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.
301
Lexicon Valley #22: Talking Leaves and Lightnin...
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the Cherokee syllabary.
28 min
302
Lexicon Valley #21: Undocumented Illegals
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the debate over "illegal" versus "undocumented" at the heart of U.S. immigration policy.
32 min
303
Lexicon Valley #20: Death to Potatoes
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo speak with Nataly Kelly, coauthor of Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World.
32 min
304
Lexicon Valley #19: Here's to You Mrs. Malaprop
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what malapropisms might reveal about the way we organize our mental dictionary.
30 min
305
Lexicon Valley #18: The Rate of Exchange
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the commonly held belief that some languages are spoken faster than others.
24 min
306
Lexicon Valley #17: Ascent of the A-word
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg about his book Ascent of the A-word: A**holism, the First Sixty Years.
25 min
307
Special Announcement from Lexicon Valley
Mike announces a run of all new episodes beginning later in the summer.
1 min
308
Lexicon Valley #16: Our Dying Words
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what we lose when a language goes extinct.
21 min
309
Lexicon Valley #15: Then Is Now, Now and Then
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the historical present.
29 min
310
Lexicon Valley #14: By Their Words You Shall Kn...
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss stylometry.
30 min
311
Lexicon Valley #13: Capturing the Past
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk about how Mad Men and Downton Abbey can teach us about language change.
37 min
312
Lexicon Valley #12: The Eloquence of Plain English
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the Gettysburg Address.
30 min
313
Lexicon Valley #11: When Being Done Replaced Doing
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the most significant change to the English language that you've never heard of.
26 min
314
Lexicon Valley #10: One Giant Leap for Humanity
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the he said/she said of the epicene pronoun.
37 min
315
Lexicon Valley #9: And May He Be a Masculine Br...
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss how a simple quirk of grammar may affect the way we think.
29 min
316
Lexicon Valley #8: When Nouns Grew Genitals
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what it means for language to have gender.
28 min
317
Lexicon Valley #7: A Needle Pulling Thread
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the big ambitions of the word "so."
27 min
318
Special Announcement from Lexicon Valley
Mike announces a batch of brand new episodes.
0 min
319
Lexicon Valley #6: A Meditation on Scrabble
Mike Vuolo talks to "Word Freak" author Stefan Fatsis about the nature of language in Scrabble.
33 min
320
Lexicon Valley #5: Untuning the String
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to author David Skinner about his book, The Story of Ain't, which will be published in the fall of 2012.
34 min
321
Lexicon Valley #4: Jumpin' Salty in The O
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the vernacular wrapped in a dialect inside a language that some call Ebonics.
38 min
322
Lexicon Valley #3: Consider the Lamppost
Lexicon Valley #3: Consider the Lamppost
27 min
323
Lexicon Valley #2: A Bundle of Faggots
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the evolution of the word "faggot."
30 min
324
Lexicon Valley #1: A Sin of Which None Is Guilty
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the longstanding English language proscription against ending a sentence with a preposition.
22 min