5 - The LSA Open Letter

516 turns

• linkBen Ainslie - I was a bit surprised to see the topic of the show this week, because— I'll be honest —I just fully expected us to be talking about this Harper's letter for, like, an entire show.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We'll see how it goes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's a lot to talk about.
• linkBen Ainslie - Far out, isn't there just.
• linkBen Ainslie - THEME MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to this bonus episode of Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.My name's Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team!He doesn't like very many things and you love him for it, it's Ben Ainslie.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I will accept that lead in, that was…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was very good.
• linkBen Ainslie - I've got to say, I don't mean to get all mushy, but I feel very seen right now.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - She's trying all the immature things she can, and she tells herself it's because she's finally given herself permission to define what adulthood means to her…LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh!That's too close!
• linkDaniel Midgley - But it's actually just a cover for her postdoctoral infantile regression…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my god!
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.Let's play the new game where Daniel just insults people by telling the truth.This is great!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow, this is rough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's not insult, It's just kind of on-the-nose introductions.
• linkBen Ainslie - Woof.That's all I can say, woof.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was…that was…I mean, I have looked up a hairdresser here in Leipzig for getting a mullet.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, wow.We want photos.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I haven't been yet, but I'm very seriously considering it.Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Why a mullet?
• linkBen Ainslie - I would tell you not to, but I know that will only calcify your resolve!LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is not helpful!
• linkBen Ainslie - You should definitely do it.I think all of the 14-year-old pimpled boys who have them at my school are very fetching.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?They're coming back?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know, there's, like, a cool, like, eastern German look where you like cool synth music and you have a mullet and you're very…like, you have a septum piercing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mullet is very, very, very in amongst football players in Australia, and thus teenage boys in Australia.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It all just feels a bit Die Antwoord to me, you know?I don't know.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's not that cool, like, in the way that it's happening in Australia.I'm sure Hedvig's dead on the money in Europe.I'm sure it is very, very cool, but here it is…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's cool on girls.Like, if it's done right on girls…
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah.Yeah, no, see, it's a male thing over here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.But if you have it, like, quite short and black, it's, like, cool on girls.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm.There we go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But enough about mullets.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I did…yeah, okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, please!Please, continue.
• linkBen Ainslie - More!More about mullets!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's just that I watched a video about a hairdresser reacting to DIY mullets on YouTube.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I've seen that on YouTube as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, yeah.And he kept saying that mullets are actually a very technical haircut.
• linkBen Ainslie - Uhhh, I find that very hard to believe.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, they're actually, like, very complicated and layering and, like, blah blah blah blah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I can believe that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And he's like no, you need to go to a hairdresser.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can see that.Anything with variable sizes is going to be a little tricky.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, you would know, as a sort of…as a native of Eastern Washington, where y'all cut your own hair.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, we sure do.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's quarantine, a lot of people are cutting their own hair.
• linkBen Ainslie - True.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's true.Covid hair is definitely a thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Anyway, shall we do a show?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.Let's get into the news.The first story was suggested by Ayesha, thanks Ayesha.It's the Dhurga Dictionary.It's new!It's out!Yay!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - AH!Yeah, very excitingh
• linkBen Ainslie - We've spoken about this before, haven't we?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, we've spoken about a lot.There's been a lot of dictionaries, but this is brand new.Dhurga is a language of coastal New South Wales.And of course, because it's been the International Year of Indigenous Languages, a lot of funding from the government of Australia and other countries has become available.So this is one of the fruits of it.A lot of the work was done by Kerry Boyenga, who helped develop the "Dhurga as a Language Other Than English" program for her elementary school.It's called Dhurga Djamanj.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Cool!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also her brother, Waine Donovan, and also Jutta Besold, who did a thesis on Aboriginal languages of the South Coast in 2012.So this includes words and it also includes a beginner's grammar, which is awesome.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can you two just sort of give me…I know we've talked about it on the show before, but we've got so many episodes and I forget most things.Can one of the two of you give me a, like, 50 words or less blow-by-blow of what making a dictionary actually involves?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my God.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, in this case, according to the ABC article, it involved plowing through a lot of work done by other people.Diana Eades did a lot of work back in the 1900 somethings, and it just required a lot of work to be gathered up and then verified.
• linkBen Ainslie - So if you're creating a new one, right, as in obviously the language is not new, that's a stupid thing to say…If you're creating a new dictionary for a thing that has not previously had a dictionary, the bulk of your task is research?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, it could be.It could also be…so forgive me if I'm wrong, but Dhurga's spoken on the New South Wales coast, close to Batemans Bay, I believe?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And there are very few speakers.So sometimes people will also triangulate in situations like this, with languages in the area.So if they find someone saying, oh, this is a Dhurga word, they say, okay, well, we know that the neighboring language has this word.So you can sort of try and verify like that sometimes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And we also know that there are some regular sound correspondences between this language and that language.So if we know that in this language, the word isbla, then we can probably guess that because there's abtodthing, that in Dhurga it'sda, or something like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right, so you're using a bit of interpolation and a bit of extrapolation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that's in particular like if the language doesn't have many or speakers who are able to share.But I mean, if you have a community, which when they are able to share, work is often sitting down with people and asking them what lots of words mean.Finding some people in the community who are more interested in sitting down with you for long hours and asking you about words, and then like inviting them to become co-creators and try and help correct your work and things like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know what did my heart good?Glottolog has an entry for Dhurga, and Glottolog lists the status as "awakening".Isn't that nice?
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh!I like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, what?What?This is new!I have been…oooh, I need to check this out because me and Claire Bowern tried to convince the Glottolog editors a while ago to use "sleeping" instead of "extinct".
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they were like, well, it's only really– and it's sort of true –It's mainly in Australia that people use the term "sleeping" instead of "extinct".So they were like, we don't know if, like, the rest of the world would…Where do you see that?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Go for that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, if, like, people would be confused.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Down at the bottom of the page.We'll have a link on our blog, becauselanguage.com
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Endangerment…No, I'm very sorry.It says "extinct" for the status, and then this is a comment that someone has described it as "awakening".
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, okay.I didn't know the status versus comment.Well, you know, it adds a step, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Yeah.And I think often you'll find that on Australian languages will use terms like awakening and sleeping.And endangered languages in South America.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry to get your hopes up there.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.Hedvig, the person who can un-lighten Daniel's heart.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aw!That's okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was I was really excited about the idea that I had convinced the Glottolog editors of something.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, don't worry, we sensed that.There was a very clear moment where you were just, like:"Fuck yes!"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well it's time to press this, I think, Hedvig.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, for sure!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah!
• linkBen Ainslie - You get back in touch and be like, "Hey, a random person on the internet said the same thing I did, so that's like two!"
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right, let's go on to the next item.We've talked many times about the Google Ngram Viewer.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, the funnest thing for a nerd who likes words to do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mmm mmm mmm!Well, they've gotten an update.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay!
