Slate Debates
A feed from the Slate podcast network featuring episodes with enlightening conversations, opposing views, and plenty of healthy disputes. You'll get a curated selection of episodes from programs like What Next, The Waves, and the Political Gabfest, with deep discussions that go beyond point-counterpoint and shed light on the issues that matter most.
226
Why Do People Talk Like That in Old Movies?
What Bette Davis, FDR, and Ralph Kramden have in common when it comes to speech.
31 min
227
Billy and Me Went to the Store. Deal With It.
John McWhorter on what the intricacies of the future tense tell us about the unwritten rules of pronouns.
24 min
228
What Is a Dictionary, Really?
John Simpson, former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, talks about life as a lexicographer.
22 min
229
The Invisible Language of Nursery Rhymes
What does "Hickory Dickory Dock" really mean? John McWhorter makes linguistic sense of seemingly arbitrary children's verse.
22 min
230
Word Sex
How Words Hook Up and Make New Ones
34 min
231
Should Shakespeare Get a Modern English Update?
John McWhorter talks with author Jack Lynch about the sacrilege of modified Shakespeare.
43 min
232
Are Emoji a Language?
Gretchen McCulloch talks to John McWhorter about the big meaning behind our favorite little pictograms.
37 min
233
Finding Life in a Dead Language
Ann Patty, author of "Living With a Dead Language: My Romance With Latin," talks about her transformative experience of learning Latin.
25 min
234
Rules Are Made to Be Spoken
Rules Are Made to Be Spoken
28 min
235
The Tragedy of English Spelling
Etymologist and poet Anatoly Liberman says that English is one of the most difficult languages to spell. But we can change that.
25 min
236
Your Brain on Profanity
Benjamin K. Bergen, author of the upcoming What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves, discusses the science of cursing.
31 min
237
Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!
How an American Revolutionary War figure spawned a new name for a very old game.
25 min
238
The Blaccent: What Does It Mean to Sound Black?
Linguist John McWhorter argues that it makes perfect sense for the speech of black and white Americans to have subtle differences.
26 min
239
A Wild Goose Chase that Stinks from Fish
How did Clupea harengus come to signify a diversionary tactic?
22 min
240
Defecation Presentation
The earliest known citation for “shit show” is from an English-language translation of a 1970s criminal trial in Germany. But what was the word or phrase being translated?
27 min
241
Take This Episode with a Grain of Salt
A phrase with roots in Ancient Rome has confounded English speakers for centuries.
29 min
242
The Full, Firm, Valiant, and Heavy-Hearted Trump
Donald Trump calls people (and publications) he doesn’t like sad. When did that word become an insult?
28 min
243
A British Insult Fit for Trump
A peculiar insult from the north of England has the Oxford English Dictionary stumped.
32 min
244
They Had a Good Year
A pronoun that English borrowed from its Scandinavian neighbors gets new life as a gender neutral alternative to he and she.
35 min
245
The Curious Case of a Conspiratorial Coinage
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk about a mystery word or phrase with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
36 min
246
Tears of Joy, Identity, and a Prism of Isms
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to editors at Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and Dictionary.com about their picks for Word of the Year.
32 min
247
Sleeping Hobos in a Tent, Rush 'Em!
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the early 20th-century origins of a bizarre food-industry code with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
29 min
248
Snoozefest
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the energetic history of the word sleep.
28 min
249
Woody Guthrie's Folk Etymology
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a word that was popularized during the 1940s folk movement with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
27 min
250
A Cat, a Coward, and Female Genitalia
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the etymological quirkiness of the word "pussy."
32 min