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Lingthusiasm is a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! 

Ever get distracted from what someone is actually saying by wondering about how they’re saying it? This is the show for you! 

Lingthusiasm is created by Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch, lecturer at La Trobe University and author of the New York Times bestselling book Because Internet. They draw on their shared linguistics background and differing experience articulating what’s neat about linguistics in media and in the classroom to bring you Lingthusiasm: lively half-hour chats about the hidden linguistic patterns you didn’t realize you were already doing. 

Lingthusiasm posts main episodes on the third Thursday of the month and bonus episodes on the first Thursday of the month, thanks to this excellent team of people. 

Lingthusiasm is on all the podcast apps and @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites, all our episodes have shownotes and good transcripts, and we’re still running after all this time thanks to our supporters on Patreon. 

What’s Lingthusiasm like? 

• I tried to listen to Lingthusiasm to help me fall asleep but it made me laugh so much I could not sleep at all. 1 star —early iTunes reviewer

• The show is often as much about social habits as it is about language — one memorable episode had Gawne and McCulloch discuss “lopsided conversations,” those verbal interactions that can go off the rails if one person is either dominating or not contributing enough. It’s a fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications. —New York Times, 5 Podcasts for Word Nerds

• Lauren and Gretchen know their stuff, have an easy rapport, and are skilled at pitching linguistic concepts to a general audience. I also like the mix of Australian and Canadian dialects. —Sentence First

• Tell your friend that I still don’t like linguistics, but I DO like her podcast. —10 year old child of a linguistics professor

• I had this epiphany listening, like “woahhh, words are like…magic?”…the kind of epiphany that made me feel like I was 21… in the attic of my college off-campus house realizing I have hands. —Lauren Passell’s Podcast the Newsletter

• Hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch, as the title suggests, share their enthusiasm for linguistics in this joyously nerdy podcast. They most recently contemplated why English vocabulary is so limited when it comes to describing smells. —Buzzfeed, Quibbles & Bits

• Seriously entertaining talks about all kinds of different aspects of language. If that sounds dry, then you are sorely mistaken, because it’s super interesting and sometimes totally hilarious. —The Geekiary

• A wonderful new podcast on linguistic matters that I highly recommend to all Language Log readers. -Ben Zimmer, Language Log