Baby Talk

When historian Kate Bowler was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, she became fascinated by the ways people try to impose order on events they can't control. She joins us to explore what it means to live fully when life offers no satisfying explanation for the tragedies we may face. ...  Show more

Think about the last time you had a discouraging thought. Maybe you told yourself, "This won't work. I'm not cut out for this." Did you take that thought as fact? Last week, we talked with psychologist Martin Seligman about why some people come to believe that their actions don’t ...  Show more

Babies learning speech figure out what an object is by listening to others talk about what that object does. Christie Nicholson reports   

Recently a video went viral of a baby talking - or babbling - with a Liverpool accent. Professor Julian Pine from Liverpool University explains how babies and young children learn language, including the rules we take for granted. Including the surprising reasons who children mak ...  Show more

In which we metaphorically enter the UCLA Language Acquisistion Lab's recording castle, guided by linguistics researcher Dr. Megha Sundara. NPR science correspondent Sydney Lupkin temporarily takes over the host chair to talk to Sundara about all things baby babble. Along the way ...  Show more

In this lesson, we learn all the language associated with pregnancy, babies and small children.