62 - Language in Spaaaaace

797 turns

• linkHedvig Skirgård - Sorry.Yes, I'm having spaghetti for breakfast.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's a perfectly acceptable breakfast food.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - All right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Perfectly acceptable.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That spaghetti you made, Ben, was super good.I was having it the next day, I'm like, "Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom."
• linkBen Ainslie - ǁ
• linkBen Ainslie - Because Language theme playing
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hello, and welcome to Because Language, a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.I'm Daniel Midgley.Let's meet the team.Back from her travels around the world, it's Hedvig Skirgård.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hello.I'm back.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're back in Germany?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm back in Germany.It's very nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're back with your kitties.And as a fellow person who has a kitty, I feel it.I feel how delight…you must have walked in the door and just been like,gaspsCome to me."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's very nice.They're very sweet ones.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Were the cats like, "Oh, it's you"?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, sort of.I mean they're cuddly.They're a bit cuddler than usual.But also, the weather is getting colder,laughsso they get cuddlier.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, they're like, "Jhoonk."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Like, "Yes, I'll sleep with you."
• linkBen Ainslie - That's very cute.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Back from his trip to the other room, possibly past the fridge for a drink on the way there, it's Ben Ainslie.
• linkBen Ainslie - Accurate.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You don't come…crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - I have no feedback to offer.No notes.That is a really appropriate thing about my life, because there is a triangle between things where I can play videogames, things where I can sleep and things where I can acquire food.That's the Holy Trinity of everything I actually want in the world.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's the real Golden Triangle.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.That's my happy zone right there, somewhere in that triad.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hey, later on this episode, we're going to be chatting with Dr.Hannah Little about her upcoming book about how science fiction has influenced linguistic research, like actually had a big poll on the way we do things in linguistics, so that's going to be a lot of fun.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That is going to be a lot of fun.She's very funny lady, and smart.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, it's nice to have you all here on the recording but it was super nice to have you all here at my place to have you, Hedvig, in Perth recently.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That was so great.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I was just going to say that one of the great things about meeting all of you in the flesh world in Perth is also that now when I look at you in Zoom and I see your rooms, I actually know where you are.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughs
• linkBen Ainslie - It's not just one tiny slice of a disconnected…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I mean, you always kind of knew where Daniel's pantry was there because we can see 90% of where he's in because it's such a small place.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, now I know what the kitchen looks like and the pantry is next to the kitchen.
• linkBen Ainslie - It is surprising how much more central in the house, in the activities own of the house than you would think it is.Like you would think that he would find a squirreled away little spot.No, no, dead center.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Home.
• linkBen Ainslie - Fridge on one side, oven on the other.Let's go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The hub.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And, Ben, I really liked your house as well and I liked your bookcase thing and your sofa is very nice.I know where that is, it's nice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben made us dinner.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I made sketti.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, very good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, but it wasn't typical spag bol.It was really elaborate.It was elaborate spaghetti.
• linkBen Ainslie - I slow roasted cherry tomatoes in a reduction of balsamic vinegar, and then mixed that in with a topping of fresh basil and goat cheese.chuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it was very good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was really good.While Hedvig was here, the three of us made a bonus episode for our patrons.It was us sitting out on a beautiful Monday morning, talking about the show, talking about ourselves, which you would not think was that interesting.But then, you'd say the same thing about linguistics as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If you want to see that episode…What?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean none of our listeners would say that about linguistics.
• linkBen Ainslie - I think he meant generally.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think after watching the episode, I think you won't say that about us either.We're actually quite interesting.We're quite compelling.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now, the only problem is we totally recorded that bonus episode as if it was like a great primer for people coming to Because Language.So, I don't know if it makes the best sense as only for the patrons' episode.
• linkDaniel Midgley - One thing that people are saying on our Discord is that it just has a really nice vibe, and I felt that as well.I felt it captures sort of the birds singing, us drinking coffee, switching from camera one to camera two every once in a while.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, vibes are good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It was great.So, if you want to see that, become a patron.You'll be supporting the show getting goodies besides like bonus episodes, invites to live episodes, our yearly mailout.Ooh, that's coming.And access to our wonderful Discord community.So, come on over and sign up.It's patreon.com/becauselangpod.
• linkBen Ainslie - What is going on in the world?It's been like two weeks.Hedvig has traveled around the world.There has to be some pretty significant updataroonies going on.What have you got for us?
• linkDaniel Midgley - There have been a lot of interesting stories.This one has been suggested by PharaohKatt who is going to helm an entirely PharaohKatt-curated show pretty soon, bonus episode there.
• linkBen Ainslie - Exciting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Daniel Andrews, who's the MP…MP, is he…?I thought he…Okay, this is where my ignorance of Australian politics comes to the fore.I should have looked this up.He's not the Premier of Victoria, is he?
• linkBen Ainslie - No, Dan Andrews is the…Yeah, no, he is.I'm going to quickly double check that but I'm 95% sure he is.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But his Twitter handle is @DanielAndrewsMP.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, he's still a member of parliament.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He's still a member of parliament.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.We don't have a handy two letter abbreviation for Premiers.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Things I should know.So, he tweeted this, "A reelected Labor Government will redevelop and expand Maroondah Hospital from the ground up.It will be renamed in honor of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
• linkBen Ainslie - Boo.Sorry, I didn't even need you to get to the end.That is such a massive boo.Argh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I don't have any feel…I try not to have feelings about sports and royals.
• linkBen Ainslie - No, you should have feelings about Royals.They're bad.We don’t need royals.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I just want a republic.I'm a republican definitely, I think.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is not a particularly…I know it feels like it is at the moment because everyone…in Australia, for those of you who are listening outside of Australia, when the Queen's funeral happened, it was simulcast on every terrestrial broadcast station, and I'm not joking.You could flip through the entire catalogue of Australian TV channels, and it was on every single one.Admittedly, there's five, so you know, it's not like 36 cable channels or whatever, but still.So, I realize that it's probably, it seems like a kind of take, I guess, but no, massive boo, we don't need to name stuff after the royal family of a different country.Blehblows a raspberry
• linkDaniel Midgley - Anymore.Yeah.By the way, Hedvig, we had a discussion once about Prince Charles, King Charles now.I thought that once he was in power, that people would go, "You know what?Time to end this royal stuff." But you thought that people would say in Australia, "No, let's give him a chance.See what he does." Ben, are you noticing either of those two sentiments in your circles?
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't see much interest or care about King Charles III.I saw a lot of like, "End of an era, "Oh, my God, this is so huge," blah, blah, blah.I think a lot more people cared about the ending of a thing than they do about the beginning of a thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was listening to the Swedish political commentary, a young girl was saying she represented the end of an era and the end of the idea of Britain as an empire.And that maybe now they can shed the fake idea that they're still an empire and just be a European country and get on with life.Lots of European countries have kings and queens and import and export and former colonies and current colonies.Britain can just step down and stop pretending, which maybe is nice to…chuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - I don’t know, man.I've got to be honest, given who's in charge of Britain at the moment, I'm not thinking that's coming down the pipe anytime soon.I don't mean King Charles, by the way.I mean their Prime Minister.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, no, I understand that.I feel it's worth acknowledging that a lot of people really liked the Queen and were very sad when she died.But what we're having discussions about now is the royalty as an institution and not the person.Also, she's already passed and naming a hospital in Perth, after…
• linkBen Ainslie - No, somewherecrosstalkVictoria.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, Victoria.
• linkDaniel Midgley - In Melbourne, right?
• linkBen Ainslie - But this is a good point though, Hedvig, I'm glad you mentioned that because we have one of those already in Western Australia.We have the Queen Elizabeth II health campus.It's like our third biggest hospital.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right, you don’t need another one.
• linkBen Ainslie - We've got Elizabeth Quay.We've got so much shit named after this lady.We don’t anymore.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Can I ask, is Maroondah hospital in a suburb called Maroondah?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, and the name…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because that sounds like a good name.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a Woiwurrung name.It means leaf, which according to the Maroondah website says, it symbolizes Maroondah's green environment.So, it means leaf in Woiwurrung.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If they're in a suburb called Maroondah or a city called Maroondah and they're the Maroondah Hospital, then if you now become the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, how many of those do we have on the world?Like the googleability of that is very bad.Very bad.
• linkBen Ainslie - I agree with you.I don't think it's the most significant thing.I think the most significant thing is beyond simply, "Ah, end of an era," and all this kind of stuff, the crown doesn't represent good things.It's not an institution.I'm not even much of a republican in the sense that I desperately want Australia to be a republic.I don't really have any baseline issues with how the actual system of government functions in Australia.But it just so happens, this weird, archaic things, vestigial feature…
• linkDaniel Midgley - This weird fondness.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like this whale hips of a thing politically sitting there, which we need to get rid of.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah,unintelligible 00:10:37.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Especially when it displaces Aboriginal naming, we can't just say that if you give something an Aboriginal name that you're done.But boy, oh, boy, symbolism matters, and the optics on this are just atrocious.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's particularly interesting for a Labor Government as well.I could see a Liberal government doing this any day of the week, like a conservative politician dog whistling to their base.Yeah, it's a weird move for Labor dude.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, who matters?Who's this about?Jack Latimore of The Age writes that indigenous leaders complained and the premier doubles down.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ah, good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He said, "They," that is the indigenous leaders, the assembly, "They are elected to negotiate treaties.That's what they need to do.That's what they're elected to do.And we're delivering that treaty." So, in other words, just shut up and stick to doing your job.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Weird move.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, this is a bizarre, bizarre move.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - When I think that something is that weird, I'm missing some information.There's something else going on here.There's some sort of dog whistling or something in that electorate or something that I don't know about because it looks weird.
• linkBen Ainslie - I agree.I feel he's had someone in his ear, some apparatchik who's gone, "We've run the numbers, and there's this swing voter bloc, who you really need to get on side," or something like that, because this is just such a bizarre, bizarre thing to do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm sure it has something to do with the time.The timing matters on this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sure.She just thought it's in everyone's…if this happened eight years from now, it would be really, really weird.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, thanks, PharaohKatt, for helping us shine a light on that.We'll keep an eye on this issue as we do with names and naming.Hedvig, you brought us a story about plain language in New Zealand?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.There's a discussion in New Zealand about a Plain Language Bill.So, these happen all over the world regularly, where governments are like, "Our bureaucracy is too complicated.We need to simplify it so that people understand the information we are distributing to them."crosstalkIn New Zealand, they're discussing such a thing.Some people are saying that, "This is a waste of resources.It's already plain enough." And they're going back and forth.It's interesting in the case of New Zealand, but I thought of it as an addition to our show, also because I think it's a movement in many places.I don't know if Australia has had like an official plain language movement in bureaucracy, but a lot of other countries have and generally good stuff.
