Where Did Punctuation Come From?
Ever wondered where all our squiggles and dots of modern punctuation come from? Author of On The Mark Florence Hazrat gives us a witty and f...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & PodcastsSociety & Culture
Word of Mouth
Series exploring the world of words and the ways in which we use them
Episodes
20 of 222 episodesBouncer George Bass on de-escalating conflict
Michael Rosen talks to security guard George Bass, the author of What The Bouncer Saw: Life on the Front Line of the Security Business. Geor...
Voices of Manchester
Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, talks to Michael about the ways people talk in Greater Ma...
Bias against women's voices
Jane Setter talks to Michael Rosen about negative attitudes to vocal traits seen as exclusively female, from vocal fry to higher pitch. Can...
How the Normans changed the way we speak
Radio 4 is marking the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry in Britain with a special day of programmes reassessing the Norman Conquest and its me...
Gaelic
Michael Rosen is in conversation with Gaelic language expert Roddy Maclean about the status of Gaelic in Scotland. Roddy explains its origin...
Fairy Tales
Michael Rosen talks to anthropologist Jamie Tehrani about how fairy tales travel the world, ever changing and evolving. He’s traced their tr...
Smell
Michael Rosen on the words used to describe the qualities of smells in different languages. Asifa Majid is Professor of Cognitive Science at...
How did people speak throughout history?
Michael Rosen meets popular YouTuber Simon Roper, who tries to recreate how people spoke in the past. Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Sall...
Words to Love the Living World
The words that we use to label or describe things in nature – words for landscapes, creatures, seasons, the weather – can they help awaken u...
The World of Words: editing, typography and print
Michael Rosen finds out about fascinating literary errors from editor Rebecca Lee, the author of Rogues, Widows and Orphans: Mischief and Mi...
Oracy: We Need to Talk
Oracy, alongside literacy and numeracy, is being encouraged in schools. Amy Gaunt, from the charity Voice 21, explains to Michael Rosen how...
Michael Rosen and Dara Ó Briain talk about time
On his 80th birthday, Michael Rosen discusses with Dara Ó Briain how we talk about and understand time, and how we look back on the differen...
Language Extinction
Michael Rosen talks to Sophia Smith Galer about the languages we're losing. She's found that by the end of this century half of the world’s...
Tourette Syndrome
Michael Rosen talks to Ione Georgakis from Tourette Action about about her personal and professional experience of Tourette Syndrome and voc...
Vincentian Creole
Michael Rosen talks to linguist Teddy Mack about Vincy, a language rooted in English spoken on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, alongside...
Aphorisms: Sayings to Live By
Michael Rosen talks to James Geary about his lifetime obsession, aphorisms. These short, witty philosophical sayings have been coined by eve...
Can AI be our friend?
Michael Rosen talks to digital anthropologist Jennifer Cearns about the rise of AI companions- how do we talk to AI, and how does AI talk to...
Scouse
As a port city Liverpool has long been open to a wide variety of global influences and languages that developed into a way of speaking that'...
The Story of A-Z
Michael Rosen goes on an alphabetical odyssey with linguist Dr Danny Bate, author of the book 'Why Q needs U: A History of Our Letters and h...