Subtitle: An LSA Podcast
The LSA is proud to serve as the lead sponsor of the Subtitle podcast. This ongoing venture is made possible, in part, by the receipt of two grants totaling more than $400,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The podcast, called Subtitle, is produced by Patrick Cox, winner of the LSA's Linguistics Journalism Award in 2019, and by documentary film and radio producer Kavita Pillay. Cox previously served as the producer of the World in Words podcast that was also supported by the NEH. The LSA is excited to assume sponsorship of this outstanding forum for informing the public about language and linguistics research.
The NEH grants only cover about 80 percent of the total project expenses, with the remainder to be raised through individual donations, corporate sponsorships, private foundation grants, and paid advertising. As a charitable, tax-exempt non-profit organization, the LSA welcomes financial contributions to support its mission, including production costs associated with the Subtitle podcast. Donations for this purpose may be made by visiting our secure online donation facility.
Subtitle will be back with a new season starting December 15, 2021. Look out for episodes on the language of self-help, French in Louisiana after Hurricane Ida, losing your mother tongue, learning Finnish as an adult, and the roots of African American English.
About Subtitle
Subtitle tells stories about languages and the people who speak them. Why is linguistic discrimination so prevalent? How can we help keep endangered languages alive? How does language make us laugh? And cry? (Sometimes at the same time!) Subtitle seeks answers to these and many other questions.
Subscribe to Subtitle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcripts of each episode can be found on the individual episode pages, below.
- Listen to Episode Forty-one: Will climate change wipe out French in Louisiana?
- Listen to Episode Forty: When did comedians start saying ‘punching up’ and ‘punching down’?
- Listen to Episode Thirty-nine: The language of the outside people
- Listen to Episode Thirty-eight: The speechways of the folk
- Listen to Episode Thirty-seven: ‘Manifesting’ the language of self-help
- Listen to Episode Thirty-six: Why some words are just funny
- Listen to Episode Thirty-five: A mother tongue reclaimed
- Listen to Episode Thirty-four: Teach me your song
- Listen to Episode Thirty-three: Once upon a hyphen…
- Listen to Episode Thirty-two: A language that survived the boarding schools
- Listen to Episode Thirty-One: A tale of edible intrigue
- Listen to Episode Thirty: The pleasure and pain of spelling
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Nine: We are the people
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Eight: The little pronoun that could
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Seven: How the alphabet won our hearts
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Six: Japan's mystery language
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Five: The dots and their future
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Four: The language closest to English
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Three: My notorious name
- Listen to Episode Twenty-Two: Subtitle presents A Better Life?
- Listen to Episode Twenty-One: We Speak: Tina
- Listen to Episode Twenty: We Speak: Ciku
- Listen to Episode Nineteen: We Speak: Verónica
- Listen to Episode Eighteen: We Speak: Patrick and Kavita
- Listen to Episode Seventeen: The birth of a language
- Listen to Episode Sixteen: 'Sisu' gets an update
- Listen to Episode Fifteen: A metaphor for our times with Elena Simino
- Listen to Episode Fourteen: In quarantine with Joe Wong
- Listen to Episode Thirteen: In quarantine with Joanna Hausmann
- Listen to Episode Twelve: At war, and not at war
- Listen to Episode Eleven: One virus, many languages
- Listen to Episode Ten: Going Dutch
- Listen to Episode Nine: How to Communicate with Aliens
- Listen to Episode Eight: Did Katrina Kill the New Orleans Accent?
- Listen to Episode Seven: The Talk of the Forest
- Listen to Episode Six: Is a Polyglot's Brain Different?
- Listen to Episode Five: Why Mormons are so good at languages
- Listen to Episode Four: Gullah Geechee enters the academy
- Listen to Episode Three: The Language of Diamonds
- Listen to Episode Two: Words We Love to Hate
- Listen to Episode One: Not So Anonymous
About Patrick Cox
Patrick Cox worked as a theater sound designer in Copenhagen and London before graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a Masters in Journalism. He then worked in radio journalism, mainly for The World public radio show where he reported from dozens of countries. The stories he brought home that most intrigued him were about language: the street slang of Singapore, the linguistic spats of post-apartheid South Africa, the lost words of the lost nation of Yugoslavia. In 2008, he founded The World in Words podcast. In 2018, the Linguistic Society of America gave him its Linguistics Journalism Award. A year later, Subtitle was born.
About Kavita Pillay
Kavita Pillay was born and raised in northeastern Ohio, where the myth of the “General American” accent runs deep. She came to audio by way of documentary film. She has reported for The World and the BBC on comedians in Singapore, Catholicism in Poland, and Finland’s insecurity complex. Her feature-length documentary on Indian men named Stalin and Lenin is in post-production. Her work has received the support of many organizations, including the LEF Foundation, the Sundance Institute, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Fulbright Scholar Program.