• linkBen Ainslie - Now, when we say in bureaucracy, bureaucracy is a relatively nebulous term.Do we mean legal jargon-?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben …in most instances is going to be uncomplicated, because that seems like a pretty impossible task if you've ever spoken to a lawyer in a professional sense.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, it can be done.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It can be done.But in this act, I took a look at the wording.It looks like it's not very well defined.
• linkBen Ainslie - Uh-huh.Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Here's the wording."In this act, plain language means, language that is, A, appropriate to the intended audience.And, B, clear, concise and well organized." Which sounds great.But what does that mean operationally?
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, wait, hang on though.Appropriate to the intended audience?You could get away with a lot that way.Right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you want to hear examples?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.So, in The Guardian article, they have a couple of examples, because they have a Plain Language Best Sentence Transformation Award.So, the sentence, "Where it hasDaniel laughsbeen identified and it is possible to update this, it has been undertaken, ensuring future band allocation is correct." This was from the New Zealand Transport Authority.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Band allocation.And the good version of that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And that has been made into, "Where possible, we've identified and updated effective submodules to make sure they're assigned to the correct levy band going forward."
• linkBen Ainslie - The interesting thing in that example, because I'm looking at it word for word here, they haven't actually simplified it in a vocabulary sense.So, this is all about grammar.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, so some…
• linkBen Ainslie - The first passage was just horrendously written.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I like this one, the first sentence for the other ones.So, this is the Government Stats Department."Over the year, we tested the innovation readiness and change adaptability of the organization." And that became, "We tested how ready our organization was to innovate and make changes." That is better.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalkThat’s totally.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sounds pretty good.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's so interesting.Basically, you could call this a Grammarly Bill essentially.They're going to feed all of their copy into this thing and Grammarly is going to go through it and be like, "Hmm.This sounds a bit clunky and difficult.Perhaps condense it to this?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's two ways that I go about this.One part of this annoys me, because I talk to a lot of people about language and I get a lot of complaints about the way politicians talk.It's a generic sort of complaint.People want to complain about the way politicians talk.They don't want to analyze how they talk or see why they're talking the way they do.They just don't like politicians or the generic politician that they imagine.So, this really feeds right into a kind of complaint culture that people are really happy to sign on to.
• linkDaniel Midgley - On the other hand, there's a real need to have writing be comprehensible and check out Part 7 2A, a link on our website, becauselanguage.com.It says, "The guidance," the writing, "must include guidance to support the accessibility of relevant documents, including the accessibility of those documents to people with disabilities." To which I'm like, "Yes.Make sure that part is in there."
• linkBen Ainslie - I agree with a level of…based on the examples that we just read, all for it, go for it, fantastic, because the writing isn't so difficult that people without a good education can't access it, although that is potentially happening.I think the writing is so dry and boring, even people with the necessary education are not going to slog through it because it's just so…Potentially, deliberately, I would argue this is the result of overworked governmental employees being a thing out and going basically like, "What's the minimum amount I need to do to make this publishable?Okay, that's what I'll do.I've done it."
• linkBen Ainslie - So, I agree with you, Daniel.I don't think this is a deliberate collusion of politicians who are like,mocking smileI'm going to make it so difficult to read that no one will understand." I think that is happening just not deliberately.I think it's happening through a combination of laziness and low resources.And so, because of that, I do think people aren't as armed when it comes to going toe to toe with their government as they could be because when someone goes, "Oh, we'll just look at the statutes." And then, you blow the dust off this tome from like the state library and you open it up and like ghosts fly out.And then, you read this just biblically boring text and you give up.So, if they can make something that's plainer that will give the average citizen the ability to arm themselves well, so that if a person, a roadblock in the system is like, "Oh, well, that's not how we do that," they can go, "Well, actually, I've read it.And it very clearly says that you can do this.So, could you please do it?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.It's an equity and fairness issue.What we're talking about is also plain language and communication from the government to its citizens, not necessarily, for example, the law book.I mean, when it comes to the law, it is a certain way and changing that is like a bigger task than what I think this is about.I believe that a lawyer education is essentially a very complicated interpretation education.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Spicy take.I love it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's like they learn lawyerese.And then, they try and transmit that knowledge to someone else.That's like…
• linkBen Ainslie - My favorite phrase for this, they are jargonauts.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Jargonauts, hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We need them and that's what they do.But yeah, this is fundamentally a good thing.Very good thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - People are very suspicious of jargon because they think it's trying to keep them out.But linguists have jargon.We use it when we're trying to describe stuff that we do, and people think there's some kind of spurious motive.But I don't see this as trying to make things more comprehensible, at least not the examples that we've seen.I see it as people picking up on jargon, because they just hate it and they're complaining about it.Whenever I see people complaining about jargon, I'm like, "Oh."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But jargon is…
• linkBen Ainslie - I didn't see jargon being fixed here, did you?I didn't see any jargon being removed.The words mostly are the same.They've just made it more readable and less baffling.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Also, jargon has a purpose.When linguists talk to other linguists, jargon is a shorthand and you know you're talking to other linguists, but that's your point.You need to know who your audience is.When bureaucrats make texts and write it as if they're writing to other bureaucrats and not take into account that their audience isn't other bureaucrats, it's random citizens, then you get problems.Jargon is great, but it's good for intergroup communication.These things aren't intergroup communication.That's the issue.
• linkBen Ainslie - They're inter-group communications.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If it can be done well, then that's great.This law won't teach people to write better or more comprehensively, and that needs to happen.Definitely, it is, in part, a social justice issue.I look at this, and I see this feeding into complaint culture, which is annoying, but maybe an unavoidable side effect.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think people should complain when they don't understand what their government is saying to them.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes, I agree.I think they should switch the rule that the West Australian has of the one newspaper we have in Perth.Their style guide is you cannot write an article pitched higher than a year 10 level education.I don't think that is an appropriate rule for the one newspaper because we need a higher level of discourse from the one newspaper we had.We can't glass ceiling it there.I feel like we should switch it.We should just go, "Okay, take the West Australian style guide, give it to the bureaucrats.No one under year 10 education can understand your shit, then you don't get to write your shit." And then, West Australian be like, "A little bit more please.Just a little bit more please."
• linkDaniel Midgley - There was one really interesting thing about this that I caught.This was from the article by Tess McClure, The Guardian.You know how people say that they're using the passive voice when they're trying to evade responsibility.You can do that.You can say, "Mistakes were made, not by me." But a lot of people including journalists refer to anytime somebody is trying to make an action seem agentless, they just call it the passive voice, even when the passive voice isn't being used.Saying, "The suspect was shot," is passive voice, and saying, "A shooting occurred," is not passive voice.But they both make the shooting seem like no one did it and everyone calls them both the passive voice.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think that's okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do you think just calling about the passive voice is no big deal?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I mean, grammatically, it's wrong but in the popular understanding…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What people mean by passive voice is changing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.I think it's okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sometimes, there's a feeling that we need to have a different term for it besides passive voice.If we can flip a switch and get people on a different track to call it something else, not passive voice, maybe it could be better.This article makes reference to what someone calls the "past exonerative tense".
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I hate it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is interesting.chuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - chucklesI like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I do too.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like passive voice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You like passive voice?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think it pertains to the…it describes actions just occurring, like everyone is passive.In the popular mind, I think the word 'voice' signifies like a standpoint.I like grammar, and I know that voice is like diathesis and blah, blah, blah.But I think passive voice is great.I think reinventing the wheel is not always a good thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's actually an aspect, isn't it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Passive voice?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, passive voice and the grammatical senses of voice, but this exonerative usage seems more like an aspect to me, don’t you think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Aspect is about the internal temporal organization of something.It's really tiny.So, it's like whether an action is completed or reoccurring every Thursday or is finished or ongoing, that's aspect-y things.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, not an aspect…how about if we call it weasel voice?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - This could be epistemicity, like the stance of the speaker but…
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm just going to say stance, you could say agentless stance, but nobody's going to go for that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, passive voice is great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You like passive voice?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I can accept that because I know that language changes and there'll be different senses for the same term.Hedvig laughsI would like to call a weasel voice because everyone knows voice.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to back away from weasel voice, simply because in this instance, yeah, it can be used to remove one's agency from the process, but there are valid instances in journalism where you have to do that.If you're reporting things that are under like a judge, you have to use passive voice because you can't actually make it seem like anyone has done anything.So, passive voice is a necessary thing instead of calling it weasel voice.
• linkchuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - This article about a person who was accused of murder who later got off because they didn't do it was just totally written in weasel voice.It feels like you're…I don’t know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughsOkay, okay.Passive voice it is.We're just going to have to accept that there's different…there's a popular understanding of passive voice and then as a grammatical understanding of passive voice.
• linkBen Ainslie - There's lots of things like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, exactly.Like, agent, subject, topic, mood.chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yep.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's fine.
• linkBen Ainslie - Whoa.What do you mean?What?Mood?What?Mood can't be more than one thing, surely.Nah.Go back.Go back.I don’t want to know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Pull up, pull up.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, I'm ripcording on that one for sure.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.Well, let's move on.This one was suggested by Aristemo.We remember Boaty McBoatface, don't we?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I liked it at the time.And then, wow, it really died the slowest and most painful of deaths.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I really liked it.I was in Liverpool and it was dock there and we were doing a little boat tour and they were like, "Oh, here's this old building," and then the guide accidentally said, "Oh, and like in that corner, you can kind of see Boaty McBoatface." And everyone was like, "Where?Where?gasps"
• linkDaniel Midgley - Boaty McBoatface.
• linkBen Ainslie - Like a celebrity.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You mean the David Copperfield Express?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - What do we have to name because we have done quite a few of these stories, I know what's coming.We have to name something new now, right?
