never consented for this technology to be imposed on them. This book is about a lot. But it’s also funny, and witty, and accessible, and written with the best intentions. Throughout this episode, Emily and Alex discuss their writing process, the pernicious economic undercurrents that paved the way for this AI hype era, contrasting epistemological orientations, how technology perpetuates societal biases, and much more. The AI ConAlex HannaEmily M. Bender Sébastien Bubeck, et al, Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like ItArs technica: “Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says”Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Tomayto Tomahto is produced, written, and edited by Talia Sherman. Artwork by Maja Mishevska.
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Philosophy of Language w/ Justin Khoo
Justin Khoo, an associate professor of Philosophy at MIT, begins this episode with the assertion that philosophy asks the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate—but this assertion is not innocent. Asking the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate may come at the cost of undermining conceptual, schematic, ideological, and often disciplinary frameworks upon which scientific findings are predicated. Through discussion of code speech, political speech, philosophy of language, aesthetic objects, hypothetical epistemic advantages, and the foundations of our current political (dis)order, this episode draws attention to stubborn frameworks and axioms, not necessarily undermining them, but questioning their validity and utility. This episode at times historicizes, allegorizes, analytically analyzes, narrativizes, and outright complains about the objects we're discussing—be it the referents of language or a film or a quote by Trump or the blind-spots of a discipline. The very fact of our discussion of the so-upheld "distinctions" between various methodologies and ideological orientations demonstrates the apparent need for a division among academic disciplines—but why? If there's a degree of meta-discourse throughout this episode, it's in reference to our frightening political climate. Parts of the world are literally on fire and yet we pontificate about Trump's contradictions and the subversive strategy of code speech. I want to acknowledge this tension, and optimistically suggest that perhaps exposing contradictions or calling out hypocrisy is a small act of resistance, even if it does project the frame of rationality on completely irrational actions. Justin's Website 3am interview Judging for OurselvesPolitical and Coded Speech Willard Van Orman Quine ; Two Dogmas of EmpiricismPeter Van InwagenMichael Lynch: Trump, Truth, and the Power of ContradictionJason Stanley: Democracy and the Demagogue‘You Can’t Pin Him Down’: Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover Jennifer Lackey: Acting on KnowledgeJustin's podcast: Cows in the Field Minority Report The Shining Artwork: Maja Mishevska, Brown '27
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Neurolinguistics, Phonetics, and Language Change w/ Chiara Repetti-Ludlow
Throughout this episode, Chiara Repetti-Ludlow, a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon's Neuroscience Institute, asks us to consider the essentials of speech processing and its constraints. We hear phonetics, but we understand phonology. How and why? To answer those questions, Chiara takes a highly interdisciplinary approach. We know that linguistics is an interdisciplinary field—it has to be. We can't divorce language from its cognitive, physical, and social apparatuses, nor can language be extricated from human interaction. But academic inquiry has a way of siloing different subfields. And, frankly, it's easier to stick to a rigid set of questions and methodologies. Chiara Repetti-Ludlow's research is exactly what we often hope for in linguistics: interdisciplinary, multi-textured, and conscious of the strengths of different subfields. By bringing together methods and insights from neurolinguistics, phonetics-phonology, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, Chiara's research attempts to answer granular questions about speech processing. Chiara is a current postdoctoral research fellow in the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at NYU. Chiara’s Website Continuous Perception and Graded Categorization: Electrophysiological Evidence for a Linear Relationship Between the Acoustic Signal and Perceptual Encoding of SpeechRegularization in the face of variable input: Children's acquisition of stem-final fricative plurals in American EnglishVariable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals: Different pa[ð ~ θ]s of changeSahil Lutha
I say tomayto, but you say tomahto. Why? What cognitive, economic, racial, or social factors led you to say tomahto and I tomayto? How did you acquire the ability to produce and perceive coherent sentences? These are some questions that linguists attempt to answer scientifically. Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this podcast explores language: what it is, how it works (both cognitively and in practice), and its relationship to politics, history, law, pedagogy, AI, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, critical theory, and more!
Ireland