61 - Together at Last

881 turns

• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig wants a proper OG Because Language intro.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - We will shut up, which will not actually…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.There we go.
• linkBen Ainslie - We can hold hands while we shut up.It will help us shut up.
• linkBecause Language Podcast theme
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello and welcome to this very special bonus edition of Because Language, a show about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley and…augh!Here's the team!It's Hedvig Skirgård sitting right next to me.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, hello.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And the always present Ben Ainslie.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello, I'm going to look at this camera.That's what I've decided.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that what you intended?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's great.I can choose.
• linkBen Ainslie - We get to do cool newsreader things.And in other news, we're going to…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This is Daniel's self-chosen job.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.All right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, we can do that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now, we get to do the calm chill bit, where we basically go, "This is going to be a really unusual episode."
• linkDaniel Midgley - This weekend has been the first time we've all been in the same place, even though we've been doing shows since— Ben —2011.
• linkBen Ainslie - 2011.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hedvig, our first show with you was in 2016 and then you were a guest.And then not for a year, and then again in 2017 a few more times, and then just all the time.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough.Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And one thing I want to do today is talk, I guess, about who were you when we first started doing this and who are you now.And what was the world when we started doing this and what is the world now?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And what is linguistics and language?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, my god, you just broke so many journalism rules, Daniel.You've asked four questions and all of which were super broad.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm not a journalist and this is the broad overview.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, Hedvig, it's been really wonderful having you here for the weekend.We're sitting on my deck.We're enjoying the birds.We're enjoying the magnolias.We're enjoying the sounds of nature.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.And coffee.
• linkBen Ainslie - And most importantly, caffeine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - This is going to be really fun.I think we should probably tell people in a sense, maybe either buckle up or if this is not going to be your thing, maybe just skip this episode, because this is not going to look like a normal Because Language episode.This is us kind of shooting the shit a little bit.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's not going to be so linguistically meaty, is what I think Ben is trying to say.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that is what I'm trying to say.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But as anyone who's listened to a podcast for a long time knows, it is…crosstalkNo, no, no, but any podcast, it is fun to go to a video and look up what the podcasters look like when they make the sounds that you hear in your ear.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I recently looked up some people that have been listened to for a long time and they don't look like I expected.And when they moved their mouth, the sound still comes out and it's like spooky.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.It's coming out of a human, but it's not the human…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And it's not the human…I've seen them on still pictures before and I was like, "Okay, yeah, maybe." And then, I saw them in a video and I was like, "Nope, wrong."
• linkBen Ainslie - Wrong.So, hopefully, you're all experiencing that cognitive dissonance now.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're our seeing weird faces in motion and just being like, "Ah, no, I don’t care for this at all."
• linkDaniel Midgley - We did do videos, you know?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We have.
• linkBen Ainslie - My students who are incredibly YouTube focused, because they're boys, looked me up.It goes in a cycle in my profession.Every two to three years, the knowledge that I do a podcast goes away.And then, there's a fresh awakening and students are like, "You have a podcast?" And I have to like, "It's cool.It's not a big deal.It's certainly not a surprise.It's not a secret, I hope.Blah, blah, blah." And then, they immediately go, "Oh, where can we find you?" So, I tell them all the things that you've probably heard listeners many times, because we've said it every show.But every time they're like, "What about YouTube?" which is arguably I think our least probably activated, and time and effort put into channel of all of the channels where we actually have a presence.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It might be Facebook now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.And so, they go there and they're always just like, "Oh."
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - There's always almost a commiseration on there, like, "Oh, you only have this many likes, and this many…" I'm like, "I don't need your approval, child.This is not why I do this." But I think all of that was a long-winded way of saying I think this is a really good opportunity to put this on YouTube and have it as like a placeholder video of…?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hey.
• linkBen Ainslie - Even though counterintuitively, this is not going to be representative of thecrosstalkepisodes that we do…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So, does that mean that we need to do like…Why don't we…I have a suggestion.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We do a round of what we think our show is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's interesting.I like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What it is.
• linkHedvig SkirgårdBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Should I start, because I'm the youngest and then they'll be…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right.And then, me.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hedvig as the youngest, everyone, in case that wasn't clear.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm the youngest.Also, in terms of years on the show.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, I see.crosstalkTenure.Yes, yes, yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And in terms of years…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Seniority.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsI make that joke everyone listening, because we sometimes tease Hedvig about desperately wanting to hold on to Gen-Z-ness.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just think they're really cool and I want them to accept me as part of that.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsI think I agree.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, they are really cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think you have picked a good order in which to do this.I concur with your…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.All right.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What is this show?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.I think Because Language is the show that comes out regularly, that is a bit of the longer one in your podcast feed.So, it'll be like 40 minutes, an hour.
• linkDaniel Midgley - An hour 30.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - An hour 30.In my brain, I'm like…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Consistently.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aren't there some that are shorter?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.Okay.All right.I'm wrong.It's a bit of a longer one and it has different segments in it.And it's about language and linguistics from a scientific perspective and it's not about specific languages, but about language as a phenomenon in the brain and in culture.And we do a newsy segment, which actually is one of my favorite segments, because I think there are fun new research and news going on in language and linguistics and I like that segment.And then, we do main segment, which is an interview with someone who's done something interesting, either written a book, or written a research paper, or done something else interesting.And that's the main theme, chunk of the show.And then, we do an end bit, where we do Word of the Week, which is an opportunity for me, in particular, to just talk about whatever I want a bit.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughscrosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - New linguistic phenomena is what we would probably try and call that section.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.It's supposed to be ones that have been in the news lately, but sometimes, it's just once that I think about.
• linkBen Ainslie - There's new, and then there's new to Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the show tries to be accessible to people who haven't done linguistics in school or at uni but are interested in language.So, we try to break down concepts.We try.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, that's part of it, sometimes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's sort of where I come in.I can take over the explanation…laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And what I like about it, there are a lot of linguistics shows and YouTube channels and things and everyone has a niche.And I think our niche is the newsy and the almost like journalistic covering of linguisticsunintelligible 00:07:51.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I'd agree with all of that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - As the second longest running member of…I almost said Talk the Talk, Because Language…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Talk the Talk, That's a dollar in the Talk jar.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no.So many dollars in that job.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - I've always seen my job as everyman or everywoman.But having said that, I think my job is…Our audience is a very clever audience.So, I'm always very reticent to go too broad in my everyperson role.I think our audiences are really clever cookies, generally.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They're very clever.But sometimes, they don't know jargon.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which iscrosstalk.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, totally.That's what I mean.Things like, "What does that piece of jargon mean?" definitely fall within my thing.But I've never seen my job as, "Let's make this as simple as humanly possible." I don't think that's what people who listen to our show really look for one or anything like that.There are other shows like that and they do great work.And I think they are free to go and do that, but that's not really what we're about.We were three relatively clever, educated people with huge blind spots.I saw that grimace.You're right.We are clever in very specific ways.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.The one thing in your explanation that I think probably hasn't been touched on is that we come from a very definitive perspective in our show.We are unashamed in some of our positions, and stances, and that sort of thing.I know it is gauche to use the word 'woke these days, but we certainly try and stay as educated on and abreast of political, social, and justice-oriented issues.Having said that, we're three white people.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was not going to…crosstalklaughs
• linkBen Ainslie - We definitely, definitely aren't on the cutting edge of that but I think we try very hard as three white people to be the least three white people-ly type of podcast we can be.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I don't know if we try very hard.We just try to cover language and cultural linguistics as fairly as possible.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think I'm not even sure…I think sometimes people make it sound like it's harder than it is.Just being a nice, kind person is not super effortful.
