Cracking the Omicron Code

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole and Ben discuss the pronunciation of the name of the latest COVID variant. They also interview Alex Bellos, puzzle columnist for The Guardian and author of The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book. And finally, Amanda Ripley, host of Slate’s podcast How To! joins us for some wordplay. We hope you’re ready to take your investigation skills to the next level. You could win a year’s membership to Slate Plus. Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at [email protected]. Produced by Jasmine Ellis. Here are some notes and references from this week’s show: Ben’s Wall Street Journal column on “Omicron” as the name of the new Covid variant Ben’s 2020 Atlantic piece on how geographic labels for diseases can encourage xenophobia Ben’s Slate piece on the puzzling legacy of Stephen Sondheim New US edition of The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book by Alex Bellos Amanda Ripley’s podcast, “How To!” Subscribe to Slate Plus. It’s only $1 for the first month. To learn more, go to slate.com/spectacularplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.3	Hello, I'm Nicole Holiday, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
1:06.3	And I am Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal. And this is spectacular
1:10.2	vernacular. A podcast where we not only explore language. We also play with it. This week
1:15.0	our guest is Alex Bellows, who has a book out called The Language Lovers Puzzle Book.
1:19.2	Right up our alley. And later, we'll try to stump Amanda Ripley,
1:22.6	host of Slates Advice Podcast, how to with some language puzzles of our own. So Ben,
1:28.2	you know I'm a podcast super fan, right?
1:30.2	Yeah, I definitely get that impression. I would say you're a bit of a podcast fiend. You're
1:34.8	always talking about some podcasts you've listened to recently.
1:37.5	Yeah, I'm that person. It's my favorite medium. And I love a lot of the slate ones, especially
	...

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