Technobabble
UK podcast star Helen Zaltzman of The Allusionist helps me figure out why one set of poorly understood pseudo-scientific terms can sink a scene, while another set can make a…
Wet weekend
Rob's weekend has been wet, even though it hasn't rained! What's happened? Feifei's about to find out and learn a new authentic English expression! {listen} Transcript FeifeiHello. I'm Feifei and…
What hunter-gatherer gut microbiomes have that we don’t, and breaking the emoji code
Sarah Crespi talks to Sam Smits about how our microbial passengers differ from one culture to the next—are we losing diversity and the ability to fight chronic disease? For our…
The English We Speak: Not a sausage
Neil and Feifei want to find out about Rob’s new job. But he’s saying absolutely nothing about it. Learn how we can express the idea of ‘absolutely nothing’ with the…
The English We Speak: Donkey’s years
Why has Rob got a donkey in the studio?! It's probably got something with today's authentic English phrase which is about not doing something for a long time. How long…
Allusionist 60: Zillions
They look like numbers. They sound like numbers. You kinda know they are numbers. But they're not actually numbers. Linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis explains what's going on with indefinite hyperbolic…
Grandmothers have the best curse words
two highlights: we hold swear words in a different part of the brain than the rest of language. We often don’t think of the literal meaning of common swear words…
Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…