New Show: Science Diction

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Society & Culture, 805813, Science, History, Friday, Studios

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2020

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hello Undiscovered fans! We're here to tell you about a new show we've been working on at Science Friday. Science Diction is a podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Hosted by SciFri producer and self-proclaimed word nerd Johanna Mayer, each episode of Science Diction digs into the origin of a single word or phrase, and, with the help of historians, authors, etymologists, and scientists, reveals a surprising science connection. Here's a sneak peek!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:08.4	Hey everyone, it's me, it's Ella. I'm back because when Undiscovered ended, we promise to tell you about other podcasts at Science Friday.
0:17.8	And I'm very happy to say that we have a new one coming out on Tuesday, March 10th.
0:23.1	It's a podcast that I'm very proud to have been working on for these past few months. It's called
0:27.1	Science Diction, hosted by Johanna Mayer. And like Undiscovered, it has a lot of science and history
0:34.0	and really good stories. And I'm going to let Johanna tell you more about it.
0:39.8	Okay. So you know the word meme? I have this friend of a friend who insists on pronouncing the
0:46.9	word, mem. It's totally insufferable. But I have to give those to them.
0:54.9	It actually kind of makes sense.
0:57.8	Because meme comes from the Greek word,
1:00.2	me memma, which means to imitate.
1:03.7	And we use that word all the time to talk about these things that we see spreading around
1:07.9	online.
1:09.2	Lawcats, the distracted boyfriend, is this a pigeon?
1:13.1	But when we first started using the word meme, it had nothing to do with the internet.
1:19.3	The word's been around since the 70s, and it came from an evolutionary biologist.
1:25.3	But you don't usually hear about that link.
1:29.0	I've always found this kind of unsatisfying because it's like, how did this concept in social
1:34.0	science research suddenly become the name of an internet cultural phenomenon? Like, how did it
1:38.4	crossover? Meme history and the evolution of language? Oh yeah. We're going there. Science Diction is a new podcast all about words like these,
1:47.6	and the science stories tucked away within them.
1:50.4	It's hosted by me, Johanna Mayer,
	...

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