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Slate Podcasts
A feed from the Slate podcast network featuring episodes with enlightening conversations, opposing views, and plenty of healthy disputes. You'll get a curated selection of episodes from programs like What Next, The Waves, and the Political Gabfest, with deep discussions that go beyond point-counterpoint and shed light on the issues that matter most.
LinguaFile V | Get One's Goat
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a mystery word or phrase with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
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35:3417/11/2014
Number Theory
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo ask the question: How did we go from "four and twenty" to "twenty four"?
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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29:3203/11/2014
LinguaFile IV | Snark
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a mystery word or phrase with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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44:0520/10/2014
Man on the Street
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to Jonathon Green, author of The Vulgar Tongue and Green's Dictionary of Slang, a 6,000-page, three-volume reference more than 20 years in the making.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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40:4706/10/2014
LinguaFile III | Orange
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a mystery word or phrase with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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31:0722/09/2014
Demonstratively Speaking
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss Sarah Palin's use of demonstrative pronouns.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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32:3208/09/2014
LinguaFile II | Lagniappe
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a mystery word or phrase with lexicographer Ben Zimmer.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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26:1925/08/2014
The Manic Pixie and the Magical Negro
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to arts critic Nathan Rabin and journalist Christopher John Farley about the phrases they coined to identify two of Hollywood's most pernicious tropes.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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32:5211/08/2014
LinguaFile I | Discombobulate
Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield discuss a mystery word or phrase with Vocabulary.com executive producer Ben Zimmer.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley. Follow @lexiconvalley.
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20:5528/07/2014
Lexicon Valley No. 38: Fisherman's Whorf
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to Columbia University professor John McWhorter about his new book, The Language Hoax.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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36:3514/07/2014
Lexicon Valley No. 37: Legislating Language
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss four legal cases in which the dictionary played a crucial part.
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34:1110/03/2014
Lexicon Valley No. 36: The Dude Abides
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the early history of the word "dude."
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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38:0127/01/2014
Lexicon Valley No. 35: Learning to Say No
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the many meanings of a child's "no."
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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27:4823/12/2013
Lexicon Valley No. 34: Ask Not Who Wrote "Ask Not"
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss JFK's Inaugural Address with Richard Tofel, author of Sounding the Trumpet.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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31:5716/12/2013
Lexicon Valley No. 33: The End of Ambiguity
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to linguist Arika Okrent about the most logical language ever invented.
Show notes at www.slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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27:0009/12/2013
Lexicon Valley: Special Announcement
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo announce the return of Lexicon Valley. Yay!
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03:0604/12/2013
Lexicon Valley No. 32: The Burden of Being Right
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the irresistible pull of language pedantry.
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37:0605/08/2013
Lexicon Valley No. 31: Name That Tone
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the relationship between tonal languages and musical acuity.
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30:2715/07/2013
Lexicon Valley No. 30: Eject at High Altitude
Mike Vuolo talks with an anthropological linguist about the influence geography might have on speech.
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21:3001/07/2013
Lexicon Valley #29: 30 Million By Four
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the importance of talking to your child.
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31:2424/06/2013
Lexicon Valley #28: A Brief History of Swearing
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss curse words old and new with author Melissa Mohr. Show notes at slate.com/lexiconvalley.
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26:5517/06/2013
Lexicon Valley #27: Accentuate the Positive
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the seemingly paradoxical phrase "yeah-no."
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28:2710/06/2013
Special Announcement
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo announce a new run of Lexicon Valley episodes.
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03:2701/06/2013
Lexicon Valley #26: The Fawth Flaw, Part II
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss R-dropping and the New York accent.
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31:5528/01/2013
Lexicon Valley #25: The Fawth Flaw
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss a defining feature of the classic New York accent.
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24:4814/01/2013
Lexicon Valley #24: Get Your Creak On
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss creaky voice.
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28:3331/12/2012
Lexicon Valley #23: Good Is Up
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss metaphor and the "fiscal cliff."
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29:5617/12/2012
Lexicon Valley #22: Talking Leaves and Lightning Paper
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the Cherokee syllabary.
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31:0603/12/2012
Lexicon Valley #21: Undocumented Illegals
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the debate over "illegal" versus "undocumented" at the heart of U.S. immigration policy.
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35:2212/11/2012
Lexicon Valley #20: Death to Potatoes
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo speak with Nataly Kelly, coauthor of Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World.
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34:3329/10/2012
Lexicon Valley #19: Here's to You Mrs. Malaprop
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what malapropisms might reveal about the way we organize our mental dictionary.
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33:2015/10/2012
Lexicon Valley #18: The Rate of Exchange
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the commonly held belief that some languages are spoken faster than others.
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27:0701/10/2012
Lexicon Valley #17: Ascent of the A-word
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg about his book Ascent of the A-word: A**holism, the First Sixty Years.
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27:5117/09/2012
Special Announcement from Lexicon Valley
Mike announces a run of all new episodes beginning later in the summer.
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03:4318/07/2012
Lexicon Valley #16: Our Dying Words
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what we lose when a language goes extinct.
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23:4009/07/2012
Lexicon Valley #15: Then Is Now, Now and Then
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the historical present.
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32:0402/07/2012
Lexicon Valley #14: By Their Words You Shall Know Them
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss stylometry.
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32:5918/06/2012
Lexicon Valley #13: Capturing the Past
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk about how Mad Men and Downton Abbey can teach us about language change.
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40:0311/06/2012
Lexicon Valley #12: The Eloquence of Plain English
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the Gettysburg Address.
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32:3304/06/2012
Lexicon Valley #11: When Being Done Replaced Doing
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the most significant change to the English language that you've never heard of.
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28:4427/05/2012
Lexicon Valley #10: One Giant Leap for Humanity
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the he said/she said of the epicene pronoun.
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39:5814/05/2012
Lexicon Valley #9: And May He Be a Masculine Bridge
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss how a simple quirk of grammar may affect the way we think.
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32:0007/05/2012
Lexicon Valley #8: When Nouns Grew Genitals
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss what it means for language to have gender.
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30:3030/04/2012
Lexicon Valley #7: A Needle Pulling Thread
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the big ambitions of the word "so."
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30:1923/04/2012
Lexicon Valley #6: A Meditation on Scrabble
Mike Vuolo talks to "Word Freak" author Stefan Fatsis about the nature of language in Scrabble.
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35:4512/03/2012
Lexicon Valley #5: Untuning the String
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo talk to author David Skinner about his book, The Story of Ain't, which will be published in the fall of 2012.
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37:2205/03/2012
Lexicon Valley #4: Jumpin' Salty in The O
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the vernacular wrapped in a dialect inside a language that some call Ebonics.
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41:0827/02/2012
Lexicon Valley #3: Consider the Lamppost
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the hypercorrected incorrectness of "between you and I."
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30:0920/02/2012
Lexicon Valley #2: A Bundle of Faggots
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the evolution of the word "faggot."
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32:4713/02/2012
Lexicon Valley #1: A Sin of Which None Is Guilty
Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the longstanding English language proscription against ending a sentence with a preposition.
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24:4306/02/2012