• linkBen Ainslie - I find it is.Maybe I'm just an asshole.I don't know.laughsI find it's really, really tricky to constantly…I definitely get where you're going their direction wise, which is just like, "Don't be a douche," isn't a particularly hard mission…?"crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it kind of low ball?
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - But if we engage in therapy chat for a second, the Johari Window and your unknown unknowns-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - -can be really, really tricky to try and get a handle on.And I think we make a bit of effort to try and stay on top of our unknown unknowns.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I thought we are trying to make a better world through language but in other ways, if we can.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we range.It starts with linguistics and then we will often just be talking about all sorts of random stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was giving a presentation and I was talking about language change and getting okay with language change and she said, "My language is Cornish."
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that actual Cornish?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, she was like…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Celtic language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.And she said, "I'm not okay with certain kinds of language change.My language is disappearing.I'm not going to be blasé about that."
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I said, "Okay, let me take a step back and then talk about what we're really about." "I talk about getting okay with language change, because I think that will help reduce discrimination and make a better world.But the real aim is to make a better world.And if that means keeping Cornish, then that's good too.That's a good goal." So, the real mission is to make a good world.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Usually, also, when we talk about language change, we talk about within one language.It’s like English speakers getting okay with the fact that young people are not going to speak exactly they did.
• linkBen Ainslie - Or the different varieties of that language have just as much relevance or standing…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Exactly.I'm actually not even sure I would call language endangerment, that historical process, language change.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I don't.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I understand that someone who's not in linguistics would, because it is changing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But in that class, maybe also, there's a discussion to be had about, there may be going to be young people who speak Cornish who want to use new words that all the Cornish speakers don't want to use.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think it isn't helped by the fact that there's bad actors in those conversations, who will deliberately try and create a narrative that is, "Oh, English is dying, English is under threat," and all that just nonsensical stuff.Now, some people make that argument in good faith, because they're just not very smart, because they don't really understand what…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - They just don't do this all day.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then, there's other people who are making those arguments absolutely in bad faith, who are trying to engender this story of the primacy of white English culture being under threat, which is just…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalkeven if it is, get rid of…
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't care.crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, I'm going to push back on that just a little bit.Because even at that level, I feel it gives power to the people that say that narrative exists.And I don't think it does, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - The narrative is false, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.No, especially false.
• linkBen Ainslie - And so, when people are like, "I agree with you if it were to be true," I'd still be like, "Ding-dong, the witch is dead."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - It'll be fine.But I don't even want to give bad faith arguers even that much where I'm like-crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Okay, fair enough.
• linkBen Ainslie - "Nope, incorrect.You are wrong."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is very incorrect.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, we've just now given our listeners or people new to the podcast, a very good idea of exactly what happens, which is we just ramble.crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I try to bring it that.
• linkBen Ainslie - We haven't even gotten to Daniel's explanation of the show yet.
• linkHedvig SkirgårdBen Ainslie - Daniel.
• linkBen Ainslie - Why don't we do it?crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - I like your explanation.I think the one thing that sets us apart is the news.There's also something else that I've become aware of in the programming and in editing YouTube for hours and hours and hours and hours.And that is that many shows are about a "thing" and they are going to try to leave it all on the field, "We have now said everything that we need to say about a thing," and we don't do that.We do a bit a and then maybe we'll come back to it in the next episode or is down the road…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.That is true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And it's almost where we are is part of the story, because my understanding grows about a thing.And I never say all there is to say about a thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - You can go back, literally, hundreds of episodes into our back catalogue back when we were called like a different podcast but essentially did still very much the same thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, pretty much the same thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - And you can see really significant shifts and changes in thinking on things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ooh, what's changed?What's changed?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I remember one of my favorite, favorite things that I ever learned on this podcast was the idea that the phonemes that we use in different languages.So, for people listening who might be completely new to the show, phonemes are things like 'ch', 'ca', 'la', just the different little bits of sounds that we can make with our mouths.The phonemes that we use broadly speaking map to where in the human migration out of Africa a particular culture is.Which is to say, African peoples who are the furthest back along that pathway have the most rich and complex phonemic inventories.So, this is where we will get interesting click sounds and that sort of thing.But see, Hedvig's shaking her head, because we know that this isn't the thing anymore.
• linkDaniel Midgley - This turned out to be wrong.laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - At the time, we could look at Polynesians, who have far fewer just letters in their alphabet, because there's far less phonemes in the language and we're like, "Oh, well, the Polynesians were way on the edge of the human expansion migratory wave." And so, they have less phonemes in their language.And then, Africans who are way back in the other direction have heaps and heaps of phonemes.But as cool as it sounds and as intuitive feeling it is, it's just not a thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well…
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What is the story, Hedvig?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's a general theory in evolutionary sciences, in general, biology, ecology, linguistics, all of them, anthropology, anyone who takes an evolutionary stance on their study object that, if you want to know the origin of something that's spread out, be that sparrows, or a certain bird, or something, then you're likely to find the most diversity at the origin.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Founder effect.Is that what it's called?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's really founder effect.And then, less diversity as you go out.And that works for language in some ways.A lot of language families will have a greater, not more words, but more different words at the center and less different words at the periphery, but not more words.Does that make sense?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They'll be more different from each other.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Correct.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I said it several times.I'm sorry I'm babying you.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it's okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And there was the theory and I think the paper you're referring to is by someone who I collaborate with.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.Cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Are we going to do a giant shit on their work?Is that what's happening?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.I actually am not going to do that, because I don't think that's necessary, but I also don't remember the nuances of their claim.But I do think that maybe it had to do with diversity at the center.And when we talk about that also, the other interpretation that could come from what you said is that people in Africa are less evolved, which is not the case.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.As far as I'm concerned from what I understood at the time, it would be the opposite of that interpretation, which is that because people in Africa have had so much time and opportunity into…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, that is where we want to go.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They've been in that place for a longer time, so different things have happened and-
• linkBen Ainslie - And stable cultures and society…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -interacting with each other in that place, and that's a thing.But there was a sentence you said that could have sounded like, "Oh, we had a lot of words in the beginning, then people went out and got less, and then the people here just stagnated and kept that." And that…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I think what I interpreted at the time was at the nebulous origin point of the out of Africa hypothesis, we probably had a set phonemic inventory to our language, relatively speaking, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - The pioneers, as it were, of that migratory frontier, who would later go on to end up being, say, Polynesians or the indigenous peoples of North and South America, and that sort of thing, the leading edge of that wave of initial human migration out of Africa would have held on to and probably had less reason to diversify and enrich their phonemic inventories, because they weren't stable and staying in one place, and constantly coming up and finding that frictional barriers when two peoples interact.And so, because of that their phonemic inventories stayed relatively similar to where they were in that initial phase of leaving…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whereas Africans and various peoples of that region for- what are we thinking, like 100,000 years?
