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Hello, I'm Nicole Holiday, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

And I'm Ben Zimmer, language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

And this is spectacular vernacular, a podcast where we not only explore language.

We also play with it. This week our guest is Anne Friedman, the founder of Planet Word,

a museum in Washington, D.C. devoted to words and language. And later we'll challenge a

listener with some cinematic word play.

Well, we have to start off the episode with some bad news, I'm afraid. Nicole and I have

had a lot of fun since launching this podcast last year, bringing you all the latest in

the world of language. But unfortunately, this will be the final episode of spectacular

vernacular that we're doing for Slate.

Yeah, it's bittersweet because although we're sad about the end of the podcast, we've

really enjoyed this whole experience. It's been such a blast and we've managed to cover

so many linguistic topics from serious ones to more light-hearted ones.

It's been great exploring so many different languagey subjects, just looking back on what

we've covered. I mean, we've talked about everything from the subtitles on Squid Game

to Dr. Fauci's Brooklyn accent, to the voices of Siri, to the linguistic quandaries of

...