• linkDaniel Midgley - The new update gives us data up to 2019.
• linkBen Ainslie - I feel like, again, I just need to do a quick, like, dummy-Ben update.There's probably a bunch of people listening who are like, "uhhh yeah…the Ngram Viewer, ha ha ha ha".So the Ngram Viewer is when you can search all words, basically.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, like the corpus of all of the books, all of the articles that have kind of ever been written?Basically?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's since 1800 usually, and it's most books.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Google has digitised millions of books over hundreds of years, and you can search them all with a stroke of a keyboard.So you can look at, for example, when people stopped calling it the Great War and started calling it World War One.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, you can look for, like, funny terms.Like if you've ever been at a party and you've been like, "When did we…" So the one I looked up recently with Ngram Viewer is "waiting for the other shoe to drop."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - I was, I had a burning desire to figure out what the flip that meant and where it came from.And I used the Ngram Viewer to sort of localise it, to narrow down my search, to be able to figure out where it started popping up and stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - My favorite search is looking for "another thingθɪŋcoming", versus "another thinkθɪŋkcoming".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What?
• linkBen Ainslie - How?What?How is that…what…how is that your favorite search?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, which one do you think is more common?Which one do you say?You've got another…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thingθiŋ.
• linkBen Ainslie - Thingθɪŋ, thingθɪŋcoming, I don't, I don't…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What even is thinkθiŋk?
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't know thinkθɪŋk, I don't say either of those phrases.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "If you thinkθɪŋkthat, boy, you've got another thingθɪŋcoming, or you've got another…"
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay!That, I say you've got another thinkθɪŋkcoming.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You do?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yup.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You are in the majority.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - So okay, Hedvig.Let's say you're my son, and you…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I know the phrase.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm just entirely confused why there'd be akthere.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because if you thinkθɪŋkthat, you've got another THINKθɪŋkʰcoming.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I thought it was going that like English speakers de-voice at the end of THINGθiŋ, because they do.
• linkBen Ainslie - You thought it was going to be a fun linguistics explanation?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I think it may be helping it along a little bit, but it turns out that thinkθɪŋkis a little older, and think is also the thing that most people write.At least in the Google Ngram Corpus.Isn't that bizarre?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, that is very funny.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.I'm not sure what the hold up was.I thought that they weren't going to update it at all, so I'm surprised to see the 2019 update, but I'm very pleased.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wait, why did you think they weren't going to update it at all?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, there was a legal battle with the Author's Guild, who contended that Google was unfairly putting authors' work out there without permission.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then in the USA, in about 2016, judges ruled that Google's use of snippets falls under fair use.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, 100 percent it does.Obviously it does.The Ngram Viewer doesn't let you see entire…even paragraphs, let alone pages!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, Google Books often does.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, but even still they've got, like, hell…like you can't just go and find a textbook and look at every page.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, no.And the lower courts in the US agreed with you.And that's why the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case.So Ngram Viewer can continue.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow!
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Yay!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, I remember.It's interesting…language and lawyers.We, at our department in Stockholm, we once had a lawyer come down from the, the law school, I guess,LAUGHTERand just talked…
• linkBen Ainslie - I love that you find them so like onerous, that you're just like "from that vile den where the lawyers pupate out of their disgusting little pods."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, no.Here we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're actually in the same building as the linguists, but we never really talk to them.
• linkBen Ainslie - LAUGHTERAh, they pupate in the same building as you!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And once you're in the elevator, you can clearly tell.Like, the law students are always very nicely dressed, and the linguist student less so.Anyway.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm sorry, that was so democratic, "the linguistics' students, less so"
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Less so."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, you know, I used to wear hot pants a lot and it's not, you know.Anyway!But we had a lawyer come down and talk to us about like, can you…if someone makes a graph in a publication and you want to show that graph in your paper, you can do it if you, like, use the same numbers and recreate the graph, but you can't use a particular image that they had.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, so you have to re-graph the graph.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And then you can do it, because that's information.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well then, that's not, well, but that's not using their graph, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.That's information.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that picture is copyrighted.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's so…imagine the person who would actually go to the effort of pursuing a copyright infringement for using a JPEG, instead of, like, quickly grabbing the Excel cell data and graphing it!LAUGHS
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the other thing they talked to us about was, like, because we were like:Oh, you know, we have all these, like, multilingual versions of, like, Alice in Wonderland and stuff and we're searching through them.And she was like:that doesn't sound…Did you make that available to all of your students?And we were like, yes…They're like:please randomly arrange the sentences.
• linkBen Ainslie - Of Alice in Wonderland?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And then…
• linkBen Ainslie - Surely, surely that was in the public domain.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Isn't Alice in Wonderland in the public domain?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm sorry.It was Harry Potter as well.It was a bunch of stuff.I think you're right, Alice in Wonderland would have been fine, but it was…I think I think we had a Harry Potter and other things.
• linkBen Ainslie - I see, something for which people actually give Dollarfucks about.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And she said, maybe if you rearrange the sentences, but we're like, okay, but we need to keep the order in the sentence like that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like, you turn to the lawyer and you're like, you do understand how language works, right‽
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, if we were only interested in the frequencies of singular words…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that would work.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …then it would have been fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - All the 'the's out the front, so it's like:the the the the.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But she was very confused when we told her that…what we were doing at the department.She was like:That doesn't seem good!Stop!
• linkBen Ainslie - I love…I delight in encountering people who give lots of fucks about copyright, because they very quickly start hating me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, dear.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it's time to move on to the big news item.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oof.All right, sorry, I've cleared room.I haven't eaten anything for a couple of hours.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, can I get more coffee?I'm just going to get more coffee.I think I'm gonna need it.Is that okay?I'll be super quick.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.While she's doing that, I'll just say the reason why I want to talk about this, is because it's easy to sidestep it.But a lot of people have been talking about this.And they've been doing it mostly from the point of view of the powerful establishment linguists, and not from the point of view of everyone else.So I thought, we need to talk about this.The Pinker letter.
• linkBen Ainslie - Are we calling it the Pinker letter, not the Harper's letter?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, see, but that's part of the problem.But let's get to that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm back.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We'll call it the LSA Pinker Debacle.How about that?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.So…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But it's mainly about Pinker.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, just for people listening.What we are talking about is a letter that you might know as the Harper's letter, which has kind of blown up.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, we're not even talking about…I mean, yes, that's the starting point for many people.But of course, we need to start further back with the original letter.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.So…but I'm wondering if it's going to be best if we come at this from the…in terms of like, can we do a little bit of a Quentin Tarantino, where we come in in the middle of this narrative and then we move back to the beginning, to speak?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Err, I don't want to do it that way.I want to do it chronologically.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think we need to do it chronologically.
