Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale ups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for

entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.

Even though you're listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free

number 877929-9673, and you can still send us email to Words at waywardradio.org, and you can still find us online at wayward radio.org.

You're listening to Away With Words. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. You know that uneasy feeling you get when you see a character in a video game, and that figure is so close to having human features, but not quite that it just gives you the willing? Oh, yes. Maybe you're trying to do your banking online, and one of those creepy virtual assistants pops up to help. And they look almost human, but they kind of make your skin crawl. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know until this week that there's a term for this queasy feeling. Do you know what, Grant? You probably do. Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. It is. Uncanny Valley. Yes, I love this term. I just came across it this week. It was coined by Mashahiro Mori, who is a Japanese researcher, who studies the reactions of humans to realistic robots.

He suggests we imagine this creepy sensation in terms of a mathematical graph.

On one axis, you have increasingly realistic human-like images, and on the other, you plot

their likeability.

So, for example, on the left side of the graph, you start out with, say, R2D2. Doesn't look very human. And doesn't need to be human. Yeah. So you're not creeped out. Yeah, you're not creeped out. And the line goes up and up and up. You get to Wally and E.T. And they look a little more human. N. C-2PO. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're a little more human, but still more likable. And then the graph

keeps going up and up. But then you get to the point where the image is almost human, but not

quite. And the graph goes way down. Their likability just plummets. And that precipitous drop is

something he refers to as the uncanny valley. That is, it's strange in an unsettling way.

So in other words, the closer you get to looking human, the more humans expect you to look human. Yeah. And so when you're near that, but not perfect, then people give you a thumbs down because you're creeping them out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see the Polar Express? Yes, a great example of how poorly that can be done. Uncanny Valley. I love that. All the poets out there are probably going to start writing poems about Uncanny Valley. I just love it. Do you have new language that you found, or do you want to talk about grammar, slang, pronunciation, usage? Give us a call, 877-929-6673. Email us, words at waywardradio.org.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter, or you can check out our website at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Vicki from Eureka, California. Hello, Vicki. Welcome. Hi, Vicki. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much. What's cooking in Eureka? Well, up here in the land of the tall trees and the six rivers and the bay and the coastline,

as it happens, I have a rental home here that I had rented to members of the family who are moving on.

And so here in this market, I'm preparing myself to sell a home.

And, of course, with everything going on now, I've been talking to a lot of people about it

and heard myself use a couple of phrases that came right out of my mouth,

and I couldn't really identify with having heard

them before or really knowing the origin of them.

Oh, good.

...