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Paranoid about the \\u201cums\\u201d and \\u201cuhs\\u201d that pepper your presentations? Bewildered by \\u201chella\\u201d or the meteoric rise of \\u201cso\\u201d? Can the word \\u201cdude\\u201d help people bond across social divides? Why are we always trying to make our intensifiers ever more intense? Are these language tics, habits, and developments in our speech a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration? Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow.

Shermer and Fridland discuss: Okay, Boomer language \\u2022 accents \\u2022 ChatGPT \\u2022 gender pronouns \\u2022 gender differences in language use \\u2022 forensic language analysis \\u2022 evolution of language \\u2022 why children learn language naturally but must be taught to read and write \\u2022 literature, film, and TV\\u2019s influence on language use \\u2022 cancel culture and taboo language \\u2022 language and identity politics \\u2022 y\\u2019all, contractions, and other language shortcuts \\u2022 tracking human migrations by language, and vice versa \\u2022 Fargo, and more.

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. She writes a popular language blog on Psychology Today called \\u201cLanguage in the Wild,\\u201d and is also a professor for The Great Courses series.