"If you want to hide something in the 21st century world, you don't need to create a James Bond style plot. Just cover it in acronyms". Gillian Tett is a columnist at the Financial Times, but she initially trained as a cultural anthropologist, studying marriage rituals in Tajikistan. She joins Michael Rosen to discuss how the study of language has been vital to her work, who continues to see the world through the lens of an anthropologist. The pair talk about the etymology of words like...

Michael shares listeners' stories about the words and phrases passed down in their families that they keep using, and what they mean to them. With Rob Drummond, Professor of Sociolinguistics at Manchester Met University, and author of You’re All Talk: why we are what we speak. Producer Beth O'Dea, BBC Audio Bristol

Michael Rosen talks to neuroscientist Dr Julia Ravey about whether we think and act differently when speaking a non-native language. More and more people are finding themselves speaking multiple languages in our cross-cultural societies. But when we communicate in a different tongue, do we become a different person? From the decisions we make to the memories we form, research in neuroscience and psychology has begun exploring this fascinating area, which not only offers insights into the...

Michael Rosen explores how language has become an online commodity, with Dr Pip Thornton, Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Thornton explains, with the help of auction props and a receipt machine, what happens to the words that we put into an online search and how the engines make money from our words and phrases. We discover why William Wordsworth's daffodils and clouds have had their context 'stolen', how Lewis Carroll wrote an incredibly 'cheap' poem and why...

Michael Rosen is joined by language scholar Ruanni Tupas, to discuss Unequal English - how native English is perceived differently, depending on where you come from. Ruanni, who's from the Philippines and also spent two decades in Singapore, has spent his career thinking about what it means to be a native English speaker when you come from somewhere other than the West. He chats with Michael about his own experience of speaking four languages (English and three Philippine languages), how...

Grant Barrett is a lexicographer, linguist, author, editor, founder of Wordnik and Head of Lexicography at Dictionary.com. He also co-hosts A Way With Words, a phone in show about language, which airs coast to coast across the United States. He and Michael discuss the joy of flicking through a dictionary with friends vs the fast return of an online look-up, the history of dictionaries, and Grant's favourite area of language: sociolinguistics - "where the rubber meets the road", as he puts...

Isy Suttie is an actor and comedian best known for her role in Peepshow and her one woman show Love Letters on Radio 4 as well as many other shows and podcasts. Here she talks to Michael Rosen about writing her comedy and what informs it. She grew up in Matlock in Derbyshire and a deep love as well of knowledge of the place and its people find their way into her humour. Words ending in consonants too are much funnier than those ending in a vowel she says. And as for learning Welsh to...

Michael Rosen talks to Ben and David Crystal about the Shakespeare quotes we use every day, without even realising. We’ve all heard someone roll their eyes and say “the lady doth protest too much, me thinks” - or head back to their desk muttering “once more unto the breach!” Shakespeare had a way with words that makes his writing extremely relatable, even today. Ben and David Crystal tell Michael why so many of the bard’s sayings have slipped into our everyday chat. Producer: Alice McKee,...

Susie Orbach talks to Michael Rosen about the use and misuse of “therapy speak”. With the rise of mental health awareness, it seems to have leaked out of the therapist’s office and into our homes. Instead of saying someone’s getting on our nerves, we talk about “boundaries”; instead of accusing someone of lying, we call them a “gaslighter”; instead of telling someone we’re listening, we say we’re “holding space”. But do these words mean what we think they do? And do they help or heighten the...

There's lots of 'birging' in this week's programme. For those not in the know - that's short for Basking In Reflected Glory and it's something football fans in particular do when they talk about their team's triumphs using the 'extended we'. Michael Bond author of 'Fans' talks to Michael about the words and language different fan groups have as a shared means of communication. Whether it's being a superfan of sport, film or music there are words and phrases that show you belong to a...

Michael Rosen talks to journalist Sheela Banerjee about the family and cultural histories revealed by our names. In her book What’s in a Name? Friendship, Identity and History in Modern Multicultural Britain, she takes a deep dive into her own personal and family names and those of her friends. Names turn out to be excellent prisms through which to view history and the stories she uncovers are surprising and poignant. Producer Beth O'Dea, BBC Audio Bristol

Lonny Evans audio describes in theatres and museums, and Terry James, who is vision impaired, trains audio describers. They talk to Michael about their work. Producer Sally Heaven

Irina Morgan is a high level interpreter. Being bi-lingual in Russian and Ukrainian means she's in demand whenever Vladimir Putin or President Zelensky give a press conference requiring simultaneous interpretation. Irina talks to Michael about the language do's and don'ts of live translation, and about how she puts herself into the mindset of someone like President Putin in order to give an accurate representation of his distinct man-of-the-people hard man linguistic style. By contrast...

Michael Rosen is learning Yiddish. Every Sunday, he joins other adults in an evening class, conjugating verbs and practising rhymes. For this episode of Word of Mouth, he invites his teacher, Tamara Micner, to join him in the studio. The pair have fun swapping family stories and sharing how they were first exposed to Yiddish. Tamara explains where the language came from and how it's evolved, and they discuss its connections to English. We also hear what Michael is like in class as a new...

Michael is joined by Emily M Bender, Professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington and co-author of the infamous paper ‘On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots’. Cutting through the recent hype, she explains how chatbots do what they do, how they have become so fluent and why she thinks we should be careful with the terminology we employ when talking about them. Presented by Michael Rosen and produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Ellie Richold.

Michael Rosen speaks with Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor at Yale University to discuss the language of fascism. They discuss propaganda, slogans and ‘vermin terminology’ as well as how fascist language changes according to culture, geography and time. Presented by Michael Rosen and produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Ellie Richold.

Dr Jenni Nuttall talks to Michael about the words used by and about women since the beginnings of language. Including some words we should never have lost.

Michael Rosen talks nonsense with literary scholar Noreen Masud. From the nonsense language of Shakespeare's fools, to the nonsense lyrics of The Beatles, via the limericks of Edward Lear, the portmanteaus of Lewis Carroll, and the made-up words of three year olds. A BBC Audio Bristol production. Produced by Becky Ripley.

Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David talks to Michael about the dialogue that takes place between him and his patients. Producer Sally Heaven

Andy West talks to Michael Rosen about his work discussing philosophy in prisons around England. His book The Life Inside is a memoir of his own experience of the justice system through his family. His father, brother and uncle all spent long stretches in jail. Andy talks about the various meanings words such as 'freedom' 'hope' and 'time' have to prisoners. The conversations he has with them as part of the philosophy course are revealing as well as often poignant and humorous....

Richard Osman talks in depth to Michael Rosen about his life in language: from growing up loving TV and sports, to working on Pointless and then writing The Thursday Murder Club. And you can download the longer Word of Mouth podcast version to hear their conversation in full. Download button on the BBC programme page. Link to all the Word of Mouth podcasts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtnz/episodes/downloads Producer Beth O'Dea

Sanmeet Kaur has been interpreting for her parents since the age of five, when her family arrived in the UK from Afghanistan. Producer Sally Heaven

Karli Witkowska is the subtitler behind films and TV shows including Stranger Things. She explains to Michael how descriptions such as 'tentacles wetly squelching' enhance the experience of Deaf and hard of hearing viewers as well as being entertaining in themselves. Producer Sally Heaven

Giles Poyner has worked in marketing and advertising for over twenty years and has worked on some of the biggest global brands. He explains how when it comes to marketing food and drink words really do matter. From taking every day slogans that we then associate with a brand to employing iambic pentameter to create taglines that stick in the customer's head. Although companies are using ever more sophisticated means to sell their products, clever slogans have been around for longer than we...