Linguistics podcasts

Stanford linguist and computer scientist Chris Manning discusses what linguistics contributed to machine learning and why pragmatics and dialogue remain open problems for language models. The conversation examines early abstraction of verb categories in small transformers, how distributed representations shape learning, and whether language alone can support meaningful representations. It also considers language in world models, diffusion language models, and representation finetuning (ReFT), which steers frozen models through their hidden states. The final discussion asks where knowledge resides and whether concepts occupy linear subspaces.

Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv, Allen Roush

Sana Qadar explores the cognitive processes involved in reading and the effects of narrative fiction with Genevieve McArthur, Lili Yu and Raymond Mar. The episode considers literacy difficulties, reading research and the relationship between stories, cognition and wellbeing, alongside readers' personal experiences.

Hosted by Sana Qadar

Researchers from Hamburg discuss the FSL Digital project, which annotates multilingual language textbooks from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Their analysis connects historical teaching practices to everyday communication, multilingualism and attitudes towards languages, showing what instructional manuals reveal about expectations of language learners in early modern Europe.

Hosted by Brynn Quick

Linguist Deborah Tannen examines how differences in conversational style create unintended conflict in families, friendships and workplaces, and how greater awareness can improve communication. This release revisits an earlier interview with Tannen, a professor at Georgetown University, and adds a new Your Questions Answered segment in which Emma Levine addresses listener questions about the psychology of lying. Hosted by Shankar Vedantam and published by Hidden Brain Media on 14 September 2026. The official episode page offers public audio, research references and a transcript, with a warning that the transcript may reflect an earlier version.

Hosted by Shankar Vedantam

Nicole Marinaro presents linguistic unease as a framework for assessing language policies in healthcare. The discussion examines how communication barriers shape access to care for speakers of minority languages and how policy evaluation can account for patients’ experiences, linguistic justice and confidence in using public services.

Hosted by Brynn Quick

Psychologist Steven Pinker joins Shankar Vedantam to explore why people communicate indirectly despite learning that honesty is desirable. The conversation examines hedging, softened wording and meanings left unstated, and considers the role these patterns play in human relationships.

Hosted by Shankar Vedantam

Yaron Matras discusses urban multilingualism through the Multilingual Manchester project. The conversation explores how language narratives can build inclusive civic identities, while tracing tensions between decolonial activism, university engagement and commercial uses of diversity. It contrasts practical multilingual spaces for access and heritage with national narratives that treat linguistic diversity as deficient citizenship.

Hosted by Ingrid Piller

Hannah Madin and Catherine White examine the mismatch between Indigenous students’ home languages and Standard Australian English in schools. They describe a Northern Territory project that supports additional-language learners through teaching materials, professional learning, school visits and an online community of practice, with particular attention to preparing teachers for multilingual classrooms.

Hosted by Agnes Bodis

Nelson Flores traces the institutionalisation of Spanish–English bilingual education in the United States after the Second World War and through the civil-rights era. Drawing on his book Becoming the System, he examines how racial hierarchies can persist within programmes intended to promote inclusion and how these histories connect with contemporary neoliberal education policy.

Hosted by Brynn Quick

Nature staff discuss rhythmic laughter in apes, what it may reveal about the evolution of speech, and evidence that AI use can erode skills in medicine and computing.

Cory Shain discusses efforts to map language processing in individual brains with greater precision. Combining measurements from different recording methods, the research aims to explain how people understand and produce language and to inform future technologies for restoring communication.

Hosted by Nicholas Weiler

Santiago Betancor Falcón discusses autonomous language learning among Roma autodidacts in Spain. The episode connects individual learning practices with the emergence of a Romani revitalisation movement, examining how speakers of minoritised languages use self-directed education as political activism and a means of strengthening collective linguistic life.

Hosted by Emily Pacheco

Yeong Ju Lee examines informal language learning through TikTok and Instagram. A comparative study of public posts and ethnographic case studies using journals, interviews and participants’ media traces show how multimodal creation and networking enter everyday learning. The discussion connects these findings with ecological accounts of learning and possibilities for classroom teaching.

Hosted by Brynn Quick

David Palfreyman explains the design and use of a corpus that captures Arabic and English writing by the same university students. The discussion shows how paired texts and contextual information can illuminate bilingual vocabulary, assessment and discourse, and how this approach supports research on multilingual language use and education.

Hosted by Ingrid Piller

Brynn Quick compares communication imagined by Australian healthcare policies with the work required in multilingual clinical settings. Analysis of thirteen policies shows how patients are often expected to identify their own interpreter needs, while staff receive little guidance on assessing English proficiency. The discussion examines how apparently language-neutral communication standards can obscure unequal access.

Hosted by Emily Pacheco, Brynn Quick

Katharina Gensch discusses interviews with older adults attending English classes in Berlin. Participants respond differently to the spread of English, from welcoming international urban life to experiencing exclusion or ageism. The study examines language learning as a strategy for participating in changing neighbourhoods and the communicative demands of multilingual cities.

Hosted by Hanna Torsh

Zoe Avery explains the co-design of Australia’s fourth National Indigenous Languages Survey. The discussion examines changes in survey design and the role of Indigenous participation in producing knowledge about languages. It presents the planning for the 2025–2026 survey and the team’s approach to gathering evidence for the subsequent report.

Hosted by Alexandra Grey

Ingrid Piller discusses intercultural communication through discourse analysis and multilingualism research. The conversation examines how cultural identities are constructed, how languages acquire different prestige and how access to linguistic resources is distributed. Examples extend to migration, crisis communication and online interaction, drawing on the third edition of her textbook.

Hosted by Loy Lising, Ingrid Piller

Ellie Pavlick examines what it would mean for a language model to understand words. She compares machine and human language processing, discusses the difficulty of explaining black-box predictions, and considers how studying these differences might clarify both artificial intelligence and human knowledge and creativity.

Hosted by Janna Levin, Steven Strogatz

Rajesh Rao revisits predictive coding and its extension from sensory inference to action, including proposed roles for cortical layers. He also describes brain-to-brain interfaces and neural co-processors that use artificial networks to restore or augment function, before discussing his separate work on the undeciphered Indus script.

Hosted by Paul Middlebrooks