The World in Words
295 episodes listed below
Patrick Cox and Nina Porzucki report on endangered languages, translation, and language's hidden stakes.
The World in Words treats language as a living record of people and place. Its episodes move from Icelandic sagas and Basque survival to Missouri place names, bilingual education, and Chinese science fiction in translation.
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The show is built as reported, narrated documentary audio rather than a studio interview or panel format, with field tape, archival recordings, and narration assembled around a single story per episode. Hosts Patrick Cox and Nina Porzucki narrate and report most episodes, with additional segments contributed by outside reporters such as Suzanne Hogan on Native place names in Missouri. Episodes run roughly 24 to 46 minutes and are credited to Subtitle, a podcast co-produced with the Linguistic Society of America and Quiet Juice, and distributed as part of the Hub & Spoke audio collective. Recurring subject matter includes the suppression and revival of minority and Indigenous languages (Basque, Irish, Chiwere), the standardization debates that come with reviving a language, and the practical stakes of language access for immigrants, including hospital interpreting and farm labor conditions in California and Florida. Other episodes take up translation as an act with political consequences, following how Chinese science fiction is edited and reframed for English-language readers, and examine language at moments of extremity, such as last words at the end of life or the neuroscience behind improvised, spontaneous speech. Guests are typically academic linguists, professional and community interpreters, language teachers, translators, and journalists rather than public figures, and many are affiliated with university language centers or community radio and language-revitalization programs. Episodes lean on primary sources — court cases, census figures, academic studies, and named researchers — rather than anecdote alone, and the tone stays investigative and narrative rather than comedic or debate-driven. Listeners with a specific interest in endangered-language revival, translation studies, or the intersection of language and immigration policy will find more depth here than in general linguistics-explainer podcasts. The show regularly closes episodes by cross-promoting other Hub & Spoke documentary podcasts, such as Ministry of Ideas and Feet in Two Worlds.
Made for: People interested in linguistics, endangered and Indigenous language revival, immigration policy, or translation studies who prefer reported narrative documentary over interview shows.
What sets it apart: Rather than explaining linguistics concepts generally, it embeds language inside single-subject investigative reporting on policy, health, and history, co-produced with the Linguistic Society of America.
The World in Words podcast is about languages and the people who speak them. Hosted by The World's Patrick Cox and Nina Porzucki.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Reported stories connect language learning and preservation to migration, public institutions, translation, and the daily consequences of speech.
The World in Words treats language as something people live through: a carrier of memory, power, displacement, and creative exchange. Patrick Cox and Nina Porzucki build episodes through narrative journalism, moving between scene-setting, recorded voices, and interviews rather…
The World in Words turns a dying composer's speech melodies into language history you can feel.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A tender, odd listen about Janacek, last words, and the pressure to sound profound at the end.
Leos Janacek's grief gives this episode its pull: a composer sitting beside his dying 20-year-old daughter, Olga Janackova, writing down her last utterances and turning them into speech melodies.
A thoughtful look at whether Icelandic can keep renewing itself as English grows harder to avoid.
Icelandic's struggle to remain unmistakably itself becomes a thoughtful lesson in how a language survives when English grows more present in everyday life.
A place-name story becomes a clear, moving lesson in Otoe-Missouria language, memory, and cultural survival.
Missouri's name opens into a larger lesson about Native place names, the Otoe-Missouria language, and the history many Americans live among without recognizing.
A clear look at migrant farm workers, extreme heat, and the politics around basic workplace protections.
Migrant farm workers facing extreme heat are placed inside a long American labor story, beginning with Edward R. Murrow's Harvest of Shame and moving into fields that are only getting hotter.
A measured look at how bilingual education moved from political target to public credential.
The bilingual edge traces the political turn from Bob Dole's mid-1990s attack on bilingual education to the seal of biliteracy reaching all 50 states in 2024.
A clear, humane look at how Basque speakers turned survival into usable everyday language.
Basque survival comes through here as everyday work as much as historical inheritance. Nina Porzuki begins at the Center for Basque Studies in Reno with the story of Bingen Amatsaga, a Basque exile fleeing Franco's Spain in 1942, then follows the language back into the practical…
A clear, thoughtful look at Chinese sci-fi, translation, and what global attention can change.
Chinese sci-fi's move into English, awards circuits, and Netflix adaptation becomes a story about language, power, and audience. The episode begins with The Three-Body Problem, tracing how Liu Cixin's novel crossed borders first through Ken Liu's English translation and later…
A sharp language story about how one English word carries race, style, soccer, and politics in France.
The English word "black" opens a careful story about race, style, music, soccer, and belonging in France. The episode begins with everyday speech, including a small film festival where people describe the word as trendier than "noir" and tied to African American culture.
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
Shankar Vedantam unpacks the psychology behind relationships, careers, and money through researcher interviews.
David McRaney interviews researchers on cognitive bias, motivated reasoning, and why minds change.
Ryan Holiday pairs daily Stoic lessons with long-form guest conversations at his Texas bookstore.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Russ Roberts interviews authors and economists on ideas from classical liberalism to AI.
The year is 1903.
A former mayor of Reykjavik predicts Iceland will abandon its native language for English within this century, raising questions about linguistic survival in the globalized world.
Missouri begins as a question.
Patrick Coggs hands the mic over.
Bob Dole wanted alternative language education gone.
Basque is still here.
A Netflix series opens the trail.
French people commonly use the English word 'black' instead of their own word 'noir' because they consider it more polite and less direct.
Molly learned Irish a bit at a time.
Oxnard starts with sound.
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Montreal comedian Sugar Sammy — born Samir Kular to Indian immigrant parents — has built a career performing stand-up in four languages: French, English, Hindi, and Punjabi.
A queer cabaret night opens a story about one small word: Mx.
Germans were once treated as outsiders who would never fit in.