• linkDaniel Midgley - We have to name something new.NASA has asked Twitter users to name the probe to Uranus.The Uranus orbiter and Probe Mission.Okay, so here we go.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes.So, much butt stuff coming up.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Butt stuff is enjoyable.So, one user said Probey McProbeface, naturally.Another Operation Butt Plug.Someone else responds, " This seems like the perfect time for @ASTROGLIDE to sponsor space exploration." Or the Planetary Orbital Observation Probe aka, "The POOP."
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well?
• linkBen Ainslie - I kind of like POOP, because it's acronym because we're saying it.It's not an initialism.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - crosstalk-abbreviation.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Nobody cares about the difference between initialisms and acronyms anymore.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.So, I like that it actually means a very good thing.That's the fun thing about dirty acronyms, I reckon, is they're not fun if they don't quite work.They're only fun if they really, really, really definitely work.
• linkDaniel Midgley - POOP works.
• linkBen Ainslie - POOP works really well.Planetary Orbital Observation Platform.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have already forgotten.It's Planetary Orbital Observation Probe.See, I've already forgotten what it really was, and it's POOP.It's just POOP to me now.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm Team POOP.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm Team POOP.Yeah, it's good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We're Team POOP.Now I have a suggestion for the planet Uranus, while I'm being the guy who wants to change everything and getting voted down.I'm prepared to nominate something else to change and I will get voted down.Okay, instead of calling the planet Uranus…
• linkBen Ainslie - Boo, I'm already against it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, me too.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - Sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I knew it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Gone on, give us your terrible idea.Let me shoot it down properly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Can I suggest that we call it by its Hindi name, Varuna?That's the Sanskrit equivalent.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Varuna was the God of the water and the celestial ocean as well as a god of law of the underwater world.It's about time we had a Hindu deity in the names for planets.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - I got it.Ooh, I hate this less.I've got to be honest, I do.Yeah, you're winning me over.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It would stop a lot of snickering in astronomy class.And if we do change it to Varuna, then here's the mnemonic."My Very Educated Mother Just Served Vegan Nachos".Mother just served vegan nachos.And who doesn't love vegan nachos?
• linkBen Ainslie - What is it currently?I don't know any of the mnemonics for the planets.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, when I was a kid, it was, “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizza Pies,” but then Pluto got demoted.So, I guess served us nachos.Yeah, served us nachos, but now she served vegan nachos.Although I don't mind the cheese.
• linkBen Ainslie - I like Varuna, I'm aboard.I like it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, wait.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm astounded.Really?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, because it's nonwestern.We've named everything after Western shit.And why not?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have a question.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Western poop.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, Uranus, I looked it up, the Latin equivalent is Caelus.And it's the god of the sky.And you just said the Varuna was the god of water.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.I said it was the Sanskrit equivalent, didn't I?Okay, I'm not certain if that is true.Let me just change that.It is Sanskrit, and it might be a totally different god, but I'm okay with that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, because normally when you flip like you take another sky god…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hold on.Wait a minute.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm going to look.
• linkDaniel Midgley - If that's the case, if I've just suggested Varuna, the god of the water, then that means we've actually got two Neptunes, right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Indra would be the Hindu god of the sky, according to my single google.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's do that.Indra.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Indra is nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - Sky, lightning, weather, thunderstorms, rain, river flows, and war.Hell, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's always "and war".
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - All the gods, not just Hindu gods.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Because Uranus.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Essentially.If that's something we care about, like, does it need to keep its semantics.But I mean, Indra sounds fine as well.I don't know.Maybe we don't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.I like them both.Okay.We'll have a twitter poll and we'll report on that for our next bonus episode.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I do think that the reason, like stop snickering in astronomy class.I don't agree with the premise that…
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's a dumb reason.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds like it's just bringing joy to people.
• linkDaniel Midgley - We need snickering.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.Also, my husband may or may not have written a comedy song related to this.
• linkBen Ainslie - Aahhh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, what a…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I can't really throw him under the bus.
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, just get him to learn Sanskrit and then he can do a hilarious…I don't know, like a rivaled series of japes about it in Sanskrit and it'll be great.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Doing puns on Uranus is really easy, and everyone's done them but Varuna or Indra, this is new territory.We could make a song about that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And now, it's time for the Oxford game or as we call it Yeah-Nah, or Nah-Yeah.I give you two words and you have to tell me if they're related or if the similarity between them is merely coincidental.Our etymological information, as always, come straight from our sponsors, the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language.
• linkBen Ainslie - The thinking person's dictionary.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You sound pensive when you say that.crosstalk
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I was about to say the thinking man's dictionary.I was like, "Well, that is not an appropriate thing to say anymore."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Mm-hmm.Our patrons on Discord are having lots of fun proposing their own pairs of words.This has turned out to be a very popular game on our Discord.
• linkBen Ainslie - Ooh, good, good, good, good, good.And look, less work for you.Win-win.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, I had a question about this one in my mind, as always, I wonder these things throughout the day and think, "Oh, that'd be a good one.Let's look it up." Sometimes, it's a Yeah-Nah, sometimes it's a Yeah-Nah.Ben laughsNah-Yeah.Yeah-Nah.This one, this iteration of the Oxford game is about a single word, but two senses, and the word is toast.One is proposing a toast and the other is hot buttered toast.Are they related or are they not?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, no.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hmm.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Thoughts.
• linkBen Ainslie - Nah-Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben thinks perhaps they are related.What's your thinking?
• linkBen Ainslie - I have the vaguest, vaguest of memories of some kind of habit or custom from a long time ago that involved dinner tables and people holding up pieces of bread.I can't remember where I remember this from, I could be completely mistaken and manufacturing this out of thin fucking air.But I seem to recall some sort of thing where the bread of the table was used in some kind of custom or cultural practice.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, they held it up in the air?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, like holding it up in the air or people stopping and listening, something like that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And they said, "I propose toast," and then…
• linkBen Ainslie - I don't think that ever happened.I think what happened was…
• linkDaniel Midgley - This is stupid.We should be drinking something.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben …there was a slight similarity and somehow it crossed over.That's mine.That’s my thinking.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben thinks that Maybe-Yeah.Hedvig, what do you think?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Toast-toast.Well, the verb toast, as in, like, "I'm toasting the croutons," or something like that, like needs to apply heat.And then, there's what we call the object nominalization, the toast, the bread that is from the action of doing that.So, what I'm now thinking is there's three things.There's the verb to apply heat, there's the verb to do with cheers and there's a noun, the bread.But I think Ben is right that the connection is between the bread and the action of doing it.Nah-Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.You both think that they are related.By the way, I love the verb "to cheers"."We were cheersing all night long." I just think that's fantastic.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do a cheer.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's great.It's not very often that interjections become verbs.Here we go, the correct answer from the Oxford English Dictionary, you're both correct.They are related.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, now tell us how.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ah, this is fun.So, the hot bread sense comes from about the 1400s toasting bread.And then, to your health sense, the Oxford English Dictionary says that it is a figurative application of toast that is to say a person.You know how do we say that somebody is the toast of the town or the toast of the ball?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, like toast is a good thing.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, because if somebody is the toast, the OED says that this is like a lady being supposed to flavor a bumper.Ah, I need to explain that word.So, a bumper…
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, Jesus, this is going deep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's going deep.A bumper is a drink, an alcoholic drink filled to the brim like for a toast.And let's just say a lady flavors a party just like toast flavors your drink.You see, believe it or not…
• linkBen Ainslie - What?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Wait, wait.Toast flavors drink?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, here's the link.People used to combine their beer or their ale with hot bread.You'd have some beer or some ale and you would stick a piece of toast in there because who doesn't love crumbs in their drink?
• linkBen Ainslie - Argh.laughsOh, no, this is jellied eel shit.I'm not on board.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Already, there's toast in your drink.You've got a piece of hot bread sticking in your drink.When people would have this drink with their toast in, they would stand around with these cups of soggy bread and they would make long speeches.So, you might make a long speech to a lady about how beautiful she was, and you'd be toasting her because she would be the toast in that party.She was making the party good, just like your toast makes the drink good.So, she's the toast.
• linkBen Ainslie - That is a fucked up and bizarre connection.This is so much weirder than I ever really thought.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Then, the meaning jumped from the piece of toast that you stick in your drink to the lady who is like the toast, and then it jumped again to the act of holding up a drink.They are related.And by the way, toasting has another sense in Jamaican music, you're aware of this one?
• linkHedvig SkirgårdBen Ainslie - No.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.Toasting is like a rap that you do in the middle of a song, and that's related too because it gets its meaning from that long speech that you would make to a lady while you're holding up your soggy bread in a cup.So, that's the relationship.We call toasting toast because people used to stick toast in their drink.They are related.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There is a custom in Scandinavian countries of dipping bread into broth or the juices from steak.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, sure.I don't think that's just Scandinavian countries, right?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I just looked it up.And apparently that's called sop.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Sop.S-O-P, that's right.
• linkBen Ainslie - In English.Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And that is where we get the word 'supper' from.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, to sop up your…right.Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, another word for Christmas is the Dipping Day.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Because that is the day that you do the thing.And then, we just count…
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that like an archaic word or do you guys regularly say that to each other?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, people still say that.And the day before Christmas is the day before the Dipping Day.And the day before that is the day before the day before the Dipping Day and people can like…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dipping Days.crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - "Dan före dopparedan" is like a saying.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Fantastic.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that’s not the…
• linkBen Ainslie - It's good when the actual Swedish gets busted out because it really does sound a lot like the Swedish chef to people who don't speak Swedish.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - While we're speaking of medieval liquids, I was listening to a documentary on YouTube about sex in medieval times.And I learned that there is a connection, maybe Daniel can look it up if it's actually true, between broth and brothel.
• linkDaniel MidgleyBen Ainslie - gasps
• linkBen Ainslie - That’s next week's.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, my gosh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Well, I heard that it was true and I'm pretty sure that it is.So, I don't know if it can be a quiz, because it would only be if Ben is convinced by me.chuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - Look, I'm skeptical AF of a lot of the shit you say, so I'm going to go with yeah, let's do it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Broth brothel.
• linkBen Ainslie - Also, YouTube documentaries very, very significantly in their rigor…some of them are like the greatest things I've ever seen.And some of them I'm like, "Oof, you really can just be anyone and upload."crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But this was by a really good medieval historian, Going Medieval, on Twitter who I respect.She has a PhD in it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - By the way, Ben, we had a talk a while ago about 'fanging it' and we thought that maybe because 'fang' meant to hang on to something that when you fang it, you have to hang on, and that's why it's called fanging it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yep.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But apparently, it's not.It's somebody's name.It's possibly a racecar driver, Juan Manuel Fangio.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, there we go.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I learned that because I found it in the OED.There's just so much information in the Oxford English Dictionary.Check your institution, check your local library to see if they have access online or become a subscriber yourself.Head to our website to see how you could do that.If you go to our website and click through, they'll know it's from us.The Oxford English Dictionary sponsors of the show and the definitive record of the English language.Thanks to them for being sponsors for the show.
• linkBen Ainslie - You can play your own little game of Yeah-Nah or Nah-Yeah, because you can think to yourself, "I wonder if those things are related." And then, you can go to the place where the Oxford English Dictionary is, possibly even your own very home, and be like, "Holy shitballs.They are related."
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.Or they're not.
• linkDaniel Midgley - interview begins
• linkDaniel Midgley - All right, we are here with Dr.Hannah Little.Hannah, Thanks for coming on the show and talking to us today.
• linkHANNAH - Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's so fun to have you on because we share a lot of interest in common, not only have we met a few times, and I would like to call us friends, maybe, I don’t know.
• linkHANNAH - Yes…laughscrosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's a bit presumptuous.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I like you, but I also know that you're into standup and comedy, and sci-fi and cool things, and linguistics and all these things at once.So, it's really fun to have you on.
• linkHANNAH - All these things at once is my favorite thing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And you're working on a book, are you not?
• linkHANNAH - I am, yes.Yeah.Very close to 50,000 words now.That's almost a book, isn't it?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - How long does the book have to be…Who says there needs to be a certain length?
• linkHANNAH - Well, I think publishers said that it needs to be a certain length.But I think nonfiction books are typically around 50,000 to 65,000.But the thing is that I'm nearly at 50,000 but I'm nowhere near finished.So, there might need to be quite a substantial amount of editing happening at some point.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.Well, that's hard.All right, so what's this book about?
• linkHANNAH - It's about science fiction and linguistics.But specifically, it's about all of the ways that science fiction has influenced linguistic research because when you say sci-fi and linguistics, people think about conlanging, so constructed languages, things like Klingon, Na'vi from Avatar, and all the ones from Games of Thrones.There's a lot of examples of where science fiction stories have directly influenced empirical research that's been happening in linguistics, especially over the last 10, 20 years.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have never heard of this.I'm going to need some examples here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, because usually we hear of the opposite, like linguists working as consultants for sci-fi TV shows or something.But you're saying that the sci-fi authors are having an effect on linguistics.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.I've lost count of the number of times I've been at a linguistics conference and somebody started with an example from science fiction, whether that's people…well, sometimes it's, "Look at this example and how horrific it is as a representation." The thing that springs directly to mind is, there's an episode Star Trek Next:Generation episode called Loud as a Whisper, which is one of the earliest representations of American Sign Language on screen.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ooh.I think I know which one it is.
• linkHANNAH - But the whole episode cuts out most of the sign language.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkHANNAH - And the way that they talk about sign languages within the episode is really bad because they're all acting as if they've never heard of such a thing as a sign language before, despite the majority of the Enterprise being from Earth, famously has quite a lot of them.
• linkDaniel Midgley - How exotic.How obscure.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe I could accept that Klingons or Romulans or whatever, that there are no deaf Klingons, I don't know, fine, whatever, maybe they…but you're right.The Federation is primarily an Earth, humanoid, human thing.So, they should be aware of that.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, and they have really advanced translation technologies on the Enterprise.They have a universal translator, that can't deal with sign languages.You would've thought that the linguists who develop that would have thought at some point, "Oh, there's a whole class of languages on Earth.Maybe some aliens out there might use visual forms of communication and not just have spoken language."
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's in the update.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you think that implies that within the Star Trek Federation world, that there are no deaf people?That people get cochlear implant when they're born that are super-duper accurate or do you think…?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, well…
• linkDaniel Midgley - They forgot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - They forgot.
• linkHANNAH - chucklesYeah.There's lots of examples in Star Trek where within the world of one episode contradicts itself several series later.So, I wouldn't like to say what current kind of Star Trek Discovery World, how that would represent deaf individuals, but certainly within that episode, that was the implication.But there's been some really lovely representations of deaf sign language uses recently in sci-fi.There's a character in the Eternals and also one in Marvel's Hawkeye, if people have seen that.Although I have a gripe with the Eternals, which is that one of the Eternals is deaf and uses American Sign Language, but there's scenes that are from like 5000 BC where she's using American Sign Language, which is only really 200 years old.Also, they're using spoken American English, which I don't think they had in 5000 BC.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that’s the same problem.
• linkHANNAH - laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - At least that’s the same problem, right?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.But that is me being a pedant.But we have gone off what the original question was, which was examples of how science fictions influence linguistic thinking.My PhD is actually in evolutionary linguistics.So, how our ancestors first started to negotiate communication systems and went from a status of having no language to having language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Aliens.
• linkHANNAH - Aliens.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - I had to, sorry.
• linkHANNAH - There are theories that it was aliens, and also theories that it was magic mushrooms.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, I've heard that one.There's also theories that magic mushrooms are the origin of religion.
• linkHANNAH - Oh, is it the same guy, Terence McKenna, who's…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don't know.But it's the idea that like psychedelic substances in nature give people out of body experiences, and that's how they start thinking about the beyond.Anyway.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Didn't say a word.But then, once you get some shrooms into him, suddenly they can't shut up.I've heard it and heard it.
• linkchuckles
• linkHANNAH - But one thing that a lot of experimental work in evolutionary linguistics does is use what I'd call "first-contact scenarios." So, the idea is that you've landed on an alien planet, you need to communicate with these aliens.How do you go about doing it?Because that's very, very similar to the scenario of you are a humanoid ancestor who doesn't have language and you want to work out how to communicate with these other people that don't have language.It's not a perfect metaphor, because the aliens potentially have language, and I have language if I go and land on an alien planet.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And the first humans might share things that aren't language with each other.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, which makes things like iconicity very easy, because you can iconically represent things via gesture, or even vocalizations to communicate something if you know you have that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You can imitate the thing that you're trying to communicate.
• linkHedvig SkirgårdHANNAH - Yeah.
• linkHANNAH - But the thing that's nice about the alien example is that if you are in a situation where you don't have a very rich awareness of the shared knowledge between you, and the shared linguistic apparatus, and even notions of what a language looks like or what a language should be, you start kind of going back to first principles in terms of what do you need to build that communication.And then, that leads us into a space where we can start thinking about what's possible.And a lot of evolutionary linguistics, because language doesn't fossilize, so we've got written languages for a few thousand years but before that, we've got very little idea of what came before because it doesn't fossilize.It's very speculative.A lot of its modeling, computational modeling or experimental modeling.It's just, "What's the most likely scenario that we have about how we came from point X of no language to point Y of language?And what's going to happen next?What’s point Z?"
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, people love to ask that.We were interviewed, me and Daniel, by this translating agency.They were asking us, "As linguists, what do you think is going to happen next in language change?" And we're like, "Fuck do we know."
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes, so, Hannah you know.
• linkHANNAH - I don’t know.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, you've done this.
• linkHANNAH - chucklesScience fiction authors love to ask this question, "What's next?Where are we going next?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - What are they saying?
• linkHANNAH - Well, in universal translators, the big one that comes to mind that there's been a lot of work trying to crack that.Translation technologies that we currently have are pretty good for languages that we have a lot of data for.But, of course, the vast majority of languages on earth don't have a lot of data just hanging out on the internet.I think I was reading an article earlier that said that it was like of the 110 languages spoken on Facebook, and I was like, "That is such a tiny proportion of languages on earth."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, for sure.
• linkHANNAH - I know they're the languages that Facebook is bothered about.But we're getting more and more towards systems that can reliably translate languages with less and less data, which is really exciting.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The whole zero-shot no-training translation.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.Which is what you see in Star Trek, with the universal translator.They come across a new alien species and somehow, the translator just can tackle it.Unless it's a sign language, as we've already discussed.
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalklaughs
• linkHANNAH - Tamarian.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The metaphor.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The metaphor people.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Darmok andcrosstalkJalad at Tanagra, yeah.
• linkHANNAH - It filled on the Tamarian stuff.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I have a question about the universal translator and about what you just said.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I've got a lot of questions.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - A friend told me a story that there's this…you know Warhammer?
• linkHANNAH - Hmm.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's supposed to be a place in Warhammer because in the Warhammer 40,000 or 40k world, it's like the far future where technology has become sort of incomprehensible to people.So it's understood as religion or magic.So, they have all this like super-duper advanced technology, but they don't really know how it works.They think that they need like priests on their ships to say prayers in order to fly into space.They've ritualized it.Anyway, there's this place where there's an old portal that is a universal translator, and this town around it, and the portal keeps working even though no one knows how it works.And anyone who goes there can immediately understand anyone else.My question is, what happens if you're born there?
• linkHANNAH - Ooh.chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wait.We have had this as a question.Didn't we tackle this one?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Maybe we did.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Somebody asked this once in a mailbag.So, what if you're born there and thinking is essentially your first language?Does it read your thoughts?Or if you speak a certain different way from standard whatever the language is, will it do the equivalent in the target language?Or is it reading your thoughts and giving you…the example that we had was, what if you don't know the word for something and you say, defenestration?The word 'defenestration' has been coming up a lot.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - For those who don't know, it means to throw someone out a window.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Right.What if you don't know what defenestration is?And then it's like, "Oh, I defenestrated Tom the other day." And they don't know what that is.What do they hear?Do they hear the equivalent of defenestrated?Or do they hear the equivalent of "threw somebody out of a window"?What does the universal translator do?Is it reading thoughts or is it just translating things straight?
• linkHANNAH - Well, it depends on what sci-fi you're reading, because in Star Trek…but again, the story keeps changing, because in the original series, they said, it takes brainwaves and then translates them, because in one episode, they found this like flashing rock, the universal translator was really struggling with the flashing rock and then eventually it managed to translate it and it was calling the crew giant bags ofcrosstalkwater or something.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - Which is true.
• linkHANNAH - But then, the explanation was that it was giving off brainwaves, which could be translated.But in Farscape, the way that universal translation works in Farscape is that there's this bacteria that attaches itself to people's brainstems and it translates incoming messages, but it doesn't affect whether you can speak other people's languages.So, in that scenario…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Same as Babel Fish is.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, so in that scenario, I suppose you'd have to have a native language before it would work.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.Yeah, the question, I guess, is it distributed like telepathy or is it translating two languages to each other?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Which a lot of sci-fi authors aren't always clear about.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, because universal translators are basically used in science fiction as a tool to get rid of the problem of thinking about really interesting linguistic questions.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Exactly.And it's so persuasive.Like, for example, in Star Trek, which of course, we're going to talk about a lot because they've done so many things, like Jean-Luc Picard who is canonically French, goes to France and stays with his family and his brother.And they all continue to speak English, not even with a French accent.I think you're right, the reason why the universal translators in so many sci-fi movies is because they want to have a show in English.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, because Jean-Luc Picard is canonically speaking French the whole time to everyone.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chuckles
• linkHANNAH - And the show ruins that.laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - This whole thing just weirds me out.His lips should have been moving differently but instead he speaks English, and the lip movements are English.gaspsDoes the universal translator translate lip movements as well?Does it make me see things differently as well as hear things differently?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, because then the aliens would all be having different movements.And I would assume actually that most of the aliens wouldn't be even using spoken language because why should they?So, you'd imagine they should be doing all sorts of things to communicate that would be then translated into your language of choice.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Hannah, have you read Becky Chambers?
• linkHANNAH - I started.Yeah, the Angry Pl…is it the…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and then there's two more.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, and the talkboxes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You can read them in any order, but they're in some universe.There's species there that have spoken language and they talk to each other.But they have an extra communication channel, which is like they have this part of their face.I think it's on the cheeks, they can flash different colors, and it can signal if they're being sarcastic or loving or angry or upset or like their tone is sort of like the intonation a bit.
• linkHANNAH - Or facial expression, really.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I was thinking…I think faces do that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But the characters in the novel kept saying, "Yeah, you humans think of facial expression as intonation, but it's more than that.It's something more." And they're like, "Yeah, we can speak to you.But we find it weird, but we will…" It's always like, they don't have a problem with transferring basic information, but…it's almost like when people in sci-fi show talk about ascending in intelligence until you become like a god, it's sort of like that.They're like, "Yeah, you guys are using this kindergarten language, fine.And we can communicate with you on that.But actually, this is the other thing going on." I thought that was kind of cute.That was more fun.I'm going to keep talking about Star Trek if no one stops me.What are some other fun things that sci-fi authors do?Or maybe we should get back to what you originally started talking about before we went off tangents on universal translator, which was how sci-fi authors have influenced linguists.
• linkHANNAH - Another thing that comes to mind is Sapir-Whorf people talk about that a lot in relationship to sci-fi.
• linkDaniel Midgley - From the basis of one very influential sci-fi film about aliens making contact.
• linkHANNAH - Arrival.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Naturally.We had a thing where the team went to an actual screening of Arrival when it was in theaters with some of our listeners and friends.And then, we had a big old chat about it afterwards.Like, why do we like Sapir-Whorf so much, the idea that language influences thought.But what we came up with was that it's the idea that language influences your thoughts seems kind of magical.And when you're in the sci-fi world, magical is good and we like it.
• linkHANNAH - It feels magical, but it also feels intuitive, right?I think?
• linkDaniel Midgley - A lot of do.We fight that intuition hard, don't we, as linguists?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - In the last episode, we were talking about this experiment…and I was a bit of a party pooper but it was this experiment where people were counting things.And if they didn't have that many numerals in their individual language, they couldn't count as far, do these counting tasks.And I couldn't help being like, "Yeah, but maybe that's got nothing to do with whether they have numerals or not.Maybe that has got to do with how often they count things." If you don't count things often, you don't have many numerals and you're not good at counting.And there's no reason that it's the language.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The language is available.The language does have numbers on up to 100, but not everyone uses them.And so, if you start making mistakes, it could not be because you don't have the language available.It could just be that that's you're in uncharted territory for you.This is not something you do a lot.And we don't know how to tease that apart.
• linkHANNAH - It reminds me of when I was a kid, my best friend was Hungarian.Her family used to take me to Hungary during the summer because they'd go there every summer to visit their family.They'd just take me with them.But I was a vegetarian, I still am a vegetarian, but as a child I was.They didn't have a word for vegetarian at the time.I, with my rubbish Hungarian, tried to explain what vegetarianism is and also my friend who speaks Hungarian tried to explain, but frequently, I would be given things that I would not consider to be part of the vegetarian diet.And then, I remembered when I was 16, and her granddad came running up the house and said, "Hannah, Hannah, we've got a word for vegetarian." And I was just like, "Hallelujah."
• linkHANNAH - laughter
• linkHANNAH - Because it felt like this magical thing that I could unlock an explanation of what this diet was, because it felt like it was unexplainable to people without the word.But I know that Hungarians are capable of conceiving a vegetarian diet and describing one.They have the language to do it.But it felt like the word was the thing.And I think that's just because of the frequency of encountering it as a concept improves your understanding of it in the same way and what you're saying that frequency of counting to a specific number would improve your ability to do it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - To count, yeah.Who knows?Doing things and encountering things makes you have more experience with them.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.Well, there's lots of sci-fi that discusses this.Nineteen Eighty-Four is the other obvious example, except for Arrival where people's thought is restricted by what they can put into language.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - My favorite one is Babel-17.
• linkHANNAH - Oh, yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - In which not only does it restrict what you can conceive of, but in that one, you can essentially sort of program people.
• linkHANNAH - Mm-hmm.It's the same thing in Snow Crash if you've read that, by Neal Stephenson.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I haven't.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I have, but it was a long time ago.What happens there?
• linkHANNAH - In ancient times, there's these people who get programmed with this specific language, which almost acts as a virus.And then, somebody creates an antivirus software for this language, which enables people to free up their thought and ability to have different languages, and therefore, different thoughts.So, it's a play on the whole Babel myth where God came down and said, "Right, I confirmed your language.You can all spread across the earth and speak different languages." I always think it's funny that in the Bible, that's framed as a punishment, that God's punishing us for trying to reach…crosstalk
• linkDaniel Midgley - With language diversity.laughs
• linkHANNAH - laughsYeah, exactly.
• linkDaniel Midgley - For the sin of cooperation.laughs
• linkHANNAH - In Snow Crash, it's almost framed a thing that freed us to be able to think more freely and in different ways, which I think is a much nicer frame of it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, like that.It makes you wonder, because maybe I have a basic linguistic relativism and die stance, just because I'm a cynical person who doesn't believe in neat explanations and it's usually something else, but sometimes it makes me think, "I mainly think and speak Swedish and English, and they're quite similar.And maybe there are things that I don't think about so much that…" The other day, it took me over 24 hours to remember a very particular cultural-specific word for my region in Sweden.And I felt weird because I knew what the thing was.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hmm.It was strange to you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's not a very romantic word.It's like if you have a cigarette, you smoke half of it and then you put it out, and you save the other half, that has a different word than if it's finished.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What is the word for that in English?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You don't have one.
• linkHANNAH - I think we have one.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I guess not.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We call the thing 'butt', like a cigarette butt.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, that's the end.
• linkHANNAH - Maybe it's just an unfinished butt.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Do we just smoke the whole thing, is that why we don't have this?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I think you have equal amounts of poor teenagers.
• linkchuckles
• linkHANNAH - If not more.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - If not more, maybe.chucklesYeah.Anyway, but it made me feel like I lost connection to a world and then when I thought of it, I was like, "Oh, yeah." And it felt like you were saying about vegetarianism, it did feel different remembering the word even though I could conceive of the concept.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I feel we're talking about different things.Lexically, that feels like one area, but then having the morphology of your language, like what suffixes you have influence how much money is in your bank account, or how likely you are to be for equal rights for women or something like that.That feels like a whole different territory.Feels like we could get behind a bit of Whorfianism in the lexicon.But when it comes to the spooky stuff, we go, "Hmm, that's not a thing." Or maybe we go, "The whole thing isn't a thing."
• linkHANNAH - I think the whole thing's a thing, but only a tiny bit.That’s how I feel.But I don't know, because all of the examples that we've ever had of Whorfianism tend to be…well, not all of them because there's the ability to intuitively know where north, south, east, and west is depending on what words you use for directions, and that's a reliable finding.And that feels a bit Whorfian because it's influencing your cognition of the world.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Or is it practice once again?We keep hitting this.The universe in which its language looks exactly like the universe in which it's practiced.And I don't know how to separate those two.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's tricky.Daniel, in the last episode, you also talked about Dutch kids and English kids and counting because Dutch kids and English kids grew up in fairly comparable…But then again, it could be that like in Dutch daycares, they don't practice counting as much as in English daycares.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But the idea was that in English, we say 24, but in Dutch, they say 4-20.And they ask the kids to do two-digit addition, and the English-speaking kids did way better, even accounting for factors like age and education.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Right.
• linkHANNAH - But why should the order have an effect on that?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I mean, now I'm learning German, and I'm trying to…
• linkHANNAH - It's 4 and 20.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, and then you add 2.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is it still the case when you get up to the 80s or 70s?Is it still reversed?Because if it flips, then that would…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Butcrosstalk400, right?
• linkHANNAH - Yes, it's…crosstalkunintelligible [01:06:54so that would be 1-4-2 rather than 1-2-4 or 124.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's the same in German.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I keep getting this question about what would alien languages be like?I'm sure that you've got a lot of reading on that.I keep thinking, "Well, okay, we don't know what their language would be like, but we can take some guesses as to based on what communication must be like." For example, they probably keep their adjectives and their nouns pretty close together.They'd say either red house or house red, if they had those things.They probably wouldn't say house blah, blah, blah red because from an information theoretic perspective that makes it easier.And what I get back is, "What if they had super good working memory?Then, it's not a problem.Oh, dang it.Okay.So, the alien language doesn't have to…" I guess my assumption about that was probably wrong based on that assumption.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We even have human languages that do that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, do we?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Most of Australian Indigenous languages do discontinuous numerals where they have the noun phrases where they have the adjective intersecting not in the same phrase as the noun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - There's been some work on long-distance dependencies but yeah, that could totally be something that happens.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.What do you think, Hannah?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, because it's really, really unsatisfying to say they could literally look like anything.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is.chucklesI try to avoid saying that whenever I can.
• linkHANNAH - And I find that quite a lot of the discourse around what assumptions can we make about language universally, including alien ones, all of it seems a little bit like it's just defying the choices that science fiction authors have made to say that we can assume that they probably have words for cooperation, and war and peace, and these concepts that we think of as concepts that you would necessarily have to have in order to have a sufficiently intelligent species to negotiate a language but also negotiate space travel, assuming that you'd need space travel for us to ever find them and speak to them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's even insane assumptions.There's an original theory Star Trek episode, which they later contradict, where they say that masculine and feminine are universal concepts because they encountered this sentient gas cloud, and Kirk is like, "Ooh, this is a woman."
• linkHANNAH - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Of course, Kirk.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Not only is it a woman but it's also a heterosexual woman who is in love with a human man.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Makes out with him.Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, the ones that you said now, Hannah, like conflict corporation, I find more plausible than masculine-feminine.chuckles
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, because even looking at species on earth, you find loads of animals that have…Well, no binary sex or very fluid binary sex, even amongst insects and things that can change sex and do all sorts of fancy things.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Or among humans, yeah.chuckles
• linkHANNAH - And among humans.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - laughsYeah, it's fun.
• linkDaniel Midgley - You wouldn't need to have a word for war or the concept war.For example, you had groups of people with limited telepathy.So, wars happen, among other reasons, when we're not sure what somebody's going to do, but we think that they might be hostile.So, we prepare for war.If you had limited telepathy, and I could see that you had good intentions toward me, but not much else, or I could feel that you had bad intentions toward me, then I could take the appropriate action.
• linkHANNAH - So, that all language where it's impossible to lie, like in Embassytown.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, tell me about that one.
• linkHANNAH - Well, it was a concept of Language in Embassytown, which is just stylized with a capital L, where it's impossible to lie.So, it's just basically like telepathy that you externalize.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Can you choose to not say things?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, but even within fiction where they have telepathy, in Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness, which is a film now, the characters can see each other's thoughts and it's called noise, or hear it, experience each other's noise, but that you can control your noise.Some people are better at it than others.But it's a really weird concept like to have telepathy without the ability to control it, who would be able to cope?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But that's the other thing is when we talk about the conflict and cooperation, what if the other species live in a hive cooperation, Borg-like community, where there's no word for war or cooperation, really, because within the community, you never have any conflict.No one ever has any bad intentions towards each other.And if you encounter someone who is not part of your community, you famously try to make them a part of your community, because that's the only way you understand the world.I don't think the Borg really have a word for…they have a word for resistance, which is famously futile.But I'm not sure they have a word for war or invasion or anything like that because…
• linkHANNAH - If only we could ask them.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know what I mean?
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But we understand.Well, I guessunintelligible 01:12:45the universal translator.So, tell me about the chapters in the book, how have you divided this up so far?
• linkHANNAH - So, I divided it up into three parts.The first part is all about our evolutionary past and biology.So, we go through animal communication systems, different modalities for communication, and what they look like, the genetic basis for language, and the X-Men theory of language and whether it all came about at once as a result of one mutation or whether it was small, incremental steps.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ooh.I know this one.
• linkHANNAH - laughsAnd also about neurology in the brain.And the middle section is all about culture, and language contact, language diversity, language change, and how things are changing now, in present day human languages and what we know about them.And then, the last part is all about the future and linguistic technologies and where they're going, and what science fiction can teach us about that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - That sounds like good division.Good plan for a book.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I want to ask one more question.You are a linguist, you're also a science communicator.What's the right way to do linguistics communication?Or if there's no right way, because it's individualized, then what good things have you noticed people doing?What should everyone be emulating?
• linkHANNAH - I think it depends massively on what your objectives are.Actually, I just wrote a chapter for a book that's coming about linguistics and public engagement, published by Routledge, edited by Hazel Price and Dan McIntyre, who's at Huddersfield.And there's loads of loads of lovely examples in that so every chapter is another example of some project that people are doing.But I wrote one of the earlier chapters, which is very, very broad and about this question of what makes good linguistic communication or research communication about linguistics.
• linkHANNAH - And then, I'm just talking about how you boil down working out what your objective is, which audiences does your objective relate to, and how can you go about reaching that audience where they're at.Because I think that the mistake that a lot of people make is trying to do things for the general public, and they start too broad.But, of course, the general public is made up of 3-year-olds, 90-year-olds, it's made up of your nan and your nephew, and somebody that you've never met on the other side of the world who likes completely different things to you.
• linkHANNAH - So, as long as you're being honest with yourself about who you're reaching, because I imagined Because Language reaches linguistics nerds.That's who listens to it.That’s who signs up to the Patreon.It's people like me,chucklesreally, really love linguistics and want to hear about linguistics, and engage them with discussions about that.But people who don't know what linguistics are very unlikely to find your podcast and listen to it, people who know what it is, but they just could not care less, they would not listen to it either.And that's fine, that's totally fine.
• linkHANNAH - I really, really like initiatives that embed research communication into culture.I think the reason I really, really got into this science fiction thing is because science fiction is part of culture.It has a huge, nerdy following.But I think that this nerdy following is getting bigger and bigger.All of the top-ranking films of the past year…over the last 10 years, the top ones are all science fiction.They're all Marvels, superhero films, big blockbuster science fiction.I think people often think sci-fi is really niche and nerdy, and…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's so not.And also, sci-fi nerds think it is.And they're like, "Oh, we're like the underdog of culture." And it's like, "Have you seen what movies are raking in money?" You're not a minority.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.I think that's a really nice.Because it's so mainstream and there's so many people interested in it, it's such a nice vehicle to start these conversations about linguistic research by saying, "What's behind the linguistics of Star Trek or of Star Wars, of the Marvel films or Arrival?But there's lots of to be said even about the ones that aren't the obvious ones like Arrival.So, yeah, I think that was a very long winded but broad answer.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense.And I think, in general, not only when it comes to science communication, but overall, in a lot of things you do in life, in general, it's good to truly understand who your audience, who you're speaking to.And that goes for a dialogue you just have with one other person too when I write code.When I write our code, I try and think about, "Is it me who's going to use it a year from now or is it someone else?And how does that make a difference?" Also, scientific articles, you write for different journals, for different audiences, it's always good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And you're right.In our podcast, we think that our audience, and we do service of our audience, and we know that they have a certain amount of linguistics knowledge usually already.They might not know all the terms or all the latest things, and that's fine.Why would they?Why would we?But yeah, we do start from a certain place and I think that's really good advice generally for communication, broadly, any communication.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So, Dr.Little, what is something that you want our audience to know about the future of language?
• linkHANNAH - Well, what I want people to know about the future…I don't know, because we were talking about universal translators at the beginning, which I think is where the really interesting space is because I think it gets to this question you had about how would you learn language in this instance of there being the presence of a universal translator, and whether the future of language…people ask this a lot, whether the future of language is that we all just end up speaking the same language, or if the universal translator would facilitate further diversification of language because it would reduce the need to have people being multilingual and also speaking different languages with different people because the computer will do it all for you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Mm-hmm.You can just speak your own individual goo-goo-gaga, essentially.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah, exactly.laughs
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkHANNAH - I don't know the answer to that but I think it's a really interesting question
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It makes you very sensitive.So, if the Romulans, the Martians, or whatever, knock out your universal translator or spread the virus that kills to Babel Fish or the bacteria or whatever, you're sort of fucked.
• linkHANNAH - Yeah.And not all science fiction shows resolve the issue of people needing to understand each other via something like a universal translator.So, The Expanse has Belter Creole in the Belt, which is the outer regions of the solar system, where a lot of people live called the Belters, but they all come from different parts of Earth and Mars.And so, they need a universal language.Well, just like Creole has come about in in the real world, they need a language to be able to communicate with each other for purposes of trading things.So, they have Belter Creole.Which I think's a much more elegant and realistic solution in that universe than just kind of having either a kind of universal lingua franca or a common tongue, which is another frequent trope that you see in science fiction, where everybody just speaks English.All of these lingua franca always look exactly like English, which is quite serendipitous.Instead, you'd have something that's a functional language that facilitates this…well, these language context situations.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I think in terms of human future, if we don't factor in aliens, that's much more realistic.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I agree.Dr.Hannah Little, thanks for being with us.How can people find out what you're doing?
• linkHANNAH - You can go to my website, hlittle.com, but I'm also on Twitter at @hanachronism, which is spelt with an H and then the word anachronism, which is not how you spell Hannah.But, yeah, you'll be able to find me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughsVery good.We'll have a link on our website, becauselanguage.com.
• linkDaniel Midgley - interview ends
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now,unintelligible 01:21:58Words of the Week.And we got a bunch.The first one suggested by Diego.Guess what this is?Red covid.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, tell me it's not another variant.I really don't want it to be another variant.
• linkDaniel Midgley - laughsWhen I saw this, I thought, "I don't know what this is, but I'm not going to like it."
• linkBen Ainslie - This bodes ill.
• linkDaniel Midgley - No, it's not a new variant of covid.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, good.
• linkDaniel Midgley - crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Is it like Red October, Red covid somehow?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Not related to Red October.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Oh.Hang on.Is it related to the Republican Party somehow?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, it is.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so red is their color.Red covid…Oh, okay.Is this to do with the general fatigue people are experiencing around Republican bullshit?
• linkDaniel Midgley - You're hitting around it here.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Diego has pointed us to an article by Eric Ting in sfgate.com.This refers to the way that deaths from covid are correlated county by county in California to voting tendencies and one presumes how Republican that county is.The Republican voting ones are the red ones, are suffering way more excess deaths than the Democratic-leaning ones.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Unsurprisingly.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, that intuitively makes sense given all of the rampant…And here's the thing, not just antivax, but also anti-mask and all of the other…like anti-closure, all the other protective factors that were being rolled out and potentially still could be rolled out.Yeah, I guess that makes a horrible morbid sort of sense.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Now, we, on Because Language, have a very strong policy that nobody should ever die for any reason ever, ever, ever.
• linkBen Ainslie - Immortality for all, obviously.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Do you know there's someone who has not that opinion?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Really?
• linkBen Ainslie - What?Someone doesn't believe in immortality for all?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow, spicy take.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You know Bolsonaro?
• linkBen Ainslie - Who?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Bolsonaro.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Brazilian.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, the leader of Brazil.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, yes.
• linkDaniel Midgley - The Trumpy guy.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - He said in interviews apparently that we shouldn't be scared of death and it's fine to die.And covid and stuff aren't really problems because strong people don't die, and people who die, it's fine.It is a pure fascism.
• linkBen Ainslie - For those who have never encountered this man, he is a level of crank that is pretty rare to come across.Like he is willing to say things out loud.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Just bizarre.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is the same guy who said things like, "I would rather my son die in a car accident than be gay." He said that openly, publicly at like a stump speech.This dude is off the chain.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - He's also said that one of the problems with the military junta that was before in Brazil was that they didn't kill enough people.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah, they didn't go far enough.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Death cults are so weird.Yeah, it seems that before the vaccine was available, there wasn't much of a difference, and in fact, remember that the Trump administration was happy to do nothing about covid because they thought it would attack blue states cities most heavily.For a while, there wasn't really any correlation between political inclination in the US counties and covid deaths.But Eric Ting reports that after the vaccine became widely available, it very strongly skewed toward Trump-won counties versus Biden-won counties.
• linkBen Ainslie - There we go.I mean, that's awful and terrible.Unlike the Queen, where I was willing to go pretty hard, this is just a situation where all these people dying fucking sucks.And there have been people who could have prevented a lot of that, and for their own political gain, decided to just sow dissent and disinformation and division, rather than just try and save people's lives.And those people should be fucking shot into the sun, basically.But the people in these counties who have died because people gave them bad information, and because of echo chambers and all the rest of the stupid bullshit that we have at the moment, that's really sad.And I'm really bummed out about that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, I've been wrong before and it really sucks that this time, the consequences for being wrong is dying.Because in the end, we're really all in this together, even if they might not think so.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's really fucked.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, so, RED COVID.We've got two more here.DIGINIM and WI-FI TRIBE.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Diginom.Oh, did I write…crosstalkyes, it's supposed to be DIGINOM.Do you want to guess what DIGINOM is?
• linkBen Ainslie - Is it fucking tragic that the only thing I can think of now that you've said diginom is digimon?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Of course, yeah.That’s why it's funny.
• linkBen Ainslie - crosstalkDigital monsters.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, it's not that.
• linkDaniel Midgley - My son was digging through all his old crap in his room yesterday, and he found all these Yu-Gi-Oh, so of course Digimon is all I can think of.
• linkBen Ainslie - Diginom, okay, I'm assuming it's to do with virtually eating?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No.So, it's a kind of person.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, it's not nom.Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I want to look at that backwards and say it's Monigid, but that's not right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.Put a bullet in this.Tell us what it is.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Digital Nomad.So, the more common word is "digital nomad," but a funny comedian I like likes to say diginom, and I think that's very funny, Ina Lindström.
• linkBen Ainslie - You know what?I would go with digignome because it's got that kind of gnome vibe.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, yeah, that's true.
• linkBen Ainslie - chuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Digital nomad is a word describing people who choose to be without a stable home and to travel around and to work remotely and go from new places to new places.It's an interesting phenomenon.There is an association such company, I don't know exactly, called Wi Fi Tribe, where people who are digital nomads, like go to places together and travel together and find each other and they call that a Wi Fi tribe.A little bit unclear exactly what it takes to be a Wi Fi tribe.I looked at their website and I didn't necessarily understand more.But, yeah, it's a thing a lot of people do.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, it's taking work from home to a new level.Work from no home.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Some people really like it.
• linkBen Ainslie - What was the film with Frances McDormand about this kind of, won the best picture?I thought it was called Nomad because what I was going to say is basically…McDormand.This is one of those things that if you've got money, this is really cool.And if you don't, you're a feckless, homeless beggar kind of thing.It's unfortunate and a bit Nomadland is what I was thinking of.Sorry.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, that's right.
• linkBen Ainslie - Because if you watch Nomadland…
• linkDaniel Midgley - It's in my queue.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Ben …you will see exactly what you've just described.A community of alternatively homed people, and they will regularly get together for big meetups where they share information and tips and tricks and all that kind of stuff.But one of the things that I think that film does a very good job of showing is how unsafe in ways beyond simply physical safety a life like that can be.So, I'm just a little bit wary of like the Instavan life people being like #blessed.Because that's because that's essentially what we're talking about, is this create a culture, who then go on the move.Now, that's not to say…I'm sure there's probably like, I don't know, coders, for instance out there who can just do their work wherever the fuck there is a computer and internet access.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's a lot of people I think who can do that.The question and why I thought it was interesting when I heard about Wi Fi Tribe is that they recognize that only having interactions through digital medium is not enough and they need to meet up persons.They choose to meet up certain kinds of people in these spaces because as far as I understand, these Wi Fi Tribe events and trips are they meet each other in real life.It's a very privileged position to be in and can still be very unsafe.I think it also says something about because they're digital nomads and that they're physically homeless, but I think a lot of them would describe maybe they're like them having a village online.Like you still have a home, it's just not physical.
• linkBen Ainslie - There was a wonderful episode of the sitcom, My Name Is Earl, which if you've never seen it, basically every episode is Earl, the titular character, trying to right one sort of wrong that he's done to someone in his life.He's trying to be a better person.And in this particular episode, he tries to right a wrong with a guy, but he can't do it because the guy dies the day before he goes to apologize and make amends and stuff.What he does is he goes, "Okay, I'm going to have to put on a really good funeral for this guy.That's how I'm going to make amends.That's the best I can do." He finds out that this person has no one in his life.Like, three quarters of the episode is him just desperately trying to find anyone, family, friends, and he can't find anyone.And then, right at the end, he nudges this dude's computer, and it goes likemimicking notification soundsand he sees all these messages from people like, "Where are you, man?What's happened?What’s going on?" It was just a really lovely kind of reminder that some people find their world, their tribe in other ways.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - It reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath, how this family is reduced to ashes and scattered to the winds.And out of that chaos, new relationships emerge.It's a painful transformation of society and culture, but society and culture can be very robust.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, fine, Daniel, I did a sitcom.You did high literature.We get it, you're smart.
• linkDaniel Midgley - chucklesI haven't read it for a while.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - But as a person who has chosen to go into academia, at least for a while, this is a problem that I face.I'm unwillingly sort of a digital nomad in some ways.I don't like it.I make friends with people, like you guys, and I go and see you or I see friends at conferences, and I don't like that my village is spread out across the world.It's actually something that makes me not want to be in this industry at all.
• linkBen Ainslie - Here's us bringing it back to linguistics.Is that something that's kind of relatively, certainly not only for linguistics, but for kinds of study that are not going to have a department at a university?Because I have to imagine, say…I don't know, the business department, probably has a staff of like 20 or 30 academics working concurrently.Do you know how many linguistic academics…?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's across the entire university, precarity is across…it's even across into non-academia kinds of labor that you get when you're choosing these kinds of topics.Casualization of the workforce and universities don't value, like if you get a permanent position opening up and you've had someone that you've casually employed for five years, they still need to compete with people from outside the university and their experience within the university system doesn't count for anything.No, it's really bad all around.
• linkDaniel Midgley - When it was presented to me, it was like, "Yeah, well, you'll finish your PhD and then you'll do a number of postdocs, and you'll go around the world, wherever you can.And then, you'll have to fight for a full-time position one day."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, that's it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Wow, it was just miles away from what I wanted to do being an established person.That was one thing that made me realize, "Okay, this is not going to be me." And I have immense respect for anybody who can do it.Like you, Hedvig, and my other friends…crosstalk
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don’t know if respect is the word that you need to say there.chuckles
• linkDaniel Midgley - It is.Being able to have that skill to be able to market yourself anywhere in the world that needs you.It's amazing.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Let's go on to our last one.This one comes from Colleen on our Discord."Justifiably, there's been some pushback on quiet quitting.Quiet quitting is that kind of awful term about just doing your job, not letting work invade your life."
• linkBen Ainslie - Or giving into grind culture.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.ACTING THEIR WAGE.Acting your wage.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hmm.I like that.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh.
• linkDaniel Midgley - A good alternative to QUIET QUITTING.And it's a reference to Sarai Marie, a TikToker who's created a character called Valerie who doesn't take any nonsense.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, man.She's done…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Have you seen this?
• linkBen Ainslie - This is the girl with the giant Starbucks cup.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's the one.Should we play some audio?
• linkBen Ainslie - Absolutely.
• linkSusan - Veronica, did you just decline the Zoom meeting that's at 6:30 tonight?
• linkVeronica - Oh, yeah, I did.I did do that.Yeah, because it's outside of my working hours, 9:00 to 5:00, so I will be attending.
• linkSusan - Okay, Veronica, I'm going to need you to complete all this today.
• linkVeronica - Susan, do I look like two people to you?
• linkSusan - No.
• linkVeronica - Oh, okay, just making sure because that looks like the work of two people, right?Right?And I'm one.I'm just one person.Right?
• linkBen Ainslie - I saw a great Stitch too, one of…is it Veronica?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.So, sort of great Stitch to this, which was basically some like super sketchy-looking punk anarchist type person, like septum nose piercing, Mohawk, all the rest of it.And this…I don't even know if this person identifies as female, but they were certainly a fab presenting, basically."I wonder how it feels to all of the like, edgy Marxist boys with a podcast to know that the boss is singlehandedly doing more tolaughsradicalize people than they will ever achieve in their entire lives." And I was like, "That's so accurate.It's so true."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.There are several TikTok accounts in this genre.I want to have a good name for the…I've accidentally stumbled into what I would call HR Tok.Like Human Resources TikTok, which has a lot of these creators.
• linkBen Ainslie - Human Resource Roleplay Tok.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, right.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's like people who have bosses who are supposed to try and be cool.And like, "Oh, I'll sign your extension for your contract next week.We're friends, aren't we?" And that kind of…
• linkBen Ainslie - Also, you know what I've come across as well is actual HR representatives who are just flaming other people, but in really appropriate ways.I think, much like politicians, HR cops a lot of hatred from people for being like the stick in the muds, the boring people, all that kind of stuff.But a lot of the people on TikTok who were talking about HR are like, "We're the people making sure that good process is followed." Like the roleplay boss being like, almost like Michael from The Office."We don't have cause to fire this person," and the boss is like, "Because I hate them."
• linkchuckles
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, I've seen those too.Or like, "But she's pregnant." "We can't fire people because they're pregnant." Or like, "People keep quitting my team.I don't understand." "Yeah.Uh, you."
• linkchuckles
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, there is one common factor here.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - There's one common factor here.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's really funny.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, so as entertaining is us talking about TikToks that we've seen, I'm sure is to our listening audience, we should probably move on.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay, well, that's about it.So, RED covid, DIGINOM, WI-FI TRIBE, and ACTING YOUR WAGE.They're our Words of the Week.We've got some comments about Ew because we had the Mailbag of Ew, and we wondered, are there any words in other languages where you use Ew or something like it?So, this one's from Dax at SpeechDocs.
• linkBen Ainslie - Hello.You're listening to us right now.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yes, they do our transcripts and they do a great job."A message for Ben," says Dax."I'm currently on book two of The Expanse series by James Corey and enjoying them immensely, but I will get to Warhammer 40k after this."
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, mate, they're so good.You are going to froth on these bad boys and they're all out.Can I make a recommendation?Actually, I can really quickly pass the mic to Hedvig to make a recommendation because she made a recommendation to me, and I smashed through the four books that I could.Hedvig, you go.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Steerswoman.makes surprised sounds
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein.It's the best.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, awesome.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - You read all four?
• linkBen Ainslie - Yeah.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What'd you think?
• linkBen Ainslie - Well, I'm halfway through book four.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Okay.Oh, my God.Okay.
• linkBen Ainslie - I have a pretty good guess of what's going on.We can talk about it in a sec, because I know Daniel will never read it.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Let's talk about it in a sec.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I might.
• linkBen Ainslie - So, anyway, Dax, The Steerswoman series is so good.If you ever thought to yourself, "Hey, I wonder if academics could be sword-wielding heroes have a story who love truth and knowledge?", My friend, is there a series for you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - So good.So, good linguistic stuff as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - What do you actually have to say about Ew?
• linkDaniel Midgley - Dax continues, "And also as a fan of the series and to answer your question on Ew in other languages.In Telugu, we use Thoo." Now, I'm not sure if that's aspirated T, thu or thoo, I should know this."I guess this is used in other South Indian languages as well but cannot testify completely to that." And that does sound like an injective, doesn't it?Thoo.Spitting something out.
• linkBen Ainslie - Yes.Yeah.You're like, "Thoo thoo."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Cameron on Patreon says, "I was fascinated by your discussion about Ew.As a millennial American, I have always used it and I am not a valley girl.And I had no idea it was so recent.Anyway, I wanted to add that Wolof, mostly spoken in Senegal and the Gambia, does have a similar exclamation, chim.As far as I know, it's only used as an exclamation and not in a sentence.It is mostly used in the same way one might exclaim, "Gross," and can be used to express disgust or displeasure with other things too, like a politician." "Oh, that guy's gross," in the same way that an American might say, "Ew," about some horrible thing or Republican did.So, Wolof has chim.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ah.I was just going to make the theory that they all had to end in vowels.Screw me.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, darn.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Nasals are basically vowels.
• linklaughter
• linkBen Ainslie - And that’s the kind of academic rigor people come here for.unintelligible [01:40:49.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s close.Yeah, it's not like it's approximate, but it's a nasal.It's close.Big thanks to our guests for this episode, Dr.Hannah Little.Thanks to everyone who gave us ideas for the show.Thanks to Dustin of Sandman Stories, who is still recommending us to nearly everyone.Thanks to the team at SpeechDocs, who transcribes our every word.Thanks to our sponsors, the Oxford English Dictionary.And most of all, thanks to our patrons who give us so much support, and make it possible to keep the show going.And Ben and Hedvig, thank you for being here as well.
• linkBen Ainslie - You're welcome.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Hey, everybody.If you like the show, there are a number of things that you can do to help.What are they, you ask?Well, we'll tell you a few.Number one, you can send us ideas and feedback.And how do you do that?Well, you can follow us.We're BecauseLangPod everywhere, except Spotify.You can leave us a message with SpeakPipe but make sure you listen back to your message because I've gotten some not very good audio that I can't use.Ozzie, send it again.You can do that on our website, becauselanguage.com.You can also send us an email, hello@becauselanguage.com.Or you can tell a friend about us or leave a review.Hey, guys, we have a new review.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - I'm going to read it.
• linkBen Ainslie - chucklesYay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Here we go.This is from Nathaniel via Apple Podcasts.Nathaniel says, "Loooooove the show." That's six O's.So, that's a lot.
• linkBen Ainslie - A lot a love.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Iconically speaking.Five stars.And then, the comment."Yes." That's it.
• linkBen Ainslie - Simple.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That's all it takes.You don't have to do very much.
• linkBen Ainslie - Precise, to the point.Love it.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That counts.Hedvig, what's another way that people can support the show?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, there are lots of ways but I also want to add that if you don't use iTunes Apple, there are other places you can review podcasts online that are good.We can link to some of them.We've done that before because I choose to.You can become a patron on Patreon.That will entitle you to a bunch of extra stuff like bonus episodes, hanging out with us on Discord, and also just the warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach knowing that you make it possible for us to do great things, like transcripts, buy me a boom mic thing, and other good things.So, I want to give a shoutout to our top patrons.They are Dustin, Termy, Elías, Matt, Whitney, Chris L, Helen, Udo, Jack, PharaohKatt, Lord Mortis, gramaryen, Larry, Kristofer, Andy B, James, Nigel, Meredith, Kate, Nasrin, Ayesha, Moe, Steele, Manú, Rodger, Rhian, Colleen, Ignacio, Sonic Snejhog, Kevin, Jeff, Andy from Logophilius, Stan, Kathy, Rach, Cheyenne, Felicity, Amir, Canny, Archer, O Tim, Alyssa, and Chris W.And the lovely Kate B who smashed the one-time donation button on our website, becauselanguage.com, and who I got to see in Canberra really recently, which is very nice.
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, cool.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Okay.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And a special welcome to our newest patrons at the listening level, we have VanyaMolotov, Melody, Gordon, and Wyrd for Words.
• linkBen Ainslie - Is that supposed to be "Weird for Words?"
• linkDaniel Midgley - I think it's Weird for Words.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Weird for words but weird is spelled with the Y.And at the friend level, SCW.I'm very curious about that.Thanks to all of our amazing patrons.
• linkBen Ainslie - Satan's Cunning Whispers.That's what I choose to believe that stands for.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Probably like…
• linkDaniel Midgley - Maybe it's something really boring, like Strawberry Chocolate Whipped Cream.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I was going to say it's going to be like Steve Cevin Worcester.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay, a Cevin with a C is deeply, deeply frightening to me.And it's so much worse than my satanic stuff.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Is that because of skinny puppy because one of the members there was Kevin with a C?
• linkBen Ainslie - Oh, it's just…I don't know, just immediately no.Just, mm-hmm, Kevin with a C.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Skinny puppy owns you.Skinny puppy owns your soul.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ew.
• linkBen Ainslie - Our theme music has been written and performed by Drew Krapljanov of who's a member of Ryan Beano and Dideon’s Bible.Thank you for listening.We will catch you next time.Because Language.
• linkBen Ainslie - Pew, pew, pew.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Pew, pew, pew.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yay.You guys are awesome.Thank you.
• linkDaniel Midgley - So, it sounds like we have stickers.The mystery animators working on a TV version of us, is that right?Yes.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We've been talking on Twitter DMs of all places because they keep posting like, "Oh, my commissions are open." And I was like, "Maybe we should actually do it."
• linkBen Ainslie - Good.Let's commit.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I tried to filter the information you guys were talking about back to them, and they were like, "Yeah, I get the gist." Something that can scale.And they even suggested like making a couple of small ones that can be used for emoji stickers on Patreon.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Oh, nice.Good.I'm working on the postcards.It'll just be stills of us from last weekend.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Fair enough.
• linkBen Ainslie - Please, just whatever you do, not that horrendous photo of us doing the heart.Like that was oof.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - What do you mean?That was really cute.
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s one of them.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsNot only did we get a lot of people online talking about how wronged you in particular were, Hedvig, but I got people offline doing it as well.I literally rolled over in bed and was like, "How did you allow this out?Take it down." And I have to say, "Well, that was her, she put it up."
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkDaniel Midgley - What?I'm-I'm having trouble seeing the problem.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughs
• linkDaniel Midgley - Well, tell you what, I think we need to move on.Can we save the…what's the Duolingo update?Is that a quick one?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - It's very quick.Duolingo made an update and everyone's upset.
• linkBen Ainslie - Okay.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Why?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - We can't go back…like they've made like a unidirectional skill tree, and people can't work on more than one lesson at one time.
• linkBen AinslieDaniel Midgley - Oh.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - And everyone.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Gee, I wonder why.
• linkBen Ainslie - I wonder why.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah.
• linkBen Ainslie - Have they articulated why?
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I don’t know.I just saw they made the update and then I saw everyone getting upset.And I thought it's news.
• linklaughter
• linkDaniel Midgley - That’s news.
• linkBen Ainslie - To our listeners who now have questions, you have no further information.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Yeah, sorry.
• linklaughter
• linkHedvig Skirgård - I'm not the journalist.
• linkBen Ainslie - I'm the topcrosstalkthe mentoring…
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Thank you.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Ben …crosstalknow.This is bad.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Adding value.
• linkBen Ainslie - This is no good.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - No, anyway, if anyone finds out why they've done it, it seems like bad.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Yeah, this is my traditional mug.It's from a bookstore called Atticus.You can see the logo here.It's got a mockingbird.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, nice.That's a good cup.
• linkDaniel Midgley - And I think of Atticus as my model, as a father.
• linkHedvig Skirgård - Oh, wow.
• linkDaniel Midgley - Atticus Finch.
• linkBen Ainslie - It's a bit of a cheat though, because he's just like the god character.
• linkDaniel Midgley - He's the Mary Sue, isn't he?
• linkBen Ainslie - It's like saying like, "The doctor is my model for…" Yeah, okay.Some sort of infinitely capable human in no way bears any relation to actual creatures.
• linkDaniel Midgley - But if I can get 70% there, I win.
• linkBen Ainslie - laughsYeah, fair enough.
• linkTranscript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription