Something You Should Know - How Your Indoor Environment Affect Who You Are & Amazing Ways Language Works

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Everyone has had that "pins and needles" feeling when your foot or arm falls asleep. Why does it happen? A lot of people believe it is because you cut off circulation. But that’s not it. Listen as this episode of the podcast begins with an explanation of why your limbs fall asleep and what that tingly sensation actually is. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-causes-feet-and-legs-to-fall-asleep-2014-6 The buildings and the rooms you spend time in have a powerful impact on all aspects of your life. And you probably never realized it. Your health, your mood, your work, your ability to think – even your relationships are influenced by your indoor environment. To discuss how this happens is Emily Anthes , a science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, Slate, Businessweek and elsewhere. She is also author of the book The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness (https://amzn.to/2Yr8ip3). Human language is amazing. It is one of the main things that distinguishes us from other animals. Without it, communication would be very difficult. The complexities of languages and how it changes are really fascinating and important. Joining me to discuss this is David Adger. He is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the book Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power (https://amzn.to/37huAxr) What brand of dishwashing liquid is sitting on your kitchen sink? Everyone has their favorite but does one really do a better job than the others? Listen as I explain what Consumer Reports says after testing a bunch of them. https://www.consumerreports.org/video/view/appliances/laundry/937114224001/testing-dishwashing-liquids/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, why does your foot fall asleep? And what is that tingly sensation you get when it does? Then your indoor environment. It has a dramatic effect on you and you probably never knew it. Almost every aspect of the indoor environment can influence almost

every aspect of our lives. Mood, cognitive performance, productivity, even our social networks that we form and some of these effects are really surprising and profound. Plus, what's the best dishwashing liquid to wash dishes? The answer will come as a surprise. And human language, it's amazing what it allows us to do. And it's constantly changing. Women tend to change language more than men do. Teenagers are real engines of language change.

People in cities tend to change language more quickly. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to another all-new episode of Something You Should Know. And we start today with that sensation you get when your foot falls asleep or your hand falls asleep. And it's most embarrassing when your foot falls asleep and you can't walk and you have to explain why. So what is going on here? Well, the technical term is paresthesia. And a lot of people think it's due to cutting off the circulation to your arm or your leg

that causes that tingly sensation. But it's not that. It's nerves. It's due to temporary compression of the nerves, says Rebecca Traub, who is an assistant professor of neurology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. When the nerve is pinched, it doesn't communicate signals to the spine and the brain properly. That tingling, or that pins-and-needles sensation you get,

happens as the nerves are regaining function. Your foot or limbs are waking up, and the discomfort, which is sometimes painful, generally causes you to change your position, which usually solves the problem. And that is something you should know. You have probably spent more time indoors than usual over the last few months. Probably more time indoors than you ever hoped to. And interestingly, your indoor environment has more of an impact on you than you might realize.

It affects your health, your mood, your productivity, lots of things. Emily Anthes is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Wired, Businessweek, Scientific American, and more. She's author of a book called The Great Indoors, The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness. Hi, Emily. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. So in broad strokes here, explain how the buildings that we are in at home and at work, how they affect us. Absolutely. So the indoor environment affects us in a wide variety of ways, some of them somewhat obvious. So, you know, air quality can affect your physical health and your respiratory health. And I don't think that would surprise too many people. But almost every aspect of the indoor environment can influence almost every aspect of our lives. So mood, cognitive performance, productivity, sleep quality, even our social relationships and the social networks that we form. And some of these effects are really surprising and profound.

So there's a study that showed that the floor you live on, if you live in a high-rise building, can affect whether or not you survive a heart attack, if you have a heart attack at home, or the layout of your office can affect the social relationships you form. And so those are just two examples, but the indoor environment really affects our lives in a huge way and in a way that we don't always appreciate.

Well, I've had the experience, and I think everybody has had the experience, of going into a building or into a room, and it just makes you feel different. It can make you feel good. It can make you feel anxious. I mean, we know that buildings and interior spaces have an effect. Even though I think we've all felt that, I don't think we've always appreciated or really thought through the extent to which these environments affect our lives

and really looked in a systematic way at, given that, are there ways we can alter or tweak our environments to improve our lives? And I'm a science writer, so I'm really interested in what the research had to say. And it turns out there are a lot of sort of evidence-based strategies for improving our indoor environments and thus our lives. So dive in and talk about some of the specifics of this, how it works, how interior spaces affect us. A big one, especially in an era where we're talking a lot about infectious disease, is ventilation. So bringing in more air from the outside is one of the best things you can do for your home. And that can be, you know, in a high-tech way.