• linkBen Ainslie - All right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But it's a fun idea.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a fun idea.So we'll call this the original letter.There was an original letter, signed by about five or six hundred linguists from the LSA, the Linguistic Society of America.It called for the removal of Dr Steven Pinker from the list of distinguished academic fellows and the LSA's list of media experts.You can go to their website, "I need a linguistic expert, who should I talk to?" And Steven Pinker was on there.And what they said was, "Dr Pinker has a history of speaking over genuine grievances and downplaying injustices, frequently by misrepresenting facts, and at the exact moment when Black and Brown people are mobilising against systemic racism and for crucial changes."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So what's wrong with Steven Pinker?It's not that he's a conservative guy.He might not even be.It's not because I disagree with his politics.What's wrong with Steven Pinker?
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't actually know Steven Pinker from a bar of soap.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - In the public eye, I think he's most well known for writing books about stylistics and how to write, isn't he?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, outside of linguistics linguistics, that's what I think he's most well known for.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I think a lot of people remember his work from "The Language Instinct".That was…a lot of us cut our teeth on that one.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So about child language development.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the contentions are that Pinker's public stances, especially on Twitter, are incompatible with the LSA's statement on racial justice.For example, he dismisses the reality that Black people are killed disproportionately by police.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hang on, is Pinker part of the IDW?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I think he is part of the Intellectual Dark Web.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay!Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What is IDW?
• linkBen Ainslie - So this now makes a lot more sense to me.So this is an acronym I only came across recently.Like, it was a thing that I kind of knew about, but I didn't have a word for.Basically it's the collection of mostly conservative intellectuals.It stands for intellectual dark web.And we're talking about like the Sam Harrises of the world and the…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jordan Peterson…
• linkBen Ainslie - …Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker.People who just kind of keep casting themselves as these, like, hyper-smart outsiders who are trying to fight the good fight against, like, political correctness and weird postmodern Marxism, and all their classic little like bugbears with what's going on in public discourse and stuff.It's like a whole collection of that kid in high school who was really, really smart, but just no one liked.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, he's the "well, actually…" guy isn't he?I mean."Well, actually…white people get killed by police, too!" "Well, actually…it wasn't six women who got murdered by that incel, it was four women and two men." It's like, well, why would you bring that up at this time?Why is this a part of the story that's important for you to tell?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So the contention is that he misrepresents work that other people have done, in a way that may not be racist, but helps racists and is capable of doing harm.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would argue that taking that stance at this time is definitely racist.Like, I don't think we need to be, sort of, circumspect about that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mkay.
• linkBen Ainslie - If you, in the same way that someone who like– this was mentioned in the article that Hedvig shared about cancel culture on Slack, which I thought was really good —like, if you were a person who in, like, July of 2020 said, "I support J.K.Rowling", right?You might not be saying it literally, but you are definitely saying "I do not support trans rights." Right?Like, that is a thing that you are doing and saying definitively by associating or aligning yourself in a certain way.And so Steven Pinker going like, "well, actually it was two people killed", or whatever, that is super racist, I think.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or misogynist, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So I think people at this point might be asking, what does this have to do with the LSA and what does that have to do with linguistics?And I think it's good to clarify that the LSA had taken an official policy that they were going to be an inclusive organisation.And as an organisation and as a workplace and as a public figure, there is both the topic matter that you're talking about, but it's also how you are serving the community, both your audience and your peers, and how you are making students in this case, many of them, but also other researchers feel included or validated.And this is where the thing gets tricky, because if the LSA hadn't explicitly said that they were going to have these policies, you could argue that it matters less what Pinker does that isn't linguistics, you see what I mean?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But because the point of this paper is that the LSA had explicitly said that they were going to have this policy, and that they wanted to validate their community members in this way, and therefore…I've seen people phrase this as a matter of representative democracy, and I kind of almost like it.It's like there's a younger generation of linguists in Aus…– Australia, I was about to say! –in the United States, who feel that Pinker doesn't like represent them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.Well, that was the gist of my objection.I am a signatory to the original letter.And it's not because I don't like the guy's politics or his linguistic stances, but because I have been aware of what he's been doing.And I ask myself, is this a good person to represent linguistics?Because the LSA is saying this is a good person to represent linguistics, to represent public linguistics.And I said:this is the field that I am devoting my professional life and my personal life to promote.Is Steven Pinker a good person to represent linguistics, to represent public linguistics, to represent me?My answer was no.And I have seen nothing in the time since then, from Pinker's reactions, I've seen nothing that would dissuade me.In fact, the view for me has become stronger.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, a move like this, it's so…The reality is, from what I am seeing from intellectuals adjacent to Steven Pinker, is that a move like this actually kind of works for Pinker.Because they are always trying to cloak themselves in this victimised outsider identity.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mhm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like it is part of their personal brand now, and, as fucked up as it is, they actually do fairly well off it, right?People like Sam Harris have fucking huge listenership.Like I froth at the mouth at the idea of having a listenership like fucking Sam Harris, right?And a huge part of that is because places are like:I don't want you to speak.I don't like your politics.I don't like the things you have to say, or the fervency with which you are saying these supposedly reasonable things, given the context of what's going on in the world at this time, and their fucking listenership goes up!Like this, I definitely think Steven Pinker should have been delisted from the list of, like, people to chat to about linguistics.But I do not for a second concede that this is materially hurting Steven Pinker.Like, fuck!More people know about him rather than less.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, there are there are no consequences for Steven Pinker.Nobody was asking for him to quit his job or to get fired.They were just saying, let's delist the guy from the list.
• linkBen Ainslie - And no one has a right to be a, like, a luminary for an organization.That's not a right that anyone gets.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's an honor that you get bestowed and that can be taken away.That's another thing that I liked in the Huff Post article we talked about earlier by Michael Hobbs.He talks about how there's a very different…it's very different for public figures.They sort of seem to think that they can speak without getting…oh, why am I so good with words today?
• linkBen Ainslie - Because you speak, like, five languages, probably.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, that's not why.I mean, I just speak one, English.But public figures…exactly, they don't really hurt from this debate.There's no one stopping them to see things, apart from some of Donald Trump's tweets getting fact checked, generally, people can say whatever they want on that platform.And if you are concerned about the so-called little people, like random employees who got fired or something, what you should– especially the United States –what you should be questioning is how you can have a system where people can get fired that easily!
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's…on the note of free speech or free exchange of ideas, I think it is impossible to remove someone's freedom of speech today.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, that's such a good thing to say.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is, however, possible to keep a powerful public intellectual from using the channels of publicity that they have heretofore had unfettered access to.And they just hate that idea.
• linkBen Ainslie - They really, really do.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which takes us to part two:the Harper's letter.So there was a letter published by, and signed to by about one hundred and fifty.I didn't count luminaries, public intellectuals, writers, authors, Wynton Marsalis, Noam Chomsky.
• linkBen Ainslie - There was some huge, some really surprising names on it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who'd you notice, who'd you notice?
• linkBen Ainslie - Umm, fucking Malcolm Gladwell signed this letter.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.Margaret Atwood.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I was surprised.