• linkDaniel Midgley - 100,000 years.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - 100,000…Oh, out of Africa, it's like 100,000 plus years.
• linkBen Ainslie - For 100,000 years, they have been living, farming, agricultural, staying in stasis, empires have risen and fallen.I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface of the complexity of human evolution of civilization in Africa over 100,000 years.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - But in that process, so many more phonemic expressions have arisen because of that geographic stability and localization.That was what I understood it to be.But I also subsequently understood that apparently not a thing.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But also, new sounds and language don't come about just because of contact with other people.They come about for language internal reasons as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, I don't know.I don't know, I need to reread this paper, because…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - See, this is really good.I had thought that my favorite thing had been kicked to the can, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I don't think it entirely is.I think there's definitely…the basic idea, more diversity at origin, I think most people are like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then specific phenomena like language sounds, we know that they can come about through other means.So, that might not work so well for those.But I need to reread this paper before I make an ass of myself.
• linkBen Ainslie - But to take it back, maybe I don't know, at this point, like 10 minutes in the conversation, you asked, what have we changed on.That was only one very specific example.I think just broadly from an awareness perspective, from a justice perspective, from a social perspective, you and I, in particular, Daniel, because we've been doing it for 13 years, are very different human beings when we started.I started on this show when I was 24.I don't know if anyone's ever met a 24-year-old before.But they're really stupid creatures, especially white male, 24-year-olds.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Assholes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Just not done yet.You were ought to done yet.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You were a kid.You were running around.You were appearing in the social pages of The West Australian.There's a couple of you.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsWhy would you bring that…laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I got to find it.I got a photo of that thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.Was it at the Laneway Festival, where I'm dressed in my little knickerbocker shorts and stuff?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I think it is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, God.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - We'll have a link on our episode page for this.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Hello.There's another child.There's a child, the same child.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, my kids are running around inside the house.Yeah, you were a very different person and you acquired this cranky personality, but you lost the cranky person…Well, I mean…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I did have a divorce in that time.Things happened.And that's the other thing about our show, because it's been going on such a longitudinal timeframe, you and I both have had kids.You'd already had kids, but you had more kids.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I saw a relationship end.I started new relationships.I've changed jobs and I changed careers in that time.All of this stuff has happened whilst the show's been happening.And I think that by necessity means that you and I have certainly changed a whole bunch.And then on a slightly lesser, significant timescale, because I think you were…Speak to it, were you already mostly on the pathway you we're now on by the time you joined the show?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have this cognitive failure, which is that all throughout my life, I have just thought that I am the same and I don't think that's true.Ever since I was about 15, 16, if you asked me naively like, "Am I the same person when I was 15 years?" I'm like, "No, I'm not." It's really not true.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It can't be true.Surely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's probably not true, but it's very hard for me to be the same.
• linkBen Ainslie - That would make you one of two things, right?Either you are the most ridiculously immature you-year-old person in the world or you would like the most biblically mature 15-year-old world has ever seen.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, it's probably not true, but it's hard for me to introspect and see what that is.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe you just don't feel like you've changed in ways that matter, sort of like many Chomskyans feel language doesn't change in ways that matter.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe.
• linkBen Ainslie - We'll bring it back to linguistics…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I also have this other cognitive bias, which is, I think that whatever I'm doing and saying is the default, normal, most plausible thing that anyone would do.
• linkBen Ainslie - Isn't that inherently the psychological fallacy that all humans struggle to overcome?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, when people say something like, "Oh, I really like you," I'm like, "I am default."
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - "I'm just person."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "I am person."
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "What are you liking?" I don't get it.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's almost like…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, why would anyone want…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Why would anyone like a blob of fat?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The things I do are the things you would do.But it's not true, because then also some people do things that I would do and I'm very confusedlaughsand I'm like, "Oh, you're different people.Oh, okay.Cool.That maybe means that I'm a different person." I know that one thing that has happened since I turned 30 is that I have decided that I don't need to optimize things as much.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I want everything to be the optimal version.But sometimes, amount of effort spent, amount of improvement, there's a plateau.
• linkBen Ainslie - Diminishing returns kind of a situation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I've been become better at recognizing something like, "Oh, this isn't the best conference I've ever organized but it is good enough and it's going to be fine," is my main thing I thought that happened to me.But that's what…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I guess, my question was a little bit more geared towards like, when you joined the show, you were like, "Yep, definitely want to be a linguistic academic.That's my path that I'm on.That's what I'm going to do.That's what I'm going to pursue."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I was like, "I want to see what it's like to do a PhD." I've always thought that I'll be in academia for as long as it's good for me.And when it is no longer good for me, I hope I have the courage to leave.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, ooh, what's the parachute?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know.
• linkBen Ainslie - I want to know.Sure you've thought about it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Don’t know, can't tell you.
• linkBen Ainslie - If he thought about the idea that there is going to be an endpoint when it doesn't work for you, what alternatives…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, unfortunately the alternatives that exist are also precarious labor markets like journalism or teaching, which is where I think most academics would have their out.
• linkBen Ainslie - When you say teaching, do you mean not my sort of teaching but at an academic level?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.I've taught at primary school.
• linkBen Ainslie - You find primary and secondary teaching to be a precarious labor market?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe not preca…In Sweden, it's been not great.
• linkBen Ainslie - Interesting.Fascinating.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm so spoiled as an Australian teacher, I guess.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe.Maybe it's less precarious than I think but…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Come teach with us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe not precarious, but people do very hard work for not very much money.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, I see.Yes.Okay.Fair enough.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because the classic thing we're teaching pretty much the world over that I've observed is that your job security is very good.But your remuneration, maybe not so much.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Just quickly.Should be remuneration, I only learned this recently and it doesunintelligible 00:27:10.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Many people feel it's renumeration because number.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It should be.We've decided this…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Okay.Everybody.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, compensation?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.Okay.I could do that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What's that?
• linkBen Ainslie - As in a stand-in for remuneration.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Compensation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Compensation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.So, I'm staying the same as always been.crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Very good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalkFor all I know, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm laughing at you, but my experience of having three hourly chats with you once a week to fortnight for the last five years actually holds up your hypothesiscrosstalkchanges.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can't really disagree.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, the only change is that one.Because when I came into my PhD, I was in a PhD project with some of the people and I was like, "Okay, oh, I'm getting stressed that this isn't organized the way I would like as I try to organize it." And then, someone took me aside and he was like, "Hedvig, you don't.It's fine.Just focus on yourself.It'll all be fine."
• linkBen Ainslie - Chill, bro.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Chill.And I had to be told that now and I don't need to be told that as often now.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fair enough.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - As often.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When I started doing Talk the Talk and it started becoming an hourlong show and it started to ramp up, I was…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Can we explain briefly what the show was and how it started?