If you have an HVAC system, you can adjust the outdoor air fraction, but it doesn't need to be. Just simply opening a window and bringing that fresh air into your home can have all sorts of benefits from, you know, diluting the amount of pathogens that might be in the air, but also diluting all the air pollutants that the consumer goods in our home tend to generate. So crack open a window if you can, that can have all sorts of benefits. Another really well-supported intervention is nature.

So this is another way in which you can think about trying to bring elements of the outdoors into your home. So there are a huge number of studies now that show that having some sort of greenery or natural element, indoor plants or something like that in your home can have all sorts of benefits from boosting your mood and reducing your stress to improving your attention span and productivity. And what's really interesting about nature is that studies show that it doesn't even have to be real nature. So if you can put a bunch of plants in your home or apartment, great. But it turns out that even looking at photos of nature or even just listening to the audio of bird song can have a lot of the same effects. So if there are ways to incorporate that into your home or office, any of your indoor

spaces, that can be really helpful as well. You mentioned at the very beginning that there's evidence that what floor you live on determines whether you'd survive a heart attack. So we can't really let that go by without explaining that. Of course. So there's a really interesting study that came out a few years ago. And here we're talking about, you know, people who live in apartment buildings and high rises and not so much single family homes. But it turns out that you are far more likely to survive a heart attack if you live below the third floor than if you live, say, I think the cutoff was the 14th floor, but if you live on one of the higher floors. And at first that seems kind of strange, like why would that matter so much? But there's a really sort of simple explanation, which is just that it takes paramedics and emergency responders longer to get

to you if you're higher up. And it might not sound like it makes a huge difference. And in fact, the research shows that it's only a couple of extra minutes you're adding on to get to the top floors. But in an emergency situation, if someone's in cardiac arrest, those few extra minutes can matter. And so survival rates are significantly higher on the lower floors than they are on the higher ones. I would have never thought of that, but you're right. And not only does it take extra minutes for them to get up there, it takes extra minutes to get back down if you're going to the hospital. Right, exactly. And I guess just a general caveat is that, you know, none of this is absolutely determinative. So if you live high, you will die. And if you live low, you're in luck. But we're talking about things that matter at the margins and can make a significant difference,

but I don't want to suggest that, you know, there's nothing else that matters. You also said at the beginning that the layout of your office can affect the social relationships you form, so we would need an explanation for that as well. There's been some really interesting work tracking and mapping office workers' social networks. And again, this is something that maybe seems like it would be obvious, but a lot of us maybe don't appreciate or think about. And this comes from a study that was done by a company called Humanize, which makes these sort of badges that office workers can wear that track their face-to-face interactions.

And they were contracted by a European bank to try to figure out why some of their bank branches were performing much better than others. And what they actually found was that the highest performing branches, everyone that worked in the office had lots of social connections to each other. And at some of the lower performing branches, there were sort of two discrete social groups that didn't interact much with each other. And when they looked at it even more closely, what they found was that these were largely two floor locations and that the employees had sorted themselves into two social groups, depending on what floor they worked on, and they didn't interact much with people in the other social group. And when the bank started to remedy this,

they started rotating people between the floors so they would make more relationships with, you know, co-workers they otherwise didn't see much. The employees' social networks expanded, and the branch's overall performance increased. So it doesn't seem like a big thing. It's just, you know, a flight of stairs. But we humans are creatures of habit, and we like to do things that are easy and convenient. And we just don't go up those stairs that much to talk to our colleagues that might work on a different floor.

Yeah, I remember hearing or talking to someone about that, like a set of stairs or even a door that you have to go through will really inhibit you doing it, even though it's not a whole lot of effort, but it's like an obstacle. Absolutely. And I talk about that also in context of eating behavior. So, you know, studies that show that if you have, you know, cut up fruit and vegetables on the table where you're sitting, you're much more likely to eat them than if they're just on a different table six feet away. And no obstacle at all in that case other than having to get up and go get it. But, you know, one of the big lessons, I think, is that if there are certain behaviors and habits you would like to do more of, to make them as easy and convenient for yourself as possible. And if there are things you'd like to discourage, like, you know, having cookies every afternoon, making that even just a little bit more difficult by, you know, maybe putting the cookies on a high shelf can really influence

your behavior. I'm talking today with Emily Anthes. She is a science journalist and author of the book, The Great Indoors, the surprising science of how buildings shape our behavior, health and happiness. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot.

Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to

called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Emily, with all that you have learned researching this, what are some of the things that maybe you do differently or the way you've reorganized your house or your office? What are some of the things that people could do that have some surprising benefits that no one's ever thought of before?

Well, the plants and nature thing is a big one. I think I went from having no plants in my apartment to at least a dozen now. So that's something that, and I can feel, you know, maybe it's partly placebo, but it brings me joy to walk into my workspace. I work from home and to see all this greenery. The other one is thinking about the air quality in my home, which was something I had not considered much at all before. But a lot of the activities we do in my home, which was something I had not considered much at all before. But a lot of the activities we do in our home, like cooking and cleaning, generate a huge amount of indoor air pollution. And that's something that, again, I suspect that a lot of people are doing more of these days, cooking and cleaning. But there are really sort of simple ways to reduce

the concentration of those air pollutants. One, as I mentioned, is opening a window. But there's another sort of ingenious strategy that I had not thought of, which is just cooking on the back burner of your stove can really reduce the amount of pollutants that are emitted when you cook. And the reason that is, is if you have a stove hood, a range hood that's, or some sort of ventilation fan over your stove, almost always the mechanics of that system are sort of in the vents and the fans are positioned in the back. And so the closer you cook to those vents, the less particulate pollution gets sort of emitted into and circulate in your home. So cooking on the back burner is like a really quick, easy tip that I bet a lot

of people haven't thought of. Daylight is another factor that has huge benefits across a wide variety of psychological and physiological functions. So even just making sure that when you get up in the morning, you open your shades and let yourself have that dose of strong light in the morning that can help keep your circadian rhythms on track and even make it easier for you to fall asleep that night. The implication of your cooking on the back burner idea implies that you're using the fan in the first place. And I know I sometimes forget, you know, unless there's visible smoke coming out, I'll sometimes forget. But I would imagine there may be something in what you're saying that you should probably always use it if you're cooking. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of, you know, I talked to some

atmospheric chemists whose whole work is studying the pollution that we generate in our homes. And one of the top things they say when I ask, what should people be doing is they say, always use the kitchen ventilation that I forget the exact numbers, but it's definitely people use it less than half the time, so you're not alone. But, you know, they say if you can smell something, like those delicious scents that are coming off whatever you're cooking, that means you're generating pollution and you should be using the fan. You mentioned the bedroom early on, and, you know, I think people struggle with that because the bedroom in many cases has become somewhat of an entertainment

center with TVs and music and all that, which I imagine makes it hard to sleep. And maybe rethinking the bedroom might be a good idea. Yeah. And I will be the first to admit that I'm not very good in this regard. I am on my devices and on Twitter late at night before I go to bed. But one thing we know for sure is that blue light, which is the kind of light that's really prevalent in daylight and that is so important to expose yourself to in the morning, that's the kind of light that I mentioned that sort of tells your body and your circadian rhythms that it's daytime,

is harmful to expose yourself to at night because it keeps your body awake and alert. And so anything you can do to sort of cut down on that kind of blue light in the evenings and especially in your bedroom can be helpful to sleep. And there's actually now a whole line of research happening into what's known as circadian lighting and that is very much based on that principle. The idea is to have light fixtures that vary the kind of light they put out throughout the course of the day. So in the mornings, it might emit a bright bluish light and as the day progresses and it gets closer to evening, it switches into sort of a more amber colored light that's less likely to interfere with sleep. And there are some consumer

products and bulbs out there that do that already. So that's something that might be worth exploring in the bedroom. What about color in general? Color is complicated. It's really interesting and there's been a lot of research on it the studies are somewhat contradictory and there's not really a lot of clear lessons there you know i mean there's some thought and some evidence that pale blues and greens and things in that range can be calming, whereas, you know, a neon pink or a red might be more activating. But one thing that I learned, whether it's talking about color or a lot of these other factors, is that there's enormous individual variation. And so someone might work great with a red-walled office, and that might drive someone else to distraction.