• linkDaniel Midgley - John McWhorter, who we have had on our show.Steven Pinker, of course, that's interesting.And J.K.Rowling.So I think we kind of know what's up.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mhm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So here's a quote from the article, "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture.An intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty." Going on."This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power, and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." Okay, thoughts?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh okay.Yeah.Where, where, where do we want to start with how fucking wrong every level of this is?Like, there's, like, eleven different things that you could come at this from a different fucking orthogonal direction and tear it apart.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're not being silenced, they're being taken away massive platforms that was given to them by someone.That's not the same as being silenced.And it's also, they think what they're talking about is so interesting and so important that their opinions are so interesting.They're often very boring and uninteresting opinions, like there are more interesting debates to have.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that's okay.They can have uninteresting opinions, but doesn't mean I have to listen to them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I would like to take issue with the last sentence."The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument and persuasion." I think that that is a good way to defeat some bad ideas when harm is unlikely.When harm is on the table, I don't think exposure is a good idea.You know, we sometimes say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but as Lindy West pointed out, sometimes sunlight doesn't disinfect.Sometimes sunlight helps things to grow.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mhm.Okay, so let's…why don't we zero in here on, like, one example.And I think we should probably just go to the J.K.Rowling example, A) because everyone knows about it, and B) because she signed the letter, and she was a huge factor in, like, this was one of the most recent examples, I have had students and other staff members at my school come up to me and basically…because I'm like known as that lefty guy who will always fight about everything or whatever.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You are, Ben?
• linkBen Ainslie - And, and so…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's so good we're on a podcast together, all of us, I enjoy it.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - And so people come up to me and they're like, "Boooo, look how everyone's treating J.K.Rowling." And I'm like, fuckin so‽
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, god.She's super rich.She's going to be fine.She doesn't need to be…yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Here's my thing with J.K.Rowling.Right.Specifically in relation to how that letter was written.Okay?That letter goes:these smart people should not be censored by a faceless mob of, like, I…what's the word they use the faceless mob of something, right?To which I would say, okay, J.K.Rowling, stop fucking tweeting things then.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And you know what?For me, it's not the controversial opinion.It's the harm.Because this creates an environment where trans people, already having a tough time, are having their…
• linkBen Ainslie - Let's just acknowledge this, what she is saying is not a controversial opinion.A huge proportion of the world— I know this because a whole bunch of them come up to me to try needle me with it —think the way she does.She is not some sort of fucking crazy…This is what I don't accept about this Harper's letter, or the Pinker letter, or anything like this.This idea that the world has moved on and these people are like fighting the good fight as the last dying breed of the noble fucking warriors who are keeping this all alive, or whatever.Most of the world agrees with their bullshit, which is why there are these huge social movements taking place to try and tear this shit down.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - They're casting themselves as like, "ooh, when we say controversial things, we get censored." And it's like:no, when you say shitty things that most people agree with, and that serves nothing, and does actual harm a significant portion of the world who are starting to see that harm go, hey, how about you fuck right off, you old dumb piece of shit.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which is why these complaints about censoriousness really ring hollow.It's only censorious when lefties criticise conservatives or intellectual dark web folks.But it's not censorious when people are persecuted, when there's harm done.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to okay, so I'm going to cool off just a little bit, right, and try and, like, cool my jets and kind of go:I get it, right?I get the fear that some people in that world have, because I was like that.Right?And I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this podcast used to, say, be a prescriptivist, and then they listen to a bunch of our stuff and then they've gone:"Actually, you know what?That's like…that's not a cool thing to do.Like, I can see how that has actually got some fairly problematic components.I'm not going to do that anymore." Right?We've all been on that journey to a certain extent or a lesser extent, right?And so once upon a time, you definitely would have found me being the, "uhhh, actually" guy who's talking about, like, only the intellectual side of things and just trying to, like, prove everything with data and all that kind of stuff.So I get the fear because I was once there and yeah, absolutely, right?In some sort of 1984 world where everyone gets censored, some terrible shit can go down.Is that where we are?No.Are we trying to get away from a world where a very small number of very white, very male media gatekeepers have had total control on everything for centuries?Yes, we are.And do you know what?In that process, we probably are going to fuck it up and overcorrect, and we're going to silence some people who maybe don't deserve to be silenced.But guess what?When you try and fix a system like this, you will not be able to do it perfectly.There will be instances that I'm sure people will delight in finding, and being like:"Ha ha!See?This proves it!This proves that you're all a bunch of fucks and you're trying to censor everyone." It's like:okay, fair enough.But there is no other way that I can see in this world that we live in to try and break these systems down.Yes, they are going to be fuck up sometimes.Is the alternative of just everyone fucking sticking with the status quo, and disenfranchised people staying marginalised and staying harmed?Fuck that!No way.I will silence some rich white fucks for a while, and they can just deal with it, basically.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, I keep coming back to this other idea.Exchange of ideas is good in general, but why is it good?Well, one of the reasons is that if we have a free exchange of ideas, then it helps the good ideas circulate and the bad ideas drop out.But what if they don't?What if some exchange, as we've seen, I think, I think we've had ample opportunity to see how the exchange of some ideas, like hateful ideas, don't lead to the good ideas floating to the top.Sometimes they make bad ideas float to the top, and this is an attempt to make bad ideas float to the top by disguising it in a good idea.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think I…I worry that by trying to make, like, a vaguely utilitarian argument, which is, is kind of what that sounded like to me, that we are still fundamentally missing the point, a little bit, which is:It's just about power, right?For me, anyway.I look at this situation and all I see is a power struggle.I can't speak to whether that is accurate or not, but that's certainly the only thing I see.And I see a bunch of very powerful people who are, with their teeth and their fingernails, trying to hold on to positions of very significant power.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And who feel entitled, who feel that these are not rights that have been given to them, these are rights that they had by virtue of just existing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Have earned, yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, all of this put the LSA, the Linguistic Society of America in a rather unenviable position.Do you go with the request and anger established intellectuals, or do you ignore it and anger a whole bunch of early-career researchers and linguists of colour?
• linkBen Ainslie - You try and split the difference, and you do it badly, and you piss everyone off!That's my guess.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, how do you know?
