Vol 2 Ep 28 - Indo-European languages

900 - 1629 - Imagine a great city in Africa, a stone kingdom so powerful its wealth flowed across oceans. Great Zimbabwe, built by the Shona people without a single drop of mortar, was a hub of sophisticated trade. Its riches in gold and ivory connected Africa's interior to a glo ... Show More

800 - 1600 - In this episode we explore the culmination of many millenniums of mound building cultures in the lands of the modern United States and find out what happened to them when European colonisers arrived in the sixteenth century. 

3500 BCE - 1600 CE - Uncover the ancient earthworks of North America’s Pre-Columbian Mound Builders—exploring ritual, trade, astronomy, and society from the Adena to the Mississippians, in this immersive historical journey. 

Mehr als 100 Millionen Menschen sprechen die deutsche Sprache. Vor allem in Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz und Liechtenstein. Aber auch in Teilen von Belgien, Luxemburg, Dänemark und Italien wird deutsch gesprochen. Aber wie ist diese Sprache eigentlich entstanden? Reisen wir a ... Show More

There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel? 

Looking specifically at Modern Greek, Polish, Dutch, and Swedish, this event interrogates what it means to translate and publish marginalised and minor European languages into English. Translations from French, German and Spanish (and more recently, non-European giants such as Ar ... Show More

Ingrid Piller speaks with Aneta Pavlenko about her new book Multilingualism and History (Cambridge UP, 2023).We often hear that our world 'is more multilingual than ever before', but is it true? This book shatters that cliché. It is the first volume to shine light on the millenni ... Show More

In 1923, an Indian American man named Bhagat Singh Thind argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that he was a white man and was therefore eligible to become a naturalized citizen. He based his claim on the fact that he was a member of India's highest caste and identified as an Arya ... Show More

Where did language come from? Is it possible to know without traveling back in time? And how do babies learn to speak? Plus: We’ll hear how the word “silly” has evolved over the last several hundred years.