So part of what's difficult is trying to extract these general principles that can be sort of useful rules of thumb and balance individual preference and difference. I mean, I would tell people that if they love the color of their study or their dining room, that they should probably keep it even if the quote-unquote research says it's not ideal for that setting. So that's something that varies a lot, just individual to individual. Yeah, well, plus, you know, when you say the color red, well, how many shades of red are there? I mean... Absolutely, and what are you using that room for? I mean, one of the big lessons is that although there are ways we can absolutely improve our environments, there's no one size fits all building our environment that what works great for one person

might be terrible for someone else. Let's talk about the work environment for a moment because, well, under normal circumstances, people spend a lot of time at work, and so there must be things we can do to make the work environment better. Well, so some of the best things you can do are things I've already mentioned, so I won't go back over them, but, you know, ensuring that employees have access to daylight and some sort of nature can be really helpful. In terms of offices more specifically, I mean, it seems like open offices are terrible almost universally. That won't surprise most people who have worked in them. But one of the interesting things about open offices is sometimes you'll hear companies say like, oh, we know that that might

be more distracting, but we think an open office is better for collaboration and communication. And the research is conflicting, but there are some solid studies that show that that is not in fact the case, that after companies move from closed offices to more open ones, that face-to-face communication actually plummets and that people tend to move more of their conversation online. And that may be because they're uncomfortable having a private conversation in a big open room or they're afraid of distracting their colleagues. But there really seems to be very little to recommend open offices

except for the fact that they're cheap, which is, of course, why a lot of employers like them. Going back to sort of the idea of individual difference, one of the best things that I think a workplace can do in an office is to try and maximize both variety and control. So create a lot of different kinds of working spaces. So maybe you have a big open area where people can share tables, but then you also have some quieter reading nooks or a conference room where someone can go work if they need to not be distracted. And then to actually ensure that employees can control their own environment so that they can move around the space throughout the day as their needs change and as their tasks change. This is sometimes known as activity-based working.

But, you know, I am sympathetic to the fact that employers have to create spaces for lots of people, but the more different kinds of spaces they can create and the more they can allow employees to choose their own workspaces, the better it tends to be. Was there anything in the research that you did on this that surprised you? Yeah, well, so one chapter, I focus a lot on what I call the indoor microbiome, and listeners might know about sort of the microbiome that's been in the news a lot in recent years. And that sort of refers to all the microbes, bacteria, viruses, fungi that live on us and our bodies. And mostly they're helpful and beneficial. They're just sort of a natural part of our biology. And in recent years,

though, scientists have been trying to document sort of the microbiomes of our buildings. And one thing that floored me is just how much life is hiding in our homes that we don't see or think about. I think the researchers were finding tens of thousands of species of bacteria and other microbes that were sort of living in our home. Again, most of them totally benign, some of them even helpful. Homes have on average close to 100 different species of insects, and most of them you'll probably never see or know about. So the idea that these indoor spaces we spend so much time in are really these vibrant ecosystems that we often don't see and certainly don't often think about just fascinated me. And I actually had, I got to

participate in one study where I had scientists identify all the microbes that were living in my showerhead, and it was just mind-boggling what was there. You know, they found traces of a mysterious bacteria that they don't know much about, but that has previously been found in paleolithic cave paintings and in dog noses, and somehow I had that same bacteria in my shower head. So I think that is kind of fascinating that all this life exists around us that we can't even see. I love that. You have paleolithic bacteria in your shower head and nobody knows how it got there. Yeah, and you might have it too. I might. You know, so that's something. Scientists are really at the early stages of this research,

and it's been, what they've discovered already is pretty staggering, and I look forward to seeing what else they turn up in the years to come. Well, it's kind of creepy to think that all those things are living in your house, but, you know, it's not that surprising, really, when you think about what could be living under your house and in the gutters and in the pipes and in the walls. I guess maybe it's that we just don't want to think about it because this is our house. This is my space.

Emily Anthes has been my guest. She's an award-winning science journalist and author of the book, The Great Indoors, the surprising science of how buildings shape our behavior, health and happiness. You'll find a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Emily. Thanks so much for having me. It's been great to talk and I hope everyone finds a way to keep their homes healthy. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show,

we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me,

we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results

from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

One of the things that separates humans from other animals is our language and the complexity of it that allows us to communicate all sorts of things by the words we say and how we say them. Every language is fascinating in its own way. Most languages, English certainly, are constantly changing. Words come, words go, we change the way we say them. And here to discuss why this is so important and how languages work is David Adger. He is professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the book Language Unlimited, the science behind our most creative power. Hey, David.

