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 101st episode finally tackles that classic “Linguistics 101” format of the micro-to-macro perspective on language. 

Plus, we made a special roundup post of 101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics. This is your one-stop-shop if you want suggestions for other podcasts, books, videos, blogs, and other places online and offline to feed your interest in linguistics, based on whittling down over 1000 listener suggestions from the Lingthusiasm listener survey with editing assistance from Leah Velleman. Even with a hundred and one options, we’re sure there’s still a few that we’ve missed, so also feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media about your favourites! 

Also, and we feel extremely enthusiastic about this, after a bonus episode mentioned crocheting a model of the vocal tract, very talented listener Melody sent us a genuine crocheted model of the vocal tract! 

And as always we put out three regular and three bonus episodes.

•  Lingthusiasm Episode 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics
• Micro to macro – The levels of language
• The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf
• Crochet vocal tract, grammar is a team sport, gifs, and soy sauce – Deleted scenes from Jacq Jones, Emily M. Bender, and Tom Scott team interviews (bonus)
• What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking (bonus)
• Rock, paper, scissors, Gesture book, and a secret project – Survey results and general updates (bonus)

Publishing news from all over 

Because Internet is now translated into four languages — three that I don’t speak (which is very surreal) and one that I sorta do. My author copies of all four have now finally arrived, so here’s a photo of them all hanging out together! 

And the famous Bunny Paper — a.k.a. Labov 1971, on evaluating kids’ language skills (using empathy and bunnies) — is back in print in open access form! When Labov passed away, someone mentioned the existence of this once-obscure paper, and Linguistics Twitter went on a hunt for a copy. We eventually did an episode about it on Lingthusiasm. Now it’s back in print so anyone who wants can read it.

Events

I went to the Linguistic Society of America’s annual meeting, this year in Philadelphia, where I played Spot the Canadian, felt a little bit old when I met a longtime fan, and saw “rawdog” elected Word of the Year.

To rawdog: taking on life without the usual protection, preparation, or comfort. Whether it’s diving into a challenge unprepared or skipping the safety net, rawdogging is about embracing risk, stone-cold sobriety, and rolling with it.

I also appeared on a few other podcasts:

• BBC Science Focus Instant Genius Podcast: How the internet shaped how we speak 
• Language on the Move: Because Internet, An interview with Gretchen McCulloch 
• A Language I Love Is…: Montreal French and Gretchen McCulloch 

New favorite data…

• “She put the card back into her small, for a handbag, handbag” (Center embedding)
• “In a sentence never before uttered by humans, I am delighted to share that an alligator stole my conservation instructor’s hat by jauntily walking into the water while wearing it 🐊” (Novel sentence) 
• “unless☝️you eat a lemon” (Emoji are really gestures!)
• “Croissan ‘wich you a happy new year” (Double portmanteau with bonus pun)

…and a few excellently coined new words

• “Acoustic bike” (rather than electric)
• “The Strunk cost fallacy” (treating the time wasted on learning silly rules as a sunk cost)
• “Fauxmage” (vegan cheese)

Social media

• I am a creature of the night (or at least, that’s the best translation I can manage)
• Linguistics-themed Valentine’s day poetry
• “…our new 3rd person dual pronoun, thembo”
• “Bluesky sells books”
• Canada gets a fully bilingual TV show
• “Just got served this ad for an app called ‘Kiki'” — “Brb launching a competing app called Bouba”

This quarter’s image is a bag of popcorn proving that people in Montreal really are using “fauxmage.”