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, 2009, I started doing a seven-minute segment on RTRFM, a community radio station.I would go in every Tuesday morning.Mm?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Seven?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.You heard right, folks.This little behemoth started as a seven-minute…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was really just…And you got whoever was doing the thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - It was a linguistic chicken McNugget.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, pretty much."Oh, let's have the thing." Then, it got take up more time.We let it run.It got to be a 25-minute thing.And then, Peter Barr, the station manager said, "Would you like it to be an hour thing?" And so, it was.And that was when I made the shift to prerecord so I could have more control.I was a maniac in those days.How was I doing a show every week with interviews, and stuff, and recordings, and feedback from…?And I had a full-time academic job on top of that.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, a full-time academic job.The only thing I can say is, you didn't have small children.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I didn't have small…But then, I did.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - And my dear partner just took a lot of that and that must have been hard.And so, she's really the hero of the show, as far as I'm concerned.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's true for my partner as well, I'm sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.But now, I find that I'm doing a lot less.It feels like we keep putting out episodes…I don't know if it's ever going to take over the world, but I'm okay with…They are my publications.I feel episodes are our publications for us, or we need to start thinking of it that way.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay, we get two DOIs.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That would be cool.
• linkBen Ainslie - DOI?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Digital Object Identifier.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like a stable URL.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.Sorry.I know you mean like what you tag certain documents and stuff with.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The other thing that I'm doing is, I'm doing shows on the Australia…It's come back to where it began on the ABC, the Australian ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where I do a show on Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon.I phone in on a show to Adelaide for 15, 20 minutes and then another 15-, 20-minute thing every Thursday morning.It's a whole different audience here in Perth, a whole different audience.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.So, listeners, if you remember earlier in this episode where I talked about how I don't want to try and dumb it down too much, forget all that.That is what Daniel has to do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because I don't have to confront things about getting cranky about language change or why we have to accept languages besides English.
• linkBen Ainslie - "Daniel, why don't they come to this country and learn our language?" Stuff like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - "Why did they call it British English?Why don't they just call it English?" that kind of thing.The way the Queen talks sounds so lovely.
• linkBen Ainslie - I would put it to people that it actually didn't sound weird, and archaic, and stilted, and non-relevant…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's only good coming out of Olivia Colman, The Crown.She played…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yeah.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, there's two different audiences.And I started to see the divide between The Because Language audience and the ABC audiences.And now, I'm doing something new.I'm teaching a lot on the- what do I call it?Where there's a group of people, mostly older, who want to get together and hear a lecture by someone.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like an open universities type thing?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That kind of thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And so, I do that sometimes one a week.I'm just going to a place, just doing a lecture, doing a thing for people, usually older, maybe 50, 60 plus, and…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Retired and semiretired?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that kind of thing.And sometimes, I think, "Hmm, this is really different.Is this where I want to have influences?This seems like a good place to have influence.Is it really?" And then, what will happen is that older folks will come up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do they change their minds?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I see it happening.I see it happening for some.Not everybody.At the end of one, I said, "Hey, we have to stop, but I'll stick around for questions for a bit, if you want." And an older gentleman said a little too loudly, "Don't bother."laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Hecklers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, it means I'm getting people angry.But afterwards, people come up to me and they're like, "What's this about 'singular they' or 'nonbinary language'?" And I'm realizing, these people have trans or nonbinary grandkids.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, it's a thing, for sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And they're struggling to understand.And so, that…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds like they're trying…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - That'sunintelligible 00:33:17always the best thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because they can go in there to learn about and to be like, "Oh, maybe there's something I need to learn about." Like, "Oh, it's hard.It's hard."
• linkDaniel Midgley - "What about this?" And then, I can be there and I can say, "Yeah, that's totally a thing and we know about this.Here's how you can help." Really, I feel I'm in a good place right now with the show talking to you two, which fills in a certain place, and then talking to other people, and doing lectures, which gets…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's very different from what I used to do, but I'm really glad that I'm doing it.I feel pretty happy about it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like the idea…Excuse me.I think I've mentioned it on the show before there's a new show out called Moonhaven, which is okay.It's not the most amazing thing in the world.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's a TV show?
• linkBen Ainslie - It is a TV show.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's a drama?
• linkBen Ainslie - It is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's on Netflix, HBO…?crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I think that it is on…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Perfect.
• linkBen Ainslie - You know how we're in this really annoying period of decentralization of production?I think it's on AMC+, which is another way to say that is, "Get it how you want to get."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Moonhaven.
• linkBen Ainslie - Moonhaven.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - It posits this sort of utopia that has grown up on the moon over the last 100 years.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.And now, in my head, it's just become sort of a…what's the word I'm looking for?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Placeholder?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.Thank you.It's become a placeholder for an idea of what we need to do to fix the stuff.And so, what Daniel's talking about which is almost anekistic, in the true sense of the word, localized approach to educating, to change, to culture change, linguistic change, and that sort of thing is the kind of way the future, I think.We need people like you who know stuff on a localized level to just sit with people and be like, "What up?" "Here's what these things mean.And these things mean amazing things." And you're not going to convince everyone, but the people who are open, and looking for answers, and for help like navigating this new frontier, which is to their perception, certainly, just resplendent with rocks to ground your craft on go, "Oh, great, somebody who can help me navigate these waters." That's really helpful.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I have to say as well, with great power comes great responsibility.You are not young, white man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.I'm someone that they will listen to.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, which means that when you say like, "It's okay.Let's talk about this," they're going to be like, "Ooh, nice." Coming…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - The white man said so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.But honestly, it helps, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - I say it in a joking way, but I mean it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's like, "You know, I used to not get this too and let me tell you what helped me."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can be an interpreter they will listen to.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, this is the thing we also come across often in the show, which is like…Well, maybe all things considered that's okay, but I wish it wasn't exactly like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, the trick is, you pass the mic.When you have the authority, you pass the mic.You highlight…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Are you able to in these speakeasies and things to be like, "And he's a young man or woman who would to talk to you about you learning their language…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.It's harder.And then what you do is you point them to Because Language, where we are able to do that more fully, I think.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's hard in that space.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is tricky.Yeah, it's hard.But the other thing is, teaching young people, we could…because…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - I guess, we've covered, huh?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Old people were young people at one point.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I tell the old people, you tell the young people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they went to school, and they had a primary school teacher, maybe, who if I can guess said, "You have to speak like this.Otherwise, you are not."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Mrs.Terwillegar was like, "Your verbs are always these and you're…"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And you can't say, "This ain't that." You haven't say, "This isn't that," or whatever it is.They were told it was wrong and right, and they were graded, and they handed in things, and they got good or bad grades, and that's how they were taught.And when you go to primary school nowadays, some of that is still there.I don't know, I've talked to some Swedish teachers and they talk about trying to talk to their kids about language appropriateness instead of correctness like, "Oh, there's an appropriate style that maybe you need to employ in work interviews, but that doesn't mean it's the best thing."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - This was something that I wanted to talk about that's changed over the show, because I think when we started talking about stuff, your view, and I was willing to go along, was the code switching.We need to help students to be good code switchers and talk about appropriateness.
• linkBen Ainslie - Mm-hmm.But you have become subsequently far more radical.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - I've become radicalized.I'm not going to teach students appropriateness so that they can dodge discrimination for somebody else to cop it.Other people can work on that."I want to focus on ending discrimination and working in that way.And I know that that's…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Actually, we have seen a few different roles a few different times, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's the most consistent thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, where we keep coming back to, not just on a linguistic front, but the idea of, "Do you help people navigate a system or do you dismantle the system?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you dismantle the system?I can dismantle the system and I won't.And maybe there will be some aspect of navigation that needs to happen.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because you're not the one-
• linkDaniel Midgley - Who cops that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -who cops that, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - No.Not at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I'm aware of that.I'm still going to find discrimination as much as I can, because I'm convinced that helping people navigate is a red herring, because it's not about…they don't get them on…Even if they could speak perfectly and aped the standardized variety, they'll get them on something else-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, they will.
