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Carrie and Megan talk with Kory Stamper, about her newest book, True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color from Azure to Zinc Pink. Out March 31, 2026!

• Chatbots and bias

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Carrie and Megan talk about the Epstein emails and Chomsky's correspondence with him. Carrie swears more than usual.

• Support Tim Brookes Kickstarter

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Carrie and Megan talk about the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year.

• TACO

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Carrie and Megan talk with Tim Brookes about his newest book, By Hand, about the importance of handwriting.

NBER report

Current Affairs

WOTY:

• 6-7
• rage bait
• parasocial
• vibe coding
• AI slop
• maple washing

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Carrie and Megan talk about Makaton, an artificial sign-based system, particularly Sara Novič's article about it.

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Carrie and Megan talk about random words that are scary or scary-adjacent.

• facsism
• eldritch
• ghost
• vampire

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We have a few things to say about Pinker.

• Part of the War on Science
• The Language Instinct
• Pinker on Race Realism
• Co-authored paper on overregularization
• The Open Letter to the LSA
• The article that Carrie was interviewed for, but not named, about the Open Letter
• Our episode on dogwhistling
• The Harper's Letter
• Guardian on his appearance on Aporia

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Contact us:

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• Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
• Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com

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Carrie and Megan talk with Adam Aleksic about his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.

• Bromism and ChatGPT

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Contact us:

• Threads us @vocalfriespod
• Bluesky us @vocalfriespod.bsky.social
• Email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com

Thanks for listening and keep calm and fry on