Hi, Mike. Really nice to be here. So we all know humans have language, lots of different languages, but we also hear that, you know, dolphins have languages and birds have languages. What is so unique about human language? Well, one of the interesting things about language is that all members of the human species have language and no other member of any other species has anything that's just like human language. So there's something about our particular species that makes us linguistic in a way that no other animal is. So it looks like language as a property of our species evolved at some point, presumably as we diverged from our closest evolutionary

relatives. And over the years, over the millennia since that happened, these languages or that language changed and diverged as we split up, spread across the world, intermarried, did all that kind of stuff. So languages change. I guess they're changing all the time. It's just that day to day, the change is very, very slight. But if you go back to, you know, old, old Shakespearean English, it doesn't look much like the English we speak today. Yeah, so languages change and they're changing right now. So one of the things I do is I work on the language of teenagers in London.

Now, London is an immensely multicultural city with 400-odd languages spoken in it, much like large cities in the US as well. And you can actually see the language changing in the way that the teenagers speak, so that it has different sounds in it, different structures in it. And, you know, sometimes you say, like, listening to Shakespeare, you're like, oh, that sounds really different. Listening to these kids, it sounds really different as well. It's quite remarkable how fast languages change, especially in situations where we have people whose parents speak lots and lots of different languages coming together, and a new kind of language emerges from that.

But teenagers are always on the forefront of changing language much more than, you know, adults or seniors that, you know, speak what they've always spoken, right? Yeah, absolutely. And they do it in quite subtle ways. So the kind of things that people probably think about, you know, were slang words, which, you know, go out of date so fast that I have no idea what the current slang words for things are. Certainly not like the words I used when I was growing up. But actually, more interesting to me as a linguist is the subtle changes that happen. So, you know, if we look at the ways that teenagers speak to each other, sometimes they begin to use particular words in particular ways or particular structures that violate the kinds of rules of the adult languages.

And they do this in some ways to make themselves different from everyone else and make themselves the same as each other. And that is a real driving force of how languages change. What happens is people want to differentiate themselves from the other people, and they want to be like each other. And that means that they end up speaking in a kind of different way. You know, like the vowel that people use sometimes in the word cool, which sounds more like cool. They just change these vowels in particular ways. They really then become a mark of their identity. It seems that the people who change language, who lead the charge

of change, often young people, are somewhat demonized as speaking something that isn't proper English. Although it may become proper English English but as the language changes there is a resistance and uncomfortableness with the change Yeah, there's a really interesting piece of research done by two linguists Rickford and King and they published it a year or two back and what they did was they actually looked

at the Trayvon Martin case and one they actually looked at the Trayvon Martin case and one of the witnesses in the Trayvon Martin case who spoke a version of English, African-American vernacular English, that actually the jurors had a really hard time understanding. And actually that had a really material effect on the case in many ways. But what Rickford and King show is that if you look at this individual's mode of speaking, it's incredibly regular. It's got incredibly specific grammatical rules, specific kinds of patterns of sound. It's just different patterns of sound from standard American English. So,

you know, people can often say, oh, these varieties of English, they don't use proper grammar. They're using really complex grammar. They're just using a different kind of grammar. So, it's like a different language. It is exactly like a different language. I mean, we all speak slightly different languages. I mean, I see things like, oh, my car needs washed. My neighbor says something like, oh, my car needs washing. So these tiny little differences that are between, you know, two people in the same city, as you expand these out over wider, wider groups of population, and people who have created quite different identities, social identities from each other,

the grammar changes. And you get languages, you get forms of language begin to drift apart. And again, that's what makes new languages in the end, as these different kinds of languages drift apart. The grammars change, the words change, the sounds change, and you end up with different languages. But you can see that, of course, within a single society as well. Is there a sense of who's doing the changing,

or is it all very random? Some things just catch on and other things just don't, and there's no real reason why? That's a brilliant question. So there is a sense of who's doing the changing. So, you know, women tend to change language more than men do. As you said earlier on, teenagers are real engines of language change. People in cities tend to change language more quickly than people in rural communities. And of course, when you have immigration happening and new languages come in and people learn the language of their community as a second language,

that can also lead to changes. So there are multiple factors. Is there any sense that English changes differently than any other language? Or do all languages change at about the same rate in more or less the same way? All languages change, but there will be certain kinds of pressures on languages to stay the same. So, you know, we know this from, you know, just there are certain societies who really don't want language to change. And they tell you, no, don't do this, don't do that.

