Internet Linguist
In the first quarter of the year, I attended the Linguistic Society of America 2026 annual meeting online and admired how linguists are really great at pronouncing people s names (phonetic transcription is a practical skill!). I narrated the audiobook for Shakespeare s Sonnets Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith, featuring sonnets turned into Continue reading January,…
In 2025, Lauren Gawne and I reached our 100th episode of Lingthusiasm, our podcast that s enthusiastic about linguistics! It s a special format featuring 100 fun things about linguistics, which makes it a great entry point to the show if you haven t tried it yet or are looking for something to forward to people. We also Continue reading 2025 year in review
This fall was a good season for literature. I took a trip to the Stratford Festival in Ontario to see live productions of Goblins Oedipus, Dangerous Liaisons, and Sense and Sensibility. I enjoyed reading Margalit Fox s Talking Hands, Margaret Killjoy s The Sapling Cage, Janet Kagan s Hellspark, and Kory Stamper s new book True Color that I ll Continue reading October, November, December 2025:…
This summer, I went to ASL camp! I spent a week at Bob Rumball Camp of the Deaf, in Parry Sound, Ontario, at their ASL Adult Immersion Summer Camp, voices off for 6 nights and 7 days! This was my first time doing any sort of language immersion camp in my various experiences learning languages, Continue reading July, August, September 2025: ASL Camp and Arroba Lengua
Back in 2017, when I was deep in the writing process for Because Internet, I was feeling stuck on the emoji chapter and Lauren Gawne, my cohost on the then-baby Lingthusiasm podcast (we were less than a year old!) offered to read the current draft. I ll never forget her comment that led to me rewriting Continue reading April, May, June 2025: Lauren writes a gesture book!
In the first few months of 2025, we celebrated a podcast milestone: 100 episodes of Lingthusiasm, a podcast that s enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, my cohost Lauren Gawne and I did a special double-feature: our 100th episode had 100 fun fact reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics (including a few from former guests) and our Continue reading January, February, and March 2025:…
In 2024, I traveled to Europe to speak at several events, including the launch of the Spanish translation of Because Internet. I started studying American Sign Language through the Lethbridge Layton Mackay Rehabilitation Centre in Montreal — my first time in a language classroom since university and it s been really fun! The 2024 lingcomm grants Continue reading 2024 Year in Review
Lingthusiasm was featured in the New York Times list of 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds! And here s print evidence that it happened. The show is often as much about social habits as it is about language — one memorable episode had Gawne and McCulloch discuss “lopsided conversations,” those verbal interactions that can go off the Continue reading October, November, December 2024: Lingthusiasm Makes the…
This summer I spent time with Finnish, Spanish, Estonian, Dutch, Italian, Latin (unexpectedly!), and… well, okay, kind of all of them, at least in museum exhibit form. So I did what any linguist would do and made myself into a guinea pig, comparing four different language learning strategies on four languages to see what happened. Continue reading July, Aug, Sept 2024: Lo! An un-detached Eurotrip!
In official research news, during the second quarter of 2024, the Crash Course Linguistics team published a case study on how the series came together, called Creating Inclusive Linguistics Communication: Crash Course Linguistics. It was a big collaboration, including co-writers me and Lauren Gawne, fact-checker Jessi Grieser, and several members of the production team at Continue reading April,…