July 2