• linkDaniel Midgley - -because it's not about language and it never was about language.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There you are.And it's a moving target.They'll be like, "Oh, you learn the variety we said we liked two years ago."crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "Now, we like something else."
• linkBen Ainslie - It's APA 8.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, I have little patience for helping for the code-switching approach.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.You are not the one who cops it, like someone is copping it…
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that's not a good time.
• linkBen Ainslie - My needle thread on that one is to acknowledge to my students, who are often teenagers, the unfairness and in a lot of ways pointlessness and stupidity of the system to say to them, "The fact that this is regarded as good, proper, higher value, higher order, all of these things is absurd and I don't want you to think that.However, in the system that we operate in, you will be afforded some measure of preference, if you are able to do these things.To put it really bluntly, these are the white man's tools.If you would like to know how to use them, I will teach you, but I will remind you the whole way that they are the white man's tools and they can suck.But what you do with those tools is entirely your call, because you're autonomous."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Teach that there is a standard, but also teach the fact that the standard is the standard is inseparable from considerations of power and prestige.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you think that they get that or when you say that very nuanced explanation, do they just hear, "Uh, Ben's saying a bunch of fancy words and he wants me to learn this"?
• linkBen Ainslie - In much the same way that Daniel's community lectures and lessons will have a certain hit rate or success.And also, on top of that, it's really hard to know reallycrosstalkwhat your success rate or your hit rate is.I get the very distinct impression some people get it in the sense that the message that I'm communicating lands relatively unchanged.Some people are more or less disinterested, because they're going, "I just want talk.Okay.You're waffling on, it's not important to me," which is completely fair.That's their call.
• linkBen Ainslie - And then I think we always have to account for the fact that some people will be interpreting the message that I am delivering completely differently from any kind of intent that I actually have.So, they might walk away from it going, "That guy's a jackass and he doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about.This is not the world I live in.And all of his cool, woke guy approaches actually don't mean anything to me or help me at all and maybe I either dislike him, disregard him," whatever it happens to be.And that's also completely understandable and fair, because as you were saying, Daniel, I don't really inherently have skin in the game.
• linkDaniel MidgleyHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - What I do, I do because of a moral imperative, but not unfortunately, because of an actual necessity, which is not true.Most people don't get to take their skin color off.Not most people.No people can take their skin color off.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No people.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I forget some of these things, because I have chosen an industry like academia and specifically, humanities and linguistics is very open to making fun of for not adhering to some of these rules.And especially, linguists who do field work.For example, I have…crosstalkOh, my God, yeah.Well, and then sometimes, they'll be like, "No, I have very particular opinions about the Oxford comma," and I was like, "Oh, you do?Okay."crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalkThat's an interesting hill to die on, but fair enough.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalkdeal with that.But usually, when you write academic papers for journals, we will usually sort of do this stuff.Okay, everything else, meh.And also, it just comes with a culture of dress code, how you address the peers, and everything.So, I don't…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that field specific or country specific?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it's field specific.I think it's similar, for example, in biology andcrosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - And so, biologists in Germany, China, America are likely to have a fairly similar culture academically.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Like physicists in all those countries, as far as I know, have a standard uniform, which is like a t-shirt with a funny quantum mechanics joke-
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -and cargo shorts.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they all…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - There's very little variation.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And they are like, "Yes.we look like this." And linguists who do field work have some sort of clothing from the place they do field work.So, if you work in the Pacific, you have Hawaiian cool shirts.I bought one now in Tahiti.Very nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - Cool.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I can wear this as a formal wear to my office every day and no one will bat an eyelid.I wear sarongs.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I come in with sarongs and flip flops and flower shirts and everyone's like, "Yeah, it's fine." When I started my PhD, my mom was like, "You have to buy a nice little black dress that you can wear at formal events."
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Right.You also need probably a little bit of a blazer-bolero thing…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I've never used it.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Not entirely true.Used it at a funeral.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, okay.Go sad.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But in fact, if you do wear like office neat and tidy corporate wear, I think people would be like, "What is up with you?"
• linkBen Ainslie - "What's your- what's your…what's your angle?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, this is not, hmm.You have to dress a little bit quirky, I think, or very like relaxed.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think if I ever left academia and had to go into suddenly a corporate job or something, I'm going to be met with a bit of a culture shock with people policing how I behave and what I say, because I can get away with being pretty darn obnoxious and cute in my current state.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsI like that you use the word 'cute'.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Would others?
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no.I don’t know.That's unfortunate.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I want to know, have you two enjoyed hanging out this weekend?We've done a lot of things together and this has been the time when we hang out, and we haven't gotten the chance to do that before.What's it been like getting together?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's all the same.laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.When I first got here to Daniel's house, because Hedvig's only been here for like three days.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I remarked on the weirdness of the not weirdness, right?And I said, "This has happened to you before, Hedvig.It's probably happened to Daniel, but it's certainly never happened to me." I've never gotten to know someone to such a significant degree.Hedvig and I, if we were to tally it, it would be hundreds of hours of conversation at this point.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because we've been doing the show together for five years minimum.And each of those shows, given how we are, go for at a recording level-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - -two and a half to three hours…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.Not that long.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, they do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two hours normally.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's only when we've transitioned to prerecords that you've done, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - If we actually have a guest that were involved in, whoa, it balloons.So, literally hundreds of hours.And so, I rock up here.Having never physically, in person met Hedvig before and it's, for lack of a better phrase and this might be weird, a close friend that I happen to have never been in the same physical space as her.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, it should be quite awkwardunintelligible [00:46:29and it wasn't.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it helps that as I was saying like, "I've never seen this part of your body." Butlaughsit's just medium white man.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsunintelligible 00:46:38again?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It was like, "Nope."
• linkBen Ainslie - Nondescript.I'm the golden retriever of human bodies.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughsAs you mentioned before, Ben, all of your interactions between the two of you for years and years have pretty much been publicly available.Everybody's been able to listen to…If somebody listens to all of our shows, they would have heard the extent of your interaction.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's a fascinating thing to think about, isn't it?There's some people who will feel they know me as well as I know Hedvig, but it's a unidirectional flow, instead of a bidirectional flow.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And now, we've been able to have some private interaction-
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that's true actually-
• linkDaniel Midgley - -which is nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - -which, I have to say, has in no way differentiated itself from…
• linkBen Ainslie - laughter
• linkBen Ainslie - unintelligible 00:47:29one aspect of our interactions that is in any way different from anything that you have heard.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it's true.It is true.And we say that this is the first meeting, but I've only met Daniel one time before.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was in Canberra.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - True.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, it's actually not that different-
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -in many ways.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.I think I met you a couple of times.I stayed at your place once and then there was a conference a few years before that.It was once in-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Canberra as well?
