Word of Mouth Episodes Episode guide
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Episode 6
Michael Rosen continues the series exploring the words we use.
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What we say and what we actually mean
Michael Rosen on clichés, gaslighting and how language is used to connect and manipulate.
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The Language of the Manosphere
Michael Rosen hears how words are used as weapons against women
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Crash Bang Wallop: The Sound of Words
Michael Rosen and Dr Catherine Laing discuss words that sound like their meanings.
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How to Persuade a Courtroom
Michael Rosen talks to defence barrister Joanna Hardy-Susskind about courtroom language.
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Keeping My Family's Language Alive
Michael Rosen asks Samantha Ellis about the language spoken by her mum and dad.
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Speech difficulties
Michael Rosen asks what happens to people's sense of identity when speaking becomes hard.
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The Art of Listening
Michael Rosen talks to Dr Haru Yamada about how we listen, and how we can do it better.
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Lists
Michael Rosen and linguistics researcher Jo Nolan discuss the joy of making lists.
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The Welsh Language with Huw Stephens at the Hay Festival
Michael Rosen talks to Welsh radio and TV presenter Huw Stephens about the Welsh language.
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The language that changed the world
Michael Rosen hears about the origin of all Indo-European languages from Laura Spinney.
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The End of the Full Stop?
Michael Rosen and Christian Ilbury discuss how online chat is changing how we punctuate.
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Street Names
Michael Rosen talks to Philip Seargeant about where our street names come from.
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Old English, New English
Michael Rosen on the Old English words used in daily life then and now, with Hana Videen.
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Talking Cockney
Michael talks cockney with Andy Green and Saif Osmani from the Modern Cockney Festival.
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Creating Languages for Film and Television with Professor David Adger
Michael Rosen asks a linguist how he invents new languages for TV series and films.
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Politeness with Louise Mullany
Professor Louise Mullany talks politeness, and how it governs every sphere of our lives.
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Jackie Kay on the Scots language
Jackie Kay has written a book in Scots and tells Michael about her love of the language.
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The Language of Genetics
Adam Rutherford joins Michael to unpick the knotty language we use to talk about genetics.
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Susie Dent's World of Words
Susie Dent joins Michael to talk about her lifelong fascination with words and languages.
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Social media language
How language is used on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter/X.
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How Animals Talk
Michael hears about how animals communicate, and why, from zoologist Arik Kershenbaum.
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A Poet Writing in Three Languages
Poet Nabeela Ahmed on being multilingual.
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Fine Distinctions
Eli Burnstein talks about fine distinctions between words.
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Former astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield on the language of Space exploration
The Canadian former astronaut and author talks about communicating Space
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The words we use about getting older and why they matter
How we talk about getting older can affect how we age. Michael hears from Dr Lucy Pollock.
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How babies learn language
Professor Julian Pine on how babies learn language.
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Little Green Men: the secret rules of word order
Michael explores the mysterious rules of word order with linguist Dr Laura Bailey.
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Word of Mouth with Michael Morpurgo at the Hay Festival
In conversation with Michael Morpurgo at the Hay Festival.
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Language When There Are No Words
Joshua Reno talks about how Charlie, his non verbal-autistic son, communicates with him.