Does it make your skin crawl when people use words like "like," "um," and "dude," like literally every hella second? You're not alone. But guest Valerie Fridland argues that these linguistic ticks are actually useful and important ways of communicating. Fridland is a sociolinguist at University of Nevada Reno, and the author of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English. On the pod, she talks about the history and psychology behind these filler words and why they are far from the end of the world as we know it.  Sign up for my online course, The Secret Formula to Writing Nonfiction Stories that Sell @ https://bit.ly/smallmasterclass