The Vocal Fries
The monthly podcast about linguistic discrimination. Learn about how we judge other people's speech as a sneaky way to be racist, sexist, classist, etc. Carrie and Megan teach you how to stop being an accidental jerk. Support this podcast at www.patreon.com/vocalfriespod
Episodes
Carrie and Megan talk with Kory Stamper, about her newest book, True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color from Azure to Zinc Pink. Out March 31, 2026!
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk about the Epstein emails and Chomsky's correspondence with him. Carrie swears more than usual.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk about the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Tim Brookes about his newest book, By Hand, about the importance of handwriting.
WOTY:
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk about Makaton, an artificial sign-based system, particularly Sara Novič's article about it.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk about random words that are scary or scary-adjacent.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
We have a few things to say about Pinker.
- Part of the War on Science
- The Language Instinct
- Pinker on Race Realism
- Co-authored paper on overregularization
- The Open Letter to the LSA
- The article that Carrie was interviewed for, but not named, about the Open Letter
- Our episode on dogwhistling
- The Harper's Letter
- Guardian on his appearance on Aporia
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us ...
Carrie and Megan talk with Adam Aleksic about his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Megan C. Reynolds, Dwell magazine editor, about her book, Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Paulette van der Voet and Martina Terrazzano, PhD students at the University of Umea, about their class called “Linguistics and the Eurovision Song Contest”.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry ...
We talk with Dr Lorna Gibb about her newest book, Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages.
Steven Pinker:
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Drs Emily M. Bender, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, and Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), about their new book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, out May 13, 2025.
Carrie and Megan talk with Gabe Henry about his new book, Enough is enuf: Our failed attempts to make English eezier to spell.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Gerald Roche, Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Cultures at La Trobe University, about his new book, The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, language oppression, solidarity, China and Tibet.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email...
Megan and Carrie talk with Massimiliano Canzanella about the Neapolitan language and how it is perceived in Italy.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Adam Benkato, Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley, about Arabic.
- codeswitching in incarceration
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on
Megan and Carrie talk to Dr Ayala Fader, professor of anthropology at Fordham University, and Dr Mike Mena, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, about their new project, the Demystifying Language Project, where academics and high school students work together to rewrite linguistic articles into more accessible versions.
First article: Speech or Silence
Intro from our patron René:
Carrie and Megan talk to Dr Leonard Cassuto, Professor of English at Fordham University, about his class called "Literature and Psychology of Disgust," which explores how language evokes emotional responses, particularly disgust, and his book Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, which was released in September.
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- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.so...
Carrie and Megan talk with Dr Elia Powers, Associate Professor of Journalism at Towson University, about his book Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality.
- 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds NY Times
- Why Does Trump Do That Weird Capitalization Thing? HuffPost (sometimes Gillon is misspelled as Gillion, as per uzh)
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- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us ...
Megan and Carrie talk with Dr Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, assistant professor at UCLA in the Departments of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Education, about her book How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America, coming out October 1.
Contact us:
- Threads us @vocalfriespod
- Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
- Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com
Thanks for listening and ke...
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