• linkBen Ainslie - Because if they'd done the right thing, you would have said it.And if they'd done the really wrong thing, you would have said it!LAUGHTER
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.The LSA released a statement saying "The Linguistic Society of America is committed to intellectual freedom and professional responsibility.It is not the mission of the society to control the opinions of its members, nor their expression.Inclusion and civility…" Oh, my favorite word!"…are crucial to productive scholarly work.And inclusion means hearing, not necessarily accepting, all points of view, even those that may be objectionable to some."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have to say, by the way, that the first letter, the open letter that we talked about at the beginning, it's quite polite!It's not like a vile name calling.I found it to be, yeah, quite polite.And what was the word they use:civil.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.Like it was the institutional version of, like, letting someone go after a long time at the organisation who you still really like, but you know, times have changed kind of thing.Like it's…it wasn't like you're fired!Get the fuck out.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it didn't mention Pinker.And as a result, Pinker and the intellectuals got to take a victory lap.I think the LSA really kind of sent a message that they aren't willing to take the side of the Black and Brown researchers or early-career researchers.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think what they very clearly said was, "We would really like to pay lip service to these movements, but we really don't want to do anything that's actually hard."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.Well, they tried to clarify later."The recent message from the executive committee to the membership, despite alternative interpretations placed on it by some," *cough* "was not intended to be a rejection of the open letter, but rather an affirmation of our collective values and principles."
• linkBen Ainslie - Ugh, trying to split the difference again.Fuck off!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They say in that statement, as well, that they're going to return to this issue at the next annual meeting, and that they have assigned to a task force.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ooh, that'll be fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - That'll be spicy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah so that will be interesting.When is the next annual meeting?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's in January, but who knows what it's going to look like?
• linkBen Ainslie - One giant Zoom call with a bunch of people yelling at the same time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, my god.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, let's go on to the next piece.The next thing that happened was:if this was conceived as a way of silencing the public intellectuals, it did not work.They had heaps of media exposure because they have the biggest megaphones.
• linkBen Ainslie - Told you!This is right into their playbook."Look how we've been singled out again.Aren't we always victimised like this for simply having our intellectual ideas?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You want to know a good Swedish word?
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Yeah.What?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Offerkofta.It means "the victim's cardigan." Like it's the thing you put on when you play the victim.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah right, the victim's…that's good.Can you say it slowly so I hear all the syllables?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - 'of.ər.ko'f.tə.Offer'of.ərwhich is victim.Koftako'f.tə, which is cardigan.
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - Oh, wow.I like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So in politics when people do this, we say that they put on offerkofta.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that's what Steven Pinker did.The New York Times devoted a whole piece to him, including some quotes by John McWhorter.Pinker described his critics as speech police who "have trolled through my writings to find offensive lines and adjectives."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Did he at all respond to the specific points in the original letter?
• linkDaniel Midgley - When he referred to the original letter, he said that he didn't recog…he only recognised one of the names, so they couldn't have been very important, could they?LAUGHTER
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh yeah, he said that too!Which is just rude.But, like, the actual points, like, there are like however many there are…six points…
• linkBen Ainslie - I think that's his way of saying, because none of these names mean anything to me, I don't deign to address the content.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I think he didn't deign.Okay, then things got kind of interesting.Rikker Dockum, on Twitter, noted that the LSA media page got changed.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mmm?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That Steven Pinker, from being on the top of the page under "General", got dropped to the bottom of the page under "General".They just kind of moved him without saying anything.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then if you go to the media expert page right now, it says that as of July 17th, they have taken down the list, and that if you want to get a hold of someone to talk, you should contact the LSA executive director.And that when the task force has finished their work, and presumably on this annual meeting has happened in January, they might put the list up again after having reconsidered it.
• linkBen Ainslie - So do you know what that reminds me of?A lot of counties across the states have been taking down racist statues just to stop there being, like, a violent confrontation.Right.So, like before even like…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sounds great!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Yeah, totally.But they're doing a similar thing, right?Like they're taking them down and basically kind of going "until all this blows over, we've just decided to like blah, blah, blah."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Putting them in storage so they can put them up later?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So they're not taking them down?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I don't think any of them have been.I'm sure there's a couple of examples of counties that are brave enough to be like, "yep, fuck slave owners!" But most of them have kind of been going:"because of safety concerns we have removed the statue for the time being, bla bla bla bla bla", which is exactly what it sounds like the LSA is doing, which is basically like:we'll put the list back up when everyone stops yelling at us.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But imagine being the LSA and having this whole thing erupt underneath you.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, see, this is…this is the thing.Like, it actually could have been a very straightforward move.And I think they kind of made the dumb call.In a context where we're seeing, like, huge brands like Nestlé and stuff, and the fucking, the baseball team— no, sorry —the football team in Washington change the name and all this other stuff.Like, really?You could you had a lot of capital and momentum there to just basically back the letter.To just kind of go:yep, cool fair cop, given what's going on in the world and everyone else doing the same thing, we're going to do it too.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or just refute it and say we don't think the charges are strong enough.
• linkBen Ainslie - If you wanted to.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So doesn't this whole debacle stem from…so on June 3rd of this year, the LSA issued a statement on racial justice.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is the reason for the open letter.And if they wanted to keep Pinker on the list, they could have just said, no, we're not gonna…we're only only only going to talk about research on linguistics and studies, we're not going to at all talk about any kind of care that we could serve our community, in terms of inclusion.And in that case…
• linkDaniel Midgley - But that's really difficult for linguistics.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is, but that could be a choice they could have made, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - But that's not what they did, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They went down that path, and then they're just not committed to it.
• linkBen Ainslie - If you talk the talk, you got to walk the walk.Ugh.Sorry, no pun intended.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the old show.So what do you think should happen now?I think that the LSA media rethink is a really good idea.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Probably.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it's a good idea as long as they're not putting the list in storage, which I suspect they might be.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Hey, did you guys see that the Harper letter had Chomsky on it, by the way?I just noticed.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When the left has gone too far for Chomsky, you know.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is what I mean!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just noticed, sorry.I was just like.Huh, fair enough!
• linkDaniel Midgley - You know, I can think of a lot of things that would make a good linguistic media person, but I can only think of a few things that would make someone a bad one.And some of those things are, like, getting the facts wrong and refusing to correct them,
• linkBen Ainslie - Or just getting as defensive and, like, douchey as he currently does.That line about like:"I only recognised one of the names" for me, that's like case closed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm more convinced than ever.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Even if some of the people who signed the Harper letter agree with him, when they saw him say that, surely they would have been like:oh, I agree with him, but like even I don't want to associate with someone who says that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I wonder if anybody's having second thoughts.It's like, you know, well, I am for intellectual freedom and diversity, but…
• linkBen Ainslie - Some, some people have.We should note that.A number of people who signed the Harper's letter, when they saw the other people they were like shoulder to shoulder with, were like:oh, fuck that, no way.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The other thing that I think would be a disqualifier is just repeatedly striving to dismiss concerns of social justice.I think there's something else we got to say, and that is:we got to talk about cancel culture, because that's what this is about.Cancel culture is not real.It is simply people thinking and talking, reevaluating other people's work and seeing how it fits with our new understanding.And these established intellectuals can't stand it!This is why I say the fear of cancellation is such a giveaway.It's not cancellation.It's having…it's sharing opinions, which is supposed to be free speech, which is what they claim to be for.But I don't think they are, only when it benefits them.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, if I'm going to be for a micro-second generous, I think it's a bunch of people who have become so accustomed to, and comfortable with, humongous platforms, that they kind of forget that the rest of us fucking shlebs just toil away here on the fringes!Like, okay, so you will no longer be published at the publishing house that you were published at, say, J.K.Rowling, which hasn't even happened, by the way.But let's say it does.Do we think for one second…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It happened to the Gillian Phillip, who wrote, "I stand with J.K.Rowling".She got fired from her publisher.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.And I'm going to say, fair enough, right?Like, if you are a person who wants to publicly endorse someone like that, and you publish books for kids, right?and your publisher is like:well, that's not politics I agree with, then, yeah, absolutely.They can fire you.And if you're good enough, someone else will hire you.If J.K.Rowling gets un-fucking…who publishes Rowling?Is it Penguin?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dunno.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's Bloomsbury, I think.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.Like let's say Bloomsbury drops J.K.Rowling, which A) is never ever going to happen…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's never going to happen.
