Best of Think '25: The joy of being a word nerd
Think from KERA
KERA
4.7 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The English language is full of words that both communicate and confound. Martha Barnette, co-host of the popular radio show and podcast “A Way with Words,” joins host Krys Boyd to discuss her love of language and all the myriad ways words bring us joy, how words can surprise and delight us, and why the meaning of some words can often be tricky to determine. Her book is “Friends with Words: Adventures in Languageland.”
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| 0:00.0 | Have you heard about OMG? Yes. This is a website the New York Times wirecutter featured as one of their most popular gifts. And for good reason, it presents new findings from the largest ever research study into women's pleasure and intimacy. In partnership with researchers at Yale and at Indiana University, they asked tens of thousands of women what they |
| 0:21.6 | wished they and their partners had discovered sooner. They found the patterns in those |
| 0:26.2 | discoveries and all that wisdom and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, |
| 0:31.6 | animations, and how-toes. When you see OMG, yes, you might understand why wirecutter recommended it. |
| 0:38.2 | It is warm, honest, and has regular women talking about real experiences. |
| 0:42.7 | It's truly eye-opening. |
| 0:44.8 | See for yourself at omgyes.com. |
| 0:47.3 | That's OMGS.com. We can think of food in strictly utilitarian terms as fuel to keep our bodies operating, but almost nobody does. |
| 1:07.2 | Even when we're trying to maximize the nutrient content, we care about the flavor, the texture, the aroma, and temperature, and origins of food, and we value it as a source of pleasure. |
| 1:17.6 | And for a lot of us, the same is true of language. |
| 1:21.2 | From KERA in Dallas, this is think. |
| 1:24.0 | I'm Chris Boyd. |
| 1:25.3 | Even apart from their nutrients, the information they communicate, |
| 1:29.3 | words have the capacity to surprise and intrigue us, and people in every culture, speaking |
| 1:34.6 | every language, are endlessly tinkering with the way we use and combine and define them. |
| 1:40.2 | It has always delighted my guest. Her love for language was planted by her educator parents, |
| 1:45.7 | seasoned by the Appalachian dialect of a beloved aunt, |
| 1:48.9 | and stirred together under the mentorship of a tutor |
| 1:51.1 | who could hold his own in more than a dozen languages, |
| 1:54.1 | including ancient Greek. |
| 1:56.0 | Martha Barnett is a journalist, public speaker, |
| 1:58.3 | and co-host of the radio show and podcast Away with Words. |
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