John McWhorter Describes Human Language's 20,...

Fad workouts have been with us for decades, but they go back much further than we realize. Long before CrossFit, Zumba, P90X, Tae Box, Jazzercise or Jack LaLanne, we had 19th century strongmen. These mustachioed showmen were the first global fitness influencers. They hauled trunk ...  Show more

In the eight decades since the United States deployed the most destructive weapon ever used, conventional wisdom has held that American leaders were faced with a difficult choice: Invade Japan, which would have cost millions of Japanese and Allied lives in bloody combat or use th ...  Show more

Around the world, 2.3 billion people speak English, and for most of them it is an extra, rather than their first, language.

In many countries, English is also used to teach most academic subjects at schools and universities – even where most of the populatio ...

My guest today is someone who I believe, without exaggeration, will help transform the way people learn ancient languages for years to come. While our institutional academies crumble, a new academy is quietly emerging in independent organizations like the Ancient Language Institu ...  Show more

Why modern communication still relies on ancient words and narratives.All communication and connection depend on one thing: language. That’s why Laura Spinney says understanding language — where it comes from and how it evolves over time — can help us use it more effectively.“Lan ...  Show more

There are thousands of languages in the world. Some are spoken by billions of people, others by less than one hundred! Which country has the most languages? In this episode I’ll answer that question, look at some of the languages spoken in that country, and try to explain why the ...  Show more