• linkBen Ainslie - Let's say they do, Penguin or Harper's or some other person will be there in a microsecond.Yeah, right.Yeah.J.K.Rowling is going to be fine.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't feel bad for these people.
• linkBen Ainslie - Don't ever feel bad for rich people.That's just a rule!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's…you guys remember a couple of months ago when Ellen and everyone on Twitter was like, I feel so alone in my big mansion and people were like:you realise that you're on Twitter, saying that you feel alone and sad in your mansion, and people are, like, not able to pay their medical bills and getting evicted?
• linkBen Ainslie - People are dying.Like, dying dying.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't feel bad for rich people!They're fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ever!Just don't do it.How hard it is to do it?Like they will sleep fine on their giant mattress stuffed with money.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're fine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And yet this kind of consequence is considered to be somehow restricting the range of acceptable opinion, or something.Why don't we think of it as just losing in the marketplace of ideas?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's yeah, that's a great point.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because somehow that's only considered acceptable when conservatives win and not when liberals win.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And at one level, it's not unlike the actual stock market, Daniel, the powerful rich people get to make the rules.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ahem.Well, guilty as charged.You know, the best take on this, I think, is from James Harbeck @sesquiotic.Listen to this.“Free speech is like the free land colonisers went west across North America for.It wasn’t free;they just didn’t think of the people who bore the burden of their invasions as worthy of account."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep, that…that absolutely…I think…yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Final thoughts?
• linkBen Ainslie - The only thing I would say is that we haven't mentioned is that the counter letter, which— to the Harper's letter, I mean —the Objective.Okay, so let me let me pull it up here.So the Objective is a great collection of journalists, writers, and thinkers from communities of colour and marginalised communities.And they basically wrote a letter response.Like, they engaged in letter discourse which is eh, whatever, but it needed to be done, basically.In the same way that the LSA had to do something, sort of in response, so too did I think the Harper's letter deserve a reply.And this is a really good one.And it is to do with specifically the very racist…It's essentially a much longer read that talks about exactly what you've just said, Daniel, about the idea of, like, free land not being free, but actually there being people there.And it talks about that in terms of the fact that there is, you know, the bulk of the world who is non-white, and whose voices just absolutely are not breaking through because of the stranglehold that some of these very large, very powerful intellectuals have over that discourse.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is this the one called "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate"?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, that's the one.I've just put it in Slack.Yeah, that's my final thought.If anyone just really, is like me perhaps, and they find in their day to day life, maybe in their family or in their workplace, that everyone just loves bringing just righty fucking nonsense their way to try and piss you off, give that response letter a read.It's going to really…that one, and the Huffington Post article actually, I think that Hedvig shared with us, which we'll also chuck the link up for.If you read those to you will be able to just smack down any Johnny-come-lately "oh, come look at what the left is doing now" douchebag in your life very comprehensively.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig?Your final thoughts?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't feel bad for poor peo….Uh, for rich people!Feel bad for poor people.There are some cases that can be discussed, like they discussed in the Huff Post about random nonpublic figures potentially fearing some kind of harm.Poor people and nonpublic figures have been censored for ages.That's how the world has worked for most of time.The way we can talk about that is to strengthen worker's rights and unions.It's not to say that any opinions by public figures should be there, unquestioned.
• linkDaniel Midgley - My final thought is:I've been around the block a few times and I've seen this happen before.I've seen it happen in atheism.With some of the same players, including Jerry Coyne.Atheism in 2006, 2007 was fun!You know, it was like Flying Spaghetti Monster and shit like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What was his name, the YouTuber, the Amazing Atheist?Do you remember?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, yeah.But then when Rebecca Watson told men to avoid following women around at conferences and cornering them in elevators— so this was Elevatorgate —it ripped the lid off of the misogyny that was bubbling around in the new atheism.Atheism had members who said that atheism needed to be more inclusive for people of colour, for women.But the general membership was derisive and dismissive.And the leaders like Richard Dawkins, who incidentally canceled Rebecca Watson…the fedoras won.That was the end result.The fedoras won.As a result, women and people of colour didn't feel comfortable in atheism.It stayed old and white, and it failed!New Atheism is no longer a thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it's super irrelevant, right?Like it could not be more irrelevant, in terms of a movement with social capital, like fucking VSCO girls have way more play.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.I think linguistics might be a different area.Like to be an atheist, you just say I'm an atheist, I'll join a club, whereas linguists, you know, it's a professional thing.But I'm worried about the future of linguistics.I'm worried about its relevance.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And like I think I tried to say earlier, I don't know if I phrase myself well, but again, people might ask, well, these are linguists and this is a linguistics organization, what does it matter what Pinker says outside of linguistics?But it is also a community and a workplace and a place where employers and associations try and care for their members.And that's where representation and equal treatment come in.And that is why the LSA felt prompted to write that statement at the beginning about racial justice, because they felt that they had a duty towards those members.And this is what comes from that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, my solution then— and this may seem kind of paradoxical, but I don't mean it that way —my solution is to support the LSA.This is the incident that reminded me to renew my membership.And we all need to support the LSA, because this is a fight that we all need to be involved in.
• linkBen Ainslie - Can either of you think of many realms in which this sort of overarching systemic reform doesn't touch?Like, I find the notion that there's, like, regions of society that can be above or free from this, or that don't have to tackle this and engage with this…I'm coming up blank, to be honest.Like, what part of our world doesn't in some way or another reflect, reinforce, or have the capacity to address the huge systemic fucking issues in our world?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that's totally right.Like my ex-boyfriend, who was a physicist, when he was doing his master's in physics, they had a course called, like, Gender and Physics.And a lot of students were very annoyed that they had to take that course.And they're like "Physics has nothing to do with gender!" And then you just like look around in a department that they're in, and compare like the wages of their tenured professors.And you ask, are you sure?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, really‽
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because if physics and math is interested in the neutral and equal exchange of ideas, then the fact that people don't quote certain authors as much as others, and don't pay them as well is a problem, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - But yeah, that's what I mean.Like, there's no…look, if someone who is listening can think of a part of the world that is, like, above this or separate from this, by all means, hit me up.I would love to hear it, because I cannot think of much.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, thank you both.I was a little nervous about getting into this topic, because I know that it's the kind of topic that doesn't make anybody happy.But I'm glad that I was able to discuss it with the both of you.So thanks.
• linkDaniel Midgley - TRANSITIONAL MUSIC
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's time for Words of the Week.How I love them.I know you do too.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well I was already fired the fuck up, so let's keep the train rolling!Choo choo!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Griot.
• linkBen Ainslie - Griot?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Griot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Griot?Is it like a riot…
• linkDaniel Midgley - …with a G!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it?
• linkBen Ainslie - A grief riot?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a G riot!No, it's not.So one of the people who passed this last week was the late Representative John Lewis, congressman in the USA.He was one of many Black folks who were beaten by police on their march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.And if you saw the movie Selma, you saw that being depicted.Now in celebrating him with a tweet, Stacey Abrams…does that name ring any bells for you non-Americans?
• linkBen Ainslie - Nope.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - She ran for Democratic candidate.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, she ran for governor of the state of Georgia.She didn't win because the other candidate, Brian Kemp, engaged in voter suppression tactics.And those didn't get investigated because the person whose job it was to oversee the election was…
• linkBen Ainslie - His brother.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Brian Kemp himself!
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Jesus.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.We should also say that she's a Black woman, maybe.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, she is.So she's gone on to start Fair Fight Action, an organisation that works to register voters and ensure that all the votes get counted.Here's her tweet:"God has welcomed Rep.John Lewis, home.Defender of justice, champion of right.Our conscience.He was a griot of this modern age." And I looked at that and I said:griot.What a superb word.What is it?
• linkBen Ainslie - Is it like a version of GOAT?You know how GOAT gets used for Greatest Of All Time?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, it's not an acronym.Other guesses?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - is it just an old word that means, like, polymath?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a good guess, too.A little closer.Here's what it is.This is my dictionary on my computer:"a member of a class of traveling poets, musicians and storytellers who maintain the tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa."
• linkBen Ainslie - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Griot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wait, I knew that.I've heard that word before!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Have you?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Because I was looking up an oral history project on Senegal and they talked about griot.But that was like six years ago.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right, okay!Well a griot could be a musician or an entertainer, somebody who knows the history, who knows genealogies, a storyteller.The dictionary that I had listed BARD as a good synonym, but I think that maybe TROUBADOUR would be the right word.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's where I was going as well.Or GLEEMAN.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I never heard that one before!
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's from a fantasy series I like.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But don't they all, those all sound like they have to do, you have to have music.I don't think griot needs to be music, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I don't know that John Lewis was a musical person, to my knowledge.He was, however, a civil rights legend, somebody you knew about, even if you didn't know much about civil rights.There are a lot of people who function as institutional memory.And he was one.There are even photos of him turning up at cosplay conventions, wearing that same overcoat that he wore that day…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - …Whaaat?
• linkDaniel Midgley - …and taking children on a march around the place.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is so fucking cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh man, what a legend.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.So John Lewis, I enjoyed reading more about his life and he will be missed.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, next one.Revenge bedtime procrastination.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - I can guess what this is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I invented this!So this comes from a tweet by Daphne K Lee.The tweet is, "Learned a very relatable term today:“報復性熬夜” (revenge bedtime procrastination), a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I saw this.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "…in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours."
• linkBen Ainslie - Even if it ruins them for the following day.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Even then.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, don't care.Yeah, that's me.City Skylines.
• linkBen Ainslie - My one recently has been Stardew Valley.Holy fuck.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is that good?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh really, you're still playing that?Sorry, that sounded rude.
• linkBen Ainslie - I've plowed hundreds and hundreds of hours into exponentially growing the profit margins of my little farm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aw!
• linkBen Ainslie - But like, in exactly the context of this phrase-unit of just, like:"Fuck you, I'll stay up until 1:00 in the morning, farming ten turnips if I want to"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because nobody tells me what to do!
• linkBen Ainslie - Exactly.And Hedvig I'm sure yours is like, "Oh, I will get this traffic interchange perfect."
• linkDaniel Midgley - I used to call this retaliatory timewasting.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, at walkways, I love seeing my little my little citizens walking on my walkways and have them walk all over the city.I just want to have a city where there are no cars.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh!Can you do that?Can you pull it off?Have you managed to bring on the utopian pedestrian dream?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Not fully, because, like, shops still require deliveries and stuff like that.But everyone who's, like, going to work, I use a fair amount of them.Yeah.Walking, or taking the metro.It's lovely.
• linkBen Ainslie - Excellent.I love it.I support you creating a foot-based utopia.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can anyone think of any other REVENGE items?
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh, I mean, obviously REVENGE PORN comes to mind but that's super gross.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, didn't want to go there, say no more.Any others?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Revenge…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can only think of one more.And it has to do with Princess Diana.
• linkBen Ainslie - What?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Haircut?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nope.On the day when it broke that Prince Charles had cheated on her, she went out in this black dress that promptly got dubbed the "revenge dress".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, I've heard about that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like what?I will never understand Britain."Oh, she wore a black dress!Oh, what a cutting revenge that was, Gerald."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, you know, it was pretty hot, it was a good dress.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I think it's good!As a royal that's the kind of, like, expression you have.I think that's true!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, yeah, apparently it had been sitting in her closet for three years and she was like, "oh, I can't wear that.That's just too…" Yeah, well, it's time to wear it.
• linkBen Ainslie - There you go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, okay, what do you want the third word to be:CRISIS FATIGUE or TOILET PLUME?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - TOILET PLUME.
• linkBen Ainslie - TOILET PLUME.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now that we live in a covid age, we are recognizing all the ways in which we are disgusting, and have always been disgusting.And this is one.
• linkBen Ainslie - By the way, just, I don't know if this is true for you, Daniel, for both Ben and…Actually, all three people on this show have a partner who is a doctor, but two of us have partners who are medical doctors.Do you also get it, Daniel, where like, if you were to say that to your partner would immediately be like, I have always known how fucking disgusting human beings are?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I actually knew about the toilet plume because I have a friend who is a bit germaphobic.And several years ago when I was at her house and they all had the stomach flu, she was like:"During this week, at least, please put the toilet seat down when you…toilet lid."
• linkDaniel Midgley - So in case anybody's having trouble following, it turns out that when you flush the toilet, it sends billions of aerosolised toilet particles into the air.And this has always been the case, but nobody cared until there was articles popping up last week saying:you know, some of those particles might be coronavirus particles and they stay in the air for a really long time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, because coronavirus sheds into the feces.So if you poop, you send those things out in the air, and the next person walks into the stall.Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - And if you're in a place like the United States, which is just on fire with coronavirus, this is a very real concern.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, my god.Yep.The New York Times article quoting here, "Scientists have found that in addition to clearing out whatever business you've left behind, flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet, or one meter.These droplets may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet's next user, or land on surfaces in the bathroom." In a similar vein, the Mythbusters guys found the toilet plume aerosols were all over everything in a bathroom, including toothbrushes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Of course, of course.Yes, because toothbrushes are in bathrooms.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was looking at an article by David Johnson from 2017.Here's the title, "Persistence of Bowl Water Contamination During Sequential Flushes of Contaminated Toilets".Contamination…One of the results was that contamination still was present twenty four flushes post-contamination, although it says less than one log.LAUGHTER, BUT ONLY FROM DANIEL
• linkDaniel Midgley - HEDVIG.God.
• linkBen Ainslie - Love it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Also, The Straight Dope cited the work of Charles Gerba, a professor at the University of Arizona, who said that significant quantities of microbes floated around the bathroom for at least two hours after each flush.However, the toilet seat was the least contaminated of 15 household locales studied.And this is the quote from Dr.Gerba, "If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial accounts," the professor says, "he would probably conclude that he should wash his hands in your toilet and crap in your sink."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep, makes sense.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Armed with this new knowledge, are you going to start lowering the seat before you flush?
• linkBen Ainslie - Um…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just thought that this should be a thing we can solve with engineering.Surely the toilets should be such that when you press the button, it lowers the seat, or they should be like…
• linkBen Ainslie - I would put it out there that Japan has probably already fixed this.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.And also a lot of toilets on airplanes and trains have the button for flushing behind the lid.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there you go!There's a real fucking smart piece of design, isn't there?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That is good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.I was about to invent this whole thing and I told Ste about it, and he was like:"Oh yeah, you know about the train toilets?" And I was like:oh fuck, of course someone's already thought of it.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're figuring out servos and stuff.That's the kind of engineering I love the most.When you just…you force people to do a thing through, like, placement.It's so good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I haven't gotten any better at closing the lid.What I do now is I flush the can and then I run screaming out of the room.
• linkBen Ainslie - I am…I'm going to…I'll be perfectly honest, I'm just a filthy pig!And I don't mean that in the literal sense, like I don't wipe feces all over the place or anything.But like, in terms of my own sanctity around cleanliness to do with, like…like if I'm at home for twenty four hours, right, and I'm not going to go out into the world, I'm not going to meet people, I'm not going to go to work or anything like that…oh man!do my hygiene standards just fall off a cliff!Because, like, if I'm going out there and I'm shaking hands with people and stuff, I should absolutely have clean hands because that's what a good, decent human does.But if I'm just staying at home, I don't care if I have terrible breath and I'm covered in micro particles of my own feces, whatever!It's only me!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because we are revolting.And always have been.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I am particularly so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I actually…that doesn't happen to me because, I think, I had a midwife nurse as a mom and, you just get instilled those things like very early.And also if you're a girl, you get UTIs a lot easier.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.Absolutely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They…this is the cause…your yourself or your partner or not…Yeah, so and there's nothing…there's few things that scare me as much as UTIs.I hate them.
• linkBen Ainslie - They are awful, awful things.Well, on that uplifting note…
• linkDaniel Midgley - So GRIOT, REVENGE BEDTIME PROCRASTINATION, and TOILET PLUME:our Words of the Week.Let's just get to one comment from last episode, Stephen, from New York City via email:hello@becauselanguage.com.Stephen says:"Having heard 'Blursday' mentioned as a Word of the Week in the recent episode, I thought I might share this diddy that I had written up, even before I learned that 'Blursday' was something trending on 'all the things':In this peculiar time, when many people are furloughed, out of work, or working from home (but even then probably only kinda working) it's easy to lose track of what day it is.So I thought I'd post a reminder:If today is Mundaneday, that means tomorrow will be Blursday.And the day after that is Weariesday (oddly pronounced weers-day, for reasons no one knows).And that means yesterday must have been Twosday, because it felt like two days in one.(Or were both of the last two days Twosday and felt like one day in two?) Every week there's also a Flybyday, but week to week it's uncertain which two days it will fall between.The most unpredictable day, however, is the very rare Mattersday.The key to retaining your sanity is to make the most of each Mattersday.The problem is, you usually don't realize it's Mattersday until it's nearly over." Thank you, Steven.
• linkBen Ainslie - That was lovely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That was very nice.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - END THEME
• linkBen Ainslie - I would be willing to wager that a bunch of people who listen to today's show, given that it was basically an hour-long rant of everything we had a problem we have to do with a series of letters…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oof, sorry about that.
• linkBen Ainslie - …you probably have some reactions and we would love to engage with them.And you can do that on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Patreon, if you are a patron.We are becauselangpod all of the places.And if you are particularly old school, and I know some of you lovely cats are, hello@becauselanguage.com is where you can draft a delightful little email for us.Please, also, if you like our podcast, go ahead and tell a bunch of people.My favorite podcasts without fail have always been the result of people telling me to listen to a cool, interesting podcast.So do that favour for some of your friends.And if you really, really feel like it, we would love for you to leave a review in any of the places where you can leave a review for our podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcast, Stitcher, all those places!Go nuts.Crazy.Love it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is a Patreon episode that goes to our pages on Patreon, and we would like to send a special thanks to everyone who supports us there.And if this does get released to our general audience, you can also go on Patreon and become a Patreon…
• linkBen Ainslie - This is…this is how I think of it.This is how I think of it, Hedvig.This is an episode for the finest stallions and thoroughbreds in our stable.But later we might then free this episode into the wild for those beautiful, wild brumbies and Mustangs to enjoy as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sure.That's a lovely metaphor.Thank you.LAUGHTERSo let's just thank the people who are within our stable, we have…I can't think of enough horses to cover all these people, so I'm just going to say their names…
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - No, no.Don't do it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They are:Termy, Chris B, Lyssa, The Major, Matt, Whitney, Damien, Chris L— we have more than one Chris —Helen, Jack, Kitty, Lord Mortis, Elias, Michael, Larry, Binh, Kristofer, Dustin, Andy, Anna, Nigel, Bob, Kate, Jen, Christelle, Nasrin, Ayesha, Keighley, and Emma
• linkDaniel Midgley - Our music is written and performed by Drew Krapljanov, and you can hear him in two bands:Ryan Beno and Didion’s Bible.I'd like to thank you patrons very much for listening.Catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Buhbye!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Boop!
• linkPAUSE
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'll find a way to end that, and now here's the transitional music.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Boop ba doop boop
• linkBen Ainslie - So wait, are we still doing kids learning language?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No!
• linkDaniel Midgley - We are going to roll that shit over.LAUGHTER
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay!I was going to say!
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because it's time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We do not have…!LAUGHTER CONTINUES
• linkBen Ainslie - I was like:Oh, fuck!All right, buckle up, sunshine!
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was the topic!
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Nope.