• linkDaniel Midgley - -2018 and then in 20…Uhh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uhh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is that same visit.Am I conflating?
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalkThis is certainly what people have come to the podcast for, hearing you two go, "Uhh."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Uhh.
• linkHedvig SkirgårdBen Ainslie - Uhh.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You can pull them out and make like a…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, like a compilation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Anyway, not many times.Let's just put it like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not many times.It's true.So, it's been kind of the same.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But I think it's been good.I think we are also people who live a lot on the internet and I have from a young age.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, a lot of my relationships…It is true.I have very few that I've never met in real life, but I have a lot of relationships that are-
• linkBen Ainslie - Predominantly online.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - -significantly mediated by the internet, and they are not any less real to me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And I think now that millennials, the first generation to be old at the internet and Zoomers are getting into it, as Millennials and Zoomers, I think we can understand social cues and stuff through text and through, who's liking which tweet and what's going on, it's a lot of nuanced.You can communicate a lot, actually.
• linkBen Ainslie - Quite good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I certainly had the experience of having online only…I was a tragic nerd as a teenager.So, there were plenty of friends that I had or even online.I just haven't met them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I never ended up meeting them later.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, same.
• linkBen Ainslie - Wonder what starburst86 is up to now.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The show is a different experience for me because you show up, and you say stuff, and then you're done.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh, lazy.It is just no other way to describe it.We just rock up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I've tried once.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think I've told this over the weekend.Because Daniel does the prep, the agenda, the plan.Sometimes, I try and help with that to more or less success.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Love that.
• linkBen Ainslie - And I do not ever help.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And he does not ever?
• linkBen Ainslie - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And then, we record, and then we all send audio files to Daniel, and then he needs to mush them all together, and then cut out our ums and ahs and when we say stupid things or…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Weird digressions.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Weird digressions and things.crosstalkBecause I was present for the episode, I don't always listen to the full episode.But I do sometimes, I'm like, "Oh, I sound smarter."
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - Daniel looks…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It really comes together in the edit.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But it means that you listen to our voices.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Like three times.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Three times.
• linkBen Ainslie - Good Lord.I'm so sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You'll be like, "Oh, that was like that time when you said that." And I said that once.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Daniel heard it when I said it and then listened to it a couple more times.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I hear it when you say it.I hear it when I edit.And then, I hear it when I listen back to do transcript correction.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, I've seen all of the words.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - This actually throws into really sharp…I'd always thought you were a mostly functional savant with the amount of recall ability you-
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - -have over our shows.It's only just now occurred to me that that's because you have stupid…like, four times more exposure to the…laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And every stupid thing we say, he remembers.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Crazy.
• linkDaniel Midgley - While the show is going on, while we're talking, I'm like, "I'm not keeping this." I'm editing-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, youcrosstalkediting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - in real time.
• linkBen Ainslie - Do you ever make notes?Do you ever actually…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.Right.So, it's all mental flagging.
• linkBen Ainslie - I crawl minute by minute through the show and think, "Oh, this was that bit where I was going to cut that out or I was going to put that-"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - -at the end."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What's the common thing you cut?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Umm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, that's a good question.Yeah.Here's how I'll ask it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Digressions that I don't think are interesting.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.I was going to say, "What do you want to say to Hedvig?" and if you could give just one direction each, what would it be?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.We'll becrosstalkstudents.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nothing.I don't want to do anything.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, no, no.
• linkBen Ainslie - Come on.Come on, come on, come on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There really isn't anything that I want to change about what we do.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Should we talk over each other less?
• linkDaniel Midgley - No.It doesn't matter, because I can fix that.Because I've got you on separate tracks.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I've got you on separate tracks.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I feel we can take input.
• linkBen Ainslie - See, I think he's being…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have none to give you, because-
• linkBen Ainslie - I know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - -I think that what you're doing is fantastic.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm disappointed as well.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - I know, I'm sorry.And you know what, partly don't want to tinker with it.But also, there's really nothing that needs to change.This is not a problem, because anything that comes up, I can fix.But you know what, I listen to the show, I get the files, and then it's time to edit the show.And you know what, it feels like I'm spending time with you and…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is sort of parasocial, but you're there.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Kind of.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then, I get to the end and I just think, "These guys are great." And I just…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm also confused.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't want to do anything besides this.This is what I think.I think this is the best job.I don't want to do anything besides just hanging out with these two.Luckily, very fortunately, I am in the privileged position of being able to do this full time, which people who have jobs can't do.So, I feel I want to take my good fortune and show that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.We need to have other people in our lives to take our egos down.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalkdo that?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, that will happen.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sound like I'm across that.crosstalkDon’t worry.I'm doing enough of that to myself.No worries at all.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Steve doesn't think like…
• linkBen Ainslie - Does he like love you and cherish you and value…?crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, my goodness.My partner does the same thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Same.
• linkBen Ainslie - And because I'm a deeply damaged, broken person, I can't handle that at all.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, his wedding vows were so sincere and nice.And mine had a joke in it…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, dear.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - chuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - The failure is ours.Do you understand that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I said, "Oh, I read through our vows and you were so sweet and mine was a bit trying to not be so sincere." And he's like, "No, no, no, yours were great.I loved them."
• linkBen Ainslie - Even on this level, youcrosstalklaughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's different ways to be and we be them, and it works.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, Daniel, incorrect.I need to change.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's express this brokenness.How long have you felt this way?
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsOh, no.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Did you also when you were little, get told like, "You are a diamond in the rough.You can be so great if you're just by yourself"?
• linkBen Ainslie - No.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I was told that.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, not at all.No, I had largely pretty dysfunctional childhood, unfortunately.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm sorry.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, it's okay.It's the response that I feel obligated to give any mention of such thing.But it's a tough gig trying to human.I don't find it particularly easy.Or, more to the point, I found it really, really easy for a long time, because I wasn't trying very hard.Does that make sense?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I guess.
• linkBen Ainslie - Being a 'meh' person is really easy, because you just barrel through existence, doing whatever inherent impulse comes to you.And then…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Living consciously.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I want to be really, really clear here.I'm not saying, I do that very well.But even trying on a really small level to try and start doing that, sucks.It's really hard.It's not fun, or easy, or any of those sorts of things.But I don't know, I personally experience it as once you are showing a little bit behind the curtain, you can never really ever forget that you've seen behind the curtain and all of the magic dies in that moment a little bit.That was my experience anyway.The illusion.vibratingOh, no, I have to buy you both a carton now.That was the rule back in the radio days.If someone's phone goes off in the studio, you go buy everyone a carton of beer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.We'll do that next time.So, what time is it?
• linkBen Ainslie - It is 10 o'clock exactly on the dot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, we're all good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we're doing well.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We're doing well.
• linkBen Ainslie - We haven't waffled too much, I don't think.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, I feel we're coming to the end of something.I feel we're tapering down.That's how it feels.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Or we figure out how to get a second wind, but we can also taper it down.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't think this needs to be necessarily super self-indulgent.Like we have two hours, so we fill two hours.We don't need to be a gas in a certain space, fill that volume no matter what.What's the takeaway?If we were to exert a slice of this video recording podcast to be the landing video on a YouTube page, or a pinned video on a TikTok, or something-?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think the reason we're talking so much about society, and feelings, and ourselves, and our experiences is because language is connected to all of that.And I think a lot of linguistics sometimes fail to recognize that or ignore that out of a need to just do feasible research, research I do included.And I think it's a nice outlet actually for me the show to be able to talk about the societal impacts and things and multidisciplinary of linguistics, because it's not often something you can do in actual research.And the way we talk about other people and the way we treat other people are quite connected.I don’t know.I think that's why we stumble into these things so often.
