The Endless Knot
Marcie Sundaram & Aven McMaster
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About This Podcast
Aven & Marcie discuss etymology, history, literature, language, and cocktails, and the sometimes surprising connections between them all.
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Recent Episodes
S10E124 Episode 124: The Alphabet, with Danny Bate
We spoke with linguist, writer and podcaster Dr Danny Bate about his debut book, Why Q Needs U, a “linguistico-historical non-fiction book” that sets out to answer two big questions: Where did we get…
S10E124 Episode 124a: Season 10 Trailer
An apology for absence, some personal news, and the guests coming in the next few months.Transcript of this episodeThis episode on YouTubeOur Patreon pageRedbubble storeThis podcast is licensed under…
Episode 123: Words Christmas Gave Us, with Grace Tierney
Grace Tierney is back with another great book about the word origins, this time “Words Christmas Gave Us"! She regales us with festive stories and we talk about some of the fun traditions and treats…
Episode 122: Says Who, with Anne Curzan
We spoke with Dr. Anne Curzan about her new book, “Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares about Words”. We talk about language change, inner grammandos, the benefits of…
Episode 121: The Vesuvius Challenge, with Stephen Parsons
Buried deep under volcanic ash lie hundreds of burnt scrolls containing texts from the first century. A new project is driving the work to try to read these chunks of carbon, to uncover new works and…
Episode 120: Swimming in History, with Karen Carr
We talked to Dr. Karen Carr about the global history of swimming — in myth, folktale, and history. Who swam, who didn’t, and how do the stories different cultures told reflect these patterns? We also…
Episode 119: An Ecological Chain
We discuss the language and history of the ecological sciences, all the way back to the ancient Greeks, and the development of the food chain and food web models of ecological systems. And apologies…
Episode 118: A Crisis of Masculinity, with Melanie Racette-Campbell
We talk to Melanie Racette-Campbell about her new book, “The Crisis of Masculinity in the Age of Augustus”, and discuss why Roman elite men were particularly vulnerable to a societal transformation…
Episode 117: A Brief History of Misogyny
The word “chauvinism” is an unlikely eponym, but it turns out that the story behind it has all sorts of interesting connections. And our discussion of those connections also leads us into the long…
Episode 116: A Quiverful of Time Arrows
We look at the history of English’s conceptualization of time, and update Mark’s research on spatiotemporal metaphor. Also, words for arrows, the surprising origin of ‘toxic’, and a bit of Latin…
Episode 115: Like, Literally, Dude! with Valerie Fridland
We spoke to Dr. Valerie Fridland about her new book, “Like, Literally, Dude!” and talked about the fascinating role that many ‘errors’ in English speech actually play in communication. We discuss…
Episode 114a: The XYZ’s of Spelling
It’s Part 2 of our mega-episode on spelling! This time, we get into some of the notorious mismatches between English spelling and modern English pronunciation. Explaining them takes us all the way…
Episode 114: The ABC’s of Spelling
We’re wading into the messy world of English spelling in this episode — the first of two, since we couldn’t fit all of the ‘quirks’ of the language into one episode. The history of orthography in…
Bonus: Livestream Q&A from LingFest23
In this bonus episode, we answer questions from viewers and listeners during a livestream on our YouTube channel, as part of #LingFest23. Apologies for the sound quality, which isn’t great.Also,…
Announcement: LingFest23 Q&A Livestream
Just a reminder that we’ll be doing a Q&A livestream on our YouTube channel as part of LingFest in connection to the LingComm23 Conference on Sunday, February 12, 2023 at 1:00pm Eastern. Please…
Episode 113: Ovid's Metamorphoses in the 21st Century
In this episode we talk to the authors of two new books on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Latin epic poem he wrote in 8 CE. Stephanie McCarter has published a new translation of the poem, and Gareth…
Episode 112: The Bellini, Art, and Patronage
As we get ready to mark the new year, it seems a good time to talk about a classic cocktail made with sparkling wine: the Bellini. Our conversation takes us to Italy, in the 20th century, the 15th…
Episode 111: Haggard Hawks, back again!
We welcome back Paul Anthony Jones, of Haggard Hawks fame, to ell us about his new book “Why Is This a Question?”. We talk about how his experience of social media has changed since we last…
Episode 110: Music and Language
We talk about the origins of music, its connection (both etymological and scientific) with the mind, how language is used to describe and teach music, the Muses, and the Museum of Alexandria. Also…
Episode 109: Endangered Alphabets, with Tim Brookes
We spoke with Tim Brooks of the Endangered Alphabets project about the cultural importance of scripts, the pressures on marginalized and isolated scripts, his beautiful wood carvings, and the various…
Frequently Asked Questions
The Endless Knot has published 135 episodes since July 2015, covering topics in Arts, Books.
The Endless Knot is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 1h 8m.
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