Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
There’s a certain ache in the bones—no, more like pain behind the eyes brought on by fatigue with the world—that overtakes a man when he’s gone too long without talking about etymology. We here at The Remnant have been feeling that deeply, and we know you have too. That’s why Jonah Goldberg is sitting down with fellow word nerd Colin Gorrie to talk about everything he’s ever wanted to know about language. Jonah and Colin cover Old English dialects, prescriptive vs. descriptive, the world’s biggest language, Latinization, early dictionaries, class, accents, linguistic hygiene, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, metaphors, the euphemism treadmill, borrowed words, Shakespearean coinages, Australian English, gender in language, Basque, and the hardest European language to learn.
Show Notes:
thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/linguists-are-nihilists-interview-colin-gorrie
There’s a certain ache in the bones—no, more like pain behind the eyes brought on by fatigue with the world—that overtakes a man when he’s gone too long without talking about etymology. We here at The Remnant have been feeling that deeply, and we know you have too. That’s why Jonah Goldberg is sitting down with fellow word nerd Colin Gorrie to talk about everything he’s ever wanted to know about language. Jonah and Colin cover Old English dialects, prescriptive vs. descriptive, the world’s biggest language, Latinization, early dictionaries, class, accents, linguistic hygiene, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, metaphors, the euphemism treadmill, borrowed words, Shakespearean coinages, Australian English, gender in language, Basque, and the hardest European language to learn.
Show Notes:
thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/linguists-are-nihilists-interview-colin-gorrie
