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Polari

When there are no safe spaces, language is a refuge, a lifeline, a keeper of secrets.

• 30 mins

Two or More

In its fairly short existence, the word 'bisexual' has had a pretty bumpy ride.

• 30 mins

Blood is not Water

The Yiddish word for ‘black’ is a slur. How to translate Black Lives Matter without it?

• 30 mins

Verisimilitude

A lot - a LOT! - of work goes into inventing languages for fictional worlds.

• 30 mins

In Character

Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world.

• 30 mins

Project ENABLE

Sterling Martin was studying worms, when suddenly he found himself making a dictionary.

• 30 mins

Cairns

Behind every Great Man of Lexicography was usually a team of women making his dictionary.

• 30 mins

Siblings of Chaos

Dictionary Corner resident Susie Dent has been studying words to make us feel happy.

• 30 mins

Timucua

Decoding and translating 400-year-old texts to understand the lost Timucua language

• 30 mins

Misophonia

Misophonia is a condition that 20% of you have: an extreme reaction to certain sounds.

• 50 mins

Gems and Patties

Two food-related renamings: one that mostly happened, another that mostly did not

• 30 mins

How the Dickens Stole Christmas

How come Charles Dickens's name is synonymous with Christmas?

• 27 mins

Ravels

Why your cardigan is called 'cardigan'

• 28 mins

Bonus 2023

It's our annual parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about

• 55 mins

The Eggs Warning

"Warning: read and keep," says the piece of paper inside Kinder Eggs, in 34 languages

• 27 mins

Lipread

How lipreading works, and why lipreading gossip stories are so successful and worthless

• 38 mins

Mouthful of Fortune

At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because puns.

• 22 mins

Tranquillusionist: Person In Scene

Soothe your brain with a meaningless list of characters without names in movie credits

• 61 mins

Craters

PhD student Annie Lennox discovered a crater on Mercury and got the chance to name it

• 30 mins

Hypochondria

Hypochondria's meaning went from physical ailments to ones that are only in your mind

• 43 mins

Word Play 2

Makers of word games explain how they turn language into creative play

• 35 mins

Lemon Demon

AJ Jacobs makes word puzzles, and sometimes turns his whole life into a puzzle.

• 45 mins

Good Grids

Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US

• 30 mins

100 Pages of Solvitude

Comedian John Finnemore spent six months solving a 100-page puzzle. Then he wrote his own.

• 28 mins

Beeing

I went to the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee

• 55 mins

Word Sport

At the Scripps National Spelling Bee it's a lot of work to make words into this word sport

• 36 mins

Queer Arab Glossary

Designer and artist Marwan Kababour collects Arabic-language queer slang

• 32 mins

199 ideas I hadn't made into podcasts yet

199 ideas that I have not yet made into podcasts (except for this one)

• 28 mins

200th Episode Celebratory Quiz

A quiz about language where all the questions were set by beautiful brainy listeners

• 39 mins

Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations

Constellations that got demoted into ex-constellations

• 25 mins