Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is primarily for social coordination, not precisely transferring thoughts from one person to another. Drawing on empirical research, Enfield shows that human lexicons the world over are far more coarse-grained than our pe ... Show More
Yesterday
Rafael Yuste, "Lectures in Neuroscience" (Columbia UP, 2023)
The human brain is perhaps the most intricate and fascinating object in the known universe. Through a mysterious process, the activity of billions of neurons within a few pounds of matter generates the unfathomable complexity of the mind.Lectures in Neuroscience is a conversatio ... Show More
1h 1m
Jan 13
Dagomar Degroot, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth. In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: ... Show More
1h 15m
Jan 11
Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of t ... Show More
45m 19s
Mar 2021
54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language
If you go to the linguistics section of a big library, you may find some shelves containing thick, dusty grammars of various languages. But grammars, like dictionaries, don’t just appear out of nowhere -- they’re made by people, and those people bring their own interests and prio ... Show More
41m 16s
Oct 2020
Chris Heffer, "All Bullshit and Lies?: Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness" (Oxford UP, 2020)
The implied answer to the titular question of All Bullshit and Lies? (Oxford University Press 2020) is no, it’s not. In this book, subtitled Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness, Chris Heffer argues that to analyze untruthfulness, we need a framework ... Show More
1h 2m
May 2024
How Can We Be More Effective With Language?
Have you ever wondered what’s up with double negation, the history of gender neutral pronouns, or why swearing is taboo? Then get ready for this week’s guest, linguist Anne Curzan! Anne and Jonathan talk about how the English language has evolved since the 1300s and how our words ... Show More
53m 20s
Aug 2011
David Crystal, “Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My Life in Language” (Routledge, 2009)
In an enormously prolific writing and editing career, David Crystal has excelled in supplying volumes hitherto missing from the field: here a balanced and accessible introduction to general linguistics, there a lucid specialised textbook in an emerging field. With this memoir, Ju ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2020
Words and the World | Paul Muldoon, Jennifer Hornsby, Hilary Lawson, Rebecca Roache
<p>How has language informed the evolution of philosophy? And is there a point where the usefulness of words ends? Our experts discuss.</p><p>Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here: <a href="https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blan ... Show More
50m 7s