That's not the proper way of speaking. And that can definitely have an effect. And it can definitely have an effect, especially in education. Teachers might decide that, you know, you shouldn't end their sentence with a preposition or something like that and tell kids not to do that. It will have some effect and it will slow down certain kinds of change, but language will in the end have its own way and will change how it's going to change. So yeah, there are certain things that slow things down. Written language changes much more, or used to change much more

slowly anyway, than spoken language, although in the age of the Internet, of course there's an enormous amount more written language, very informal written language, just in the form of tweets and Facebook posts and so on. And that's actually causing quite a lot of quite fast language change as well. Well, it's interesting to think, well, when does a language change enough to become a new language? I mean, you've got French that's spoken in France and French that's spoken in Canada. They're both French, but they're pretty different languages.

And I've spent time in England and Scotland, and they speak English and I speak English, but they're very different English. And in some cases, like in some places in Scotland, it's really hard to understand their English. So are we speaking the same language? Because it's not just their accent that makes it difficult. The language is different. And so when do the differences become great enough to call it a different language? To a great extent, what we decide is a language is us making a decision that this is a language, often a political decision. So, you know, if you look at the languages of Scandinavia, you know, they're pretty mutually intelligible with each other. In fact, bits of Norwegian might sound more different from

other bits of Norwegian than they do from bits of Swedish. But we decide to call these different languages because we have different countries. So there's a different political entity behind them. But actually, languages almost always are on a climb. They kind of merge into each other in the way that people actually speak. It's just that we impose upon that a certain kind of name, which really comes from the politics and the history, rather than from the actuality of what people do. Can you give some actual examples of interesting ways the language has changed? Even just, well, you mentioned Shakespeare earlier on. And just before Shakespeare, we had Chaucer, okay? And if we look back at the kind of English spoken in Chaucer's time,

then it looked really different from the kind of English that we speak now. So, the word order was different. I mean, you sometimes said things like, I will the book read, rather than I will read the book. So you'll just shift the words around. So it's a little bit more like German, say, right? And that changed over the last few hundred years. So we really hardly ever say that. Although sometimes, if you look at these really bad poems

that you find in like greeting cards, you find that kind of shift of word order, right? To try and make something rhyme, right? So I will this to you say and stuff like that just to get the rhyme right. But actually it's quite fascinating. If you look at that, actually they're using the kinds of ordering that Chaucer

used to use. So it's like there's a ghost of Chaucer's English still hovering around in the English we speak today. Well, it sounds a little like Yoda from Star Wars. Yoda, of course, what he tends to do is he takes something near the end of the sentence and puts it right at the start so you know strong with the force

will you be and master your emotions you will young sir that kind of stuff so he takes the end of the sentence and kind of shifts it round to the start there is really actually a grammar to the way that Yoda speaks. And I've actually, when I've taught linguistics to my students, I've sometimes just given them bits of Yoda and got them to try and work out what the rules are.

But you're right. It's, you know, as I said earlier on, it's like there's a ghost of Chaucer hovering around in there. There are people, and I think of kind of the old stuffy English professor kind of people who really want to preserve the language, that there is a proper English and then there's all this other stuff. It seems like a losing battle to preserve the language, but I also see the nobleness of it as well because there is something about the language that is sacred in a way and it would be nice to keep it. I don't know if there's something about the language that's sacred.

I think there's something fascinating and important about all varieties of language, really. But that includes the kind of, you know, high different levels of language that can only enrich our experience but I think that it's on a hiding to nothing to try and preserve language as it is languages always change you know in France they have this academy francaise that kind of says oh this is proper French but actually people just rarely pay attention to it. And, you know, people want to speak the way they want to speak. And that means that their kids will listen to that and then they will want to speak the way they want to speak and languages will just do their own thing.

So, you know, there is a beauty to all different kinds of language. And I think trying to preserve particular varieties, it's just going to end in failure, really. Yeah. But when you're a student and you write an English paper and the teacher says, you know, this is not proper English, according to what you're saying, you could come back and say, well, it is now because I just made that up. And that's, but that's, it's like it's breaking the rules of the game. And yes, at some point, maybe the rule will change. But you can't just willy nilly say, no, this is my English. And so live with it. You're absolutely right. So there are, of course, rules, not just to language itself, but to how we use language.

So, you know, you don't want to use the same kind of language in an English essay as you might do if you're chatting in a bar with your friends. So absolutely, there are different registers, you know, there are different kind of levels of ways we use language and there's an appropriateness to them. So to be a really fluent and good speaker of your language is to be able to move between these registers. And that's something that we should teach our kids and our students to be able to do because it allows them to be successful in a wider range of situations. So absolutely, you can't just make it up willy-nilly. I'm always fascinated by slang just because it comes and goes so easily. But my favorite slang word has always been cool because cool has been cool forever.

It never goes away. It has beaten the odds and stayed cool for decades. It's amazing, right? It goes in and out. So it seems to sort of vanish in the speech of teenagers, and then it pops back up again. So it's an odd word. Sometimes it pops back up again with a different vowel as well. So the vowel in the word cool has changed

in different English speaking varieties over the years. But yeah, that's one of the mysteries. I don't know why that one seems to have some staying power. When you look at English and changes in English or slang or any specific type of change in the English language, is there any kind of geographical influence? Does more of it come from England? Does more of it come from California or New York? Or does it just come from wherever it comes? Well, I mean, I said earlier on that cities were really important.

So like changes often happen within a city and within the teenagers in that city. And then they spread out from there. So that's definitely what happens in modern day times. Of course, if you look at the kind of English spoken in north america these days a lot of it has come from different parts of the uk originally so there's a kind of interesting question as to how much uh bits of american dialects actually depend originally on bits of english and scottish and irish and welsh dialects um And you can certainly see very, if you look at, for example,

bits of Appalachian grammar, they look a little bit like bits of Scottish grammar. And that kind of makes sense given the way the immigration there happens. So, you know, it's like what I said earlier on, it's a kind of messy thing

as the languages do as they change across time. And especially when you have patterns of migration happening. I don't know if you've ever looked at this but I've always been curious as to whether music influences language or just reflects it. Some people have suggested that actually music might have been an origin of language. So if you look at bird song, the way that birds sing is very complex. It's got this kind of complex way of putting little bits together into larger phrases.

And that's what human languages do with grammar in a way. But the way the birds do it, they don't add meaning to it. So they just, and that's true for human music. The meaning is kind of holistic. It's like, this is sad, this is happy, this is threatening. And that's a little bit like birdsong, right? Birds are like, I'm threatening you, stay out of my territory, I want to mate with you or whatever. So people have suggested that actually that complex patterning of human language may have come out of something like a musicality. Again, going back to my earlier answer, unfortunately, we'll never know this because languages don't fossilize in the way that I really wish they did.

And we don't have a time machine to go back and listen to them. Yeah, well, I guess what I meant more was the lyrics. If, for example, in rap music today, there's a lot of profanity. Is that reflecting the increase in profanity in the language? Or is the language getting more profane because the music is more profane? Or in the 60s, when there were a lot of songs about groovy and psychedelic, did those words become, is that reflective of the language or did that influence the language? I think it's a bit of a to and fro.

So obviously you're not going to put something in a song that you are, it's rare you'll put something in a song that you're not already using to speak with, right? So things like groovy and profanity and stuff like that, they're all there, okay? They're all there in the language that people are using. But then if you get a song and the song becomes really, really cool,

then that of course is a song that's gonna be in people's minds. I mean, I don't know about you, but I still remember lyrics from when I was a teenager of whole songs, no problem. They kind of lodged themselves in your brain, right? And then, of course, that makes them easier to take back out again. So I think there's a kind of to and fro in language within lyrics and within the way that we speak.

Well, I've always enjoyed looking at the view of, you know, English is English and that's proper English. And then all the influences that keep trying to tug at it and change. And it's fun to see how over time things shake out. David Adger has been my guest. He's a professor of linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the book Language Unlimited, The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, David. Thanks very much, Mike. It was a real pleasure.

The next time you go to the supermarket, you might take note of all the different brands of dishwashing liquid. There are dozens of them, including name brands like Dawn and Palm Olive, as well as store brands and generic brands. And while most people probably have their favorite brand, is there really any difference when it comes to washing dishes in the sink? Consumer reports put a dozen brands through their paces, testing for the ability to clean and cut through grease. What they did was, they used dirty panes of glass, and they used a machine to scrub the glass,

so each dishwashing liquid got the exact same test. The results? There was no discernible difference. They all performed well. So the advice from Consumer Reports is to just buy the cheapest or whatever's on sale. And that is something you should know. Our audience is growing, and it's due mostly to word of mouth. People like you sharing this podcast with their friends. I invite you to do that right now.

I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.

Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone.

So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.