• linkBen Ainslie - I agree.Yeah, I think that necessarily, linguistics…And this is a complete outsider's perspective in the sense that I have no formal linguistic education of any kind, is one of the most inextricable disciplines from just being alive, it's really hard to tease apart linguistics from being a human being who lives and experiences the world.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whereas for something like physics or chemistry, it's really easy to do that, because those rules and those principles exist totally independent of human beings existing and being alive.Whereas linguistics, the study of linguistics could not exist without us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and that's why linguists are such a drag at parties as well, because language is going on all the time around us.And even if people are quiet, that is a communicative signal.In your head, you're doing things as well.So, if you've ever been at a party with a linguist, probably what happened is someone says something, they are like, "Oh, can you see that in the past tense as well?Ooh."
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And you become a little zoo animal and it's a bit awkward and you have to tell them to stop.But it is because it's everywhere…I experienced this when we did that interview with the translation service based in Israel.What were they called?
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was BLEND.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - See what I mean?See that recall?We’re 400 episode deep, and he's like, "Oh, you mean BLEND?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I also said a falsehood in that one.I said the wrong etymology of Ukraine.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, don’t.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.No.Focus, focus.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's my job.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They asked us questions.They asked us as linguist questions about what's going to happen with societal changes in future, specifically about for example, gender-inclusive language.And we're like, "We study the words."
• linkBen Ainslie - We're not futurists.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But what you're asking us to do with something that maybe ask like a sociologist, or an historian, or an anthropologist.I'm not sure sometimes…because it is true, linguistics is linked to all these things.But the study of linguistics is not actually preparing you to study all of those things always and maybe that isn't even possible.When you make a study, we try to focus on what are the words.And linguistics is coming more around to the fact that communication is more than just words.There's shared common knowledge, assumptions, and hints, and like…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Can we describe linguistics as…?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, no.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, no, no.Is it possible to carbon date linguistics into epochs?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, the first bit was when we were like, "There are words and those words have rules and that is linguistics."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, that's-
• linkDaniel Midgley - Panini.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, Panini.One of the first grammarunintelligible 01:00:08written was written in India a very long time ago on Sanskrit and that was very influential.So, some people called it like Paninian linguistics up until…well, probably up until Bloomfield.
• linkDaniel Midgley - 1700s.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay.Oh, yeah.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jacob Grimm and …crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, okay.And then, we get like, "Ooh, maybe there are language trees."
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And everyone gets…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe languages are related to each other so much.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Languages are related.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then, maybe we can figure out what they were like earlier.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And as is always neat to point out, still very intertwined with racist ideology.
• linkBen Ainslie - Of course.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - That's nearly everything throughout the enlightenmentunintelligible 01:00:51wars.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And I think this idea that people have that racism was a thing in Nazi Germany.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It was and everywhere else massively, like all of Europe was doing eugenics.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's why it was appealing.That's why Nazism was appealing to most people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I believe it was sort of the 1400s…My extremely limited understanding of this is starting from the 1400s onwards, a racial dimension to thinking was a relatively new aspect in the sense that there was always the other.So, if you were, say, a European citizen, you would see yourself as a Christian and then there would be everyone else.You would see yourself as Northern European and then there would be everyone else.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - But the idea that being sub-Saharan black African was a unique racial quality to those people kind of gets its start around 1400s-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mainly.Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - - more or less as a justification for chattel slavery.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And also, I think people are fascinated by biological evolutionary theory and wanted to use that in more…I don't know, but it definitely permeates into linguistics as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - Of course.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Some of the terms like isolating andunintelligible 01:02:09and stuff has part of its origins in some of that stuff about primitive and betard.There's a lot of wording, even in anthropologic linguistics into the 60s, it has a lot of wording about primitiveness, and progression, stuff that…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, rudimentary and…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It gets really icky.And I have this map that I was trying to remind myself off, which is the language families of the world and they're all divided into the three races.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We put a link up to that photo.It's on our website.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's good to just sit with and look at and be like, "Okay, this is a thing.It was made in 1920s.It was perfectly normal.It was taught to school children.It was perfectly normal." Anyway…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anyway, we had them there was Bloomfield and Jakobson.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then, Chomsky.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Chomsky.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And then, Labov.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, like sociolinguistics.Yeah, I guess…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that where we are now?
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's where we are.I think it's where we are.I feel we're doing a lot of language evolution stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And it's not they replace each other, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's more like you get more spouts.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's still Labovian and Bloomfield…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's like vinyl and CDs and streaming.
• linkBen Ainslie - Right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You get all of them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Maybe that's where we are now.I definitely think that linguistics has progressed to recognizing the social context of language more.It used to be more like a logic puzzle.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And now, it's like people use this to communicate and to signal identity.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, it was approached more like a physics back in the day, where there are rules and systems that govern how this goes and…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that are independent that you can extract from social situation and they have exactly the same meaning, which we don't think is true, really.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And so, when you have gone and past sentences that are ambiguous, like when you read them on a piece of paper, you're like, "Oh, I don't know if this refers to that or that," when you have them in a social context, there is no confusion.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkBen Ainslie - Semantic ambiguity drops off significantly-
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - -when you get that face-to-face communication.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I know Ben.I know roughly what he knows.I know that if I say these words, he's going to probably think like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, we have guesses about each other's knowledge and beliefs, desires, goals, and intentions.So, we use all of that information, even though we're just guessing a lot, to disambiguate the words that we hear.
• linkBen Ainslie - But good guesses.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And were really good guessers.crosstalkIt's really rare that we get it wrong, honestly.And when you get it wrong, sometimes, you're like, "Oh, this person's inner in mind is not the way I thought.The rest of my conversation, I'm going to…"
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm good.Or, I'm going to clarify.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I'm going to stick to a different…Yeah.Sorry, you asked me a question and then I ranted off.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, we got it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Epochs of linguistics.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that's the thing.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, there we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But might be different.We'll continue evolving.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, yeah, that's certainly…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - If there's a button for…Because Language is a show to just round out this really bizarre non-normal episode is that, if you wanted to know what Because Language is and is about and you wanted to just jump in now, you can reliably anticipate that we're just going to be bringing you new, interesting, different things of a linguistic orientation, but certainly not exclusively about linguistics.And we're probably also going to try and make it fun and funny in the process.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, we try.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We talk to interesting people who are doing good work.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Speaking of, who are we talking to you next?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, that's a good question.We've got a number of shows lined up in the hopper, but the exact order is going to be…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Depending on availability and that stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, stuff like that.There is one thing that I want to say and that is, we made the jump from appearing on a community radio station to going independent of being ourselves.
