I was at the ER the night before Thanksgiving/early hours of Thanksgiving last year with a family member, and we overheard two doctors call that block of time "The Night of the Mandolines" due to the sheer number of sharps injuries during meal prep.

‘More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries.’

Stark piece from a former diplomat on how loss of language learning hits our defence & geopolitical capabilities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/proc... @timeshighered.bsky.social

interesting interpretation...

I proposed doing this at work. We're calling it Shut Up and Do Your Admin Tasks. (In academia everyone knows Shut Up and Write sessions.)

not for linguists 😩

With this empirical base, I wasn't tied to collections of last words, which are biased on every dimension. Including toward "words." (What about nonverbals? Silence?)

I analyzed the data cards and wrote about the study in BBILY, and in this paper:

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Data from that study, encoded on cards for each death, are at McGill. Some of the cards included observations about language and interactional behavior.

A fortunate encounter with medical historian Tom Laqueur pointed me in the direction of the cards. I'm indebted to him.

When he was at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Osler launched the first-ever clinical study of the process of dying, collecting info on 486 deaths from 1900-1904.

Osler was interested in knowing whether people die in discomfort: psychological, spiritual, physical.

One of the goals of my work is to show the language angle of everyday life through narrative and science.

Build better myths!

Another is to broaden what linguists can and should care about.

More inclusive science!

Bye Bye I Love You: The Story of Our First and Last Words (2025) is the first linguistic look at language at the end of life, including "last words" and beyond.

It explores these linguistic milestones as cultural phenomena across historical eras. The Economist's top 40 book of 2025 (so far).

"What is the upper limit of the human ability to learn/speak/ know/use languages?" In my book, I answered that question! Not with supposition but evidence! Spoiler alert: it's complicated.

Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners (2012). Translated into 8 languages. The first & most comprehensive look at the phenomenon of "hyperpolyglottery," or massive multilingualism/high intensity language learning.

One chapter I'm proud of: the history of the umless aesthetic in public speaking.

It dates only to the late 19th/early 20th centuries, a function of tech change, social mobility pressures, and urbanization in the US.

Cicero didn't care if you said um. Neither did Jefferson.

Um...Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They mean (2007) explores the natural history of speech disfluencies ("uh," "um," sentence restarts, etc.) and slips of the tongue. Inspired by George W. Bush's profile as "verbal blunderer." I wondered: what is "fluent speech" anyway?