The Endless Knot
We discuss etymology, history, literature, science, and language, and the connections between them.
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 learning the rules of texting from one’s students, and of course, surprising connections!
Also, please check out the Defeat Depression fundraising event, and the Sudbury Walk/Run on May 25.
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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 open new doors into the past. We spoke to one of the leaders of this project, Dr. Stephen Parsons, about the Vesuvius Challenge, the technical aspects of ‘virtual unrolling’, the possibilities of new classical texts, the development of new ways of doing scholarship, and more.
Also, please check out the Defeat Depression fundraising event, and the Sudbury Walk/Run on May 25.
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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 talked a bit about Dr. Carr’s next book, all about silver, women, and textiles.
Dr. Carr’s history website and blog, Quatr.us
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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 for the unscheduled hiatus!
Cuckold video and podcast
Frank N. Egerton. “A History of the Ecological Sciences: Early Greek Origins”, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 82.1 (2001): 93-97
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 2: Aristotle and Theophrastos”, BESA 82.2 (2001): 149-152
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 3: Hellenistic Natural History”, BESA 82.3 (2001): 201-205
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 4: Roman Natural History”, BESA 82.4 (2001): 243-246
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 5: Byzantine Natural History”, BESA 83.1 (2002): 89-94
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 6: Arabic Language Science—Origins and Zoological Writings”, BESA 83.2 (2002): 142-146
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 7: Arabic Language Science—Botany, Geography, and Decline”, BESA 83.4 (2002): 261-266
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 8: Frederick II of Hohenstaufen: Amateur Avian Ecologist and Behaviorist”, BESA 84.1 (2003): 40-44
———, “A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 9: Albertus Magnus: a Scholastic Naturalist”, BESA 84.2 (2003): 87-91
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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 that changed their role in the state. What did it mean to be a good man in ancient Rome, and how and why did that change?
Melanie’s book is available here
Tiber Island, picture by Jenny Muslin
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 history of misogyny in the western world, from Eve and Pandora to the Virgin Mary, courtly love, and Victorian womanhood.
Cocktail: Pandora’s Jar, from Nectar of the Gods
BnF MS Fr. 25526
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 poetry!
Old English Schemata
Old Norse Schemata
Latin Schemata
Anglo-Norman Schemata
© Martin Szillat
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 the never-ending changes that English has gone through, the surprisingly sophisticated rules behind our use of ‘um’ and ‘uh’, and much more.
Dr. Valerie Fridland’s website
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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 back to Phoenician — several times — but maybe, just maybe, some bits of this odd language will make more sense to you when we’re done!
Christopher Upward & George Davidson, The History of English Spelling (2001)
David Sacks, Letter Perfect (2003)
Kevin Stroud, The History of the Alphabet (audiobook)
NativLang “Thoth’s Pill - an Animated History of Writing”
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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 English is all tangled up with the history of the alphabet, so in this part we trace some of the twists and turns that resulted in our modern script.
Christopher Upward & George Davidson, The History of English Spelling (2001)
David Sacks, Letter Perfect (2003)
Kevin Stroud, The History of the Alphabet (audiobook)
NativLang “Thoth’s Pill - an Animated History of Writing”
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
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, sorry that we didn’t manage a regular episode in February, but we’ll definitely have one in March.
@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community
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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 leave us your questions on this website, email us, or post on social media, or just show up on the day at the livestream.
The livestream will be here, just click on Sunday afternoon to join in!
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 Williams has written a short interpretive introductory work on the epic to go with the Columbia Core Curriculum. We talked with both of them about the way Ovid fits into contemporary society, what considerations there are when teaching this epic, and the joys and difficulties of engaging with Ovid’s poetic brilliance.
Content note for sexual violence and brief description of trauma.
@AllEndlessKnot@toot.community
“Landscape Near Rome during Storm” by Simon Denis
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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 century, and the 1st century BCE, to Renaissance art and the Roman practice of patronage, and more. Happy New Year!
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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 interviewed him in 2016, what it was like researching a book covering such wide-ranging topics, the state of the publishing industry, and more.
Our previous interview with Paul (episode 21)
Citogenesis (the Wikipedia citation problem) coined in xkcd comic
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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 featuring brief cameos from music YouTuber 12Tone.
12Tone’s video “Why Do Notes Have Names?”
Murdoch Mysteries episode “The Dominion of New South Mimico”
Language: The Cultural Tool by Daniel Everett
Erskine, Andrew. “Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Museum and Library of Alexandria.” Greece & Rome, vol. 42, no. 1, 1995, pp. 38–48. JSTOR.
Hardie, Alex. “Etymologising the Muse.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’analisi Dei Testi Classici, no. 62, 2009, pp. 9–57. JSTOR.
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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 initiatives he and his group have been working on to support script revitalization and creation around the world.
Website: Endangered Alphabets
Twitter: @endangeredalpha
Instagram: @endangeredalphas
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Commemorating the 6th anniversary of the death of Mark’s father, and the 75th anniversary of Indian independence, this episode connects widows and partition, and while also touching on the legacy of Alexander the Great, the origins of badminton and tennis, and obscure typesetting vocabulary.
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We have a very fun conversation with Dr. Natalie Swain about her work on classical reception and the polar regions — the Arctic and Antarctic — science fiction, and comics. And Natalie and Mark find lots of overlaps and connections between their interests!
“Between the Sheets: Reading the Coverlet as Comics in Catullus 64.” Image [&] Narrative 22.2 (2021)
Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics
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We’re talking all about the future in this episode — and if we even have one (in English). This is a topic near and dear to Mark’s heart, and in part the subject of his dissertation! We get into the nitty gritty of grammatical tense, ways of thinking about the future, and a mystery cocktail.
Whisky Exchange article about Futurist cocktails
Lavery, Gerard B. “Hoc Aeui Quodcumquest : Lucretius and Time.” Latomus, vol. 46, no. 4, 1987, pp. 720–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41534650
Berns, Gisela. “Time and Nature in Lucretius’ ‘De Rerum Natura.’” Hermes, vol. 104, no. 4, 1976, pp. 477–92. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4475983
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