• linkBen Ainslie - Podcast only.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And that's been amazing, because I was wondering, should we do it, should we make the move?And Grant Barrett from A Way with Words, I was talking to him about this.And he said, "Do it.Jump.They'll catch you.They'll catch you." And they, being the patrons, the people who have been with us since the Talk the Talk days.And they did.They've caught us and they've been great contributors to the show.Actually, one huge difference is.the media landscape, we used to be about, "Oh, Facebook," for a long time and I didn't even have Twitter.I didn't even have a Twitter account, and then I got that grudgingly.And Twitter is now the way that we do it mostly and I despise Facebook.I don't want to do Facebook.I don't want to make Facebook.I think there's things that Facebook is very good for.There are good things about Facebook.I don't like it anymore.Please do something different.But we get most of our engagement from Discord.Our Discord patrons are amazing.They give us so much good stuff and they create…We've managed to create this fun, perking environment and you folks show up.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I really like Discord, but they are still active, I actually struggled to keep up.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's a bit intimidating.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Just stop it.
• linkBen Ainslie - But this is also…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I try.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - This is something that I noticed certainly when I was my nerdy teenage self is that web comics that I enjoyed, or TV show forums, or whatever it happened to be, they would often have community message boards and that sort of thing, which operate nearly, completely independently of the source material.I remember I worked on a couple of webcomic message boards and it very quickly just transitions into its own little social space.And yeah, there might be a sub forum about the comic of the week, but that is often one of the least trafficked parts of the actual community.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's just for us.
• linkBen Ainslie - And everyone's just hanging out and chilling.A collection of likeminded individuals hanging out.One of the more populous channels of our Discord is just photos of people's pets.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh, Iunintelligible 01:08:28the one with your cat.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - My cat is so good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I met his cat.A she cat.
• linkBen Ainslie - She is total sweetheart.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Lovely cat.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Very cute, this one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I just wanted to say a big thanks to our patrons for supporting us, for helping us do this.And we appreciate you and we hope that you're enjoying what you're getting.
• linkBen Ainslie - You are the real MVP in this situation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm.Yeah.It's fun to be on Patreon.I support other shows on Patreon as well.And as someone who for years and years and years and years and years listened to a lot of podcasts and never went on Patreon, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be very difficult." It's not very difficult.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's two cartons.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's two cartons.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, no.Sorry.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's not very difficult.It's very easy.You can go support us or any other show you like, fairly strain free.crosstalkYeah.It's easier than I thought.And I get little emails like, "Oh, I got a picture goodie." And I'm like, "Ooh." But some of the time, I'm just happy that they are.I am helping people do their thing and that is the most fun bit.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, this is my thing.I know you both have other things.I got other things too.But I'm glad that we come together and do this thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm glad that life has moved in such a way that allows you more free time.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because I used to feel a lot more guilty about contributing nothing at all.And now, I feel slightly less guilty about contributing nothing at all.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If I needed more from you, I've told you.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't believe you.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm not sure eithercrosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalkAll right.There was a time when you were absent from a lot of episodes when you were taking a sabbatical, but that was because there was stuff going on for you and it worked.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, yes.Life being crummy, an excellent excuse not to do things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that it is really good when you have a social sphere where you can say things like that directly.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is true.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When I was at the end of my PhD, I told you guys like, "I'm going to bail a lot."
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.I can't be here.And there were just lots of Ben and Daniel shows, and that was fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - And the angels wept.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.But as I manage other projects and sometimes, people feel bad saying when they can't do things and that actually makes your life as a project coordinator worse.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Even worse than if they just…The fact that they don't show us one thing, but if you don't know and I always feel comfortable telling you guys…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's good.It feels good.Okay, we should definitely wrap up.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - clapping
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you, patrons, and thank you for being here, first of all.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, this has been tremendous.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.And then, Ben, sit here.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, what do we do?Okay, we…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We are all waving and then we can get a GIF.
• linkBen Ainslie - This one?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.One, two, three.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - music
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Very good.Movement is good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thank you.This is so fun…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - No, we can be real Millennials and make a boomerang.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, we do the reads…
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I will.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, we do the reads.I don't have reads.
• linkBen Ainslie - I can do this.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, are you going to try and remember patron names from…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - No, I'm not going to do it anyway.crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'll have them going up the screen.
• linkBen Ainslie - If you enjoy this episode of Talk the Talk, this very nonstandard episode of Talk the Talkcrosstalk.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - Classic.Has to happen like once an episode.It was…How many years?Eight years?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - The muscle memory is really struggling.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, so, he's got three things in the Talk the Talk jar and two cartons of beer.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Two cartons.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.If you have enjoyed this very nonstandard episode, Because Language, there are heaps of different ways you can help support us ranging from requiring basically no effort whatsoever.That includes things like going leaving a review or telling a mate who might say to you, "Hey, do you have any good podcasts to listen to?" "Yeah, absolutely.You should listen to our podcast.This podcast is about linguistics.Really fun, interesting.I really like it." If you don't think that, just lie and say that you do.You can leave a review in lots of different places, but generally, unfortunately, Apple Podcasts is the place where that does the best work.
• linkBen Ainslie - You can also, if you were so inclined, become a patron and throw as much or as little money our way as you like.It allows us to do all sorts of really important things, most notably, and where most of our money goes, is towards transcribing our show so it makes it searchable for people and so that people who might not be able to hear can still engage in our podcast material about linguistics as well.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And we can pay guests.
• linkBen Ainslie - Also, that.Oh, and if you want to get in touch with us, like you want to say, "Hey," you can do it in all of the ways.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Tell us, Hedvig.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, no.Okay.So, Twitter, @becauselangpod, Facebook, @becauselanguage.
• linkDaniel Midgley - @becauselangpod.We're everywhere langpod…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, @becauselangpodeverywhere.hello@becauselanguage.com, if you like good old-fashioned email.That's it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We have a few thank-yous.Dustin from Sandman Stories who always recommends us.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The team at SpeechDocs.Our sponsors, The Oxford English Dictionary.How about that?Thanks to, of course, our patrons who are massive and help us at times.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And we met some of them this weekend.It was very fun.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, we had a get-together.crosstalkI love it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was lovely.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The music you're listening to is by Drew Krapljanov, who's a member of Ryan Beano and of Didion's Bible.Thanks for listening.We'll catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Pew, pew, pew, pew.That's a wrap.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a wrap.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That's a wrap.
• linkbeep
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There we go.Okay, do I look silly with this?
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think that you should just look how you are and how you are is wonderful.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah, okay.I'm just staying warm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - beep
• linkBen Ainslie - I really regret/resent that Crocs are so aesthetically unpleasing, because on so many other fronts…crosstalkLook, I know it has a cool young Gen Zs, but I'm not that thing.I'm just a tragic…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You can be a…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It works.It's what I've been trying to tell you from the start.
• linkBen Ainslie - No.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You just really want to.
• linkBen Ainslie - I don’t want to becrosstalkdressed as lamb.laughsI need to age gracefully.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's an expression.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Don't.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah.Hedvig's like, "Nope.No grace to the aging." I will cling on with bloody ragged fingernails.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Only culturally though.
• linkBen Ainslie - Every time I've ever had to record outside for any reason in Australia, the birdsong comes through really, really clearly in recordings.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, people are going to hear lovely, native birds twaddling in the background.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We hope that you enjoy what's going on here.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription