Amanda Montell is a language scholar and host/creator of the “Sounds Like a Cult” podcast, and she joins us to talk about how language is used to develop the us vs. them mentality that solidifies people’s membership in cults – and cultish organizations.
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This hour we’ll talk with linguist John McWhorter about how we use profanity, Anna Sale of the “Death, Sex and Money” podcast about strategies for having difficult conversations and psychologist Katherine Kinzler about how the actual sound of our voices affects how people hear what we’ve got to say.
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Sabreet Kang Rajeev joins us to talk about understanding her parents’ journey, their hopes for their new life, and connecting those to her own story as a first-generation American.
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New Yorker staff writer John Colapinto joins us to talk about the experience of losing his voice and how it led him to look into how the sounds we create are so integral to our identity.
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Elizabeth Stokoe, professor of social interaction at Loughborough University, joins us to talk about how personal interactions and niceties reveal our motives – and we’ll get tips for having more meaningful conversations.
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Stephanie Tam joins us to tell the story of one man’s quest for a lingua franca that would bridge communication and why it was blocked by colonial ideas of English superiority.
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Christopher MacDonald-Dennis is chief diversity officer at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and he joins us to talk about the evolution of BIPOC and similar terms – and why some people embrace them while others don’t.
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Louis Chude-Sokei, director of the African American studies program at Boston University, joins us to talk about his journey to understand his place in the Black diaspora.
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University of Manchester sociology professor Gary Younge joins us to talk about how societies operate based on assumptions and privileges granted to people based on their identities.
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Kristin Swenson is an associate professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she joins us to talk about approaching the Bible anew with a sense of wonder and context.
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Shankar Vedantam, host of NPR’s “Hidden Brain,” joins us to talk about the myriad ways we lie to ourselves on a daily basis and how that might actually help lead to a much happier life.
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Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer at National Geographic, and he joins us to talk about his journey into the world of telemarketers and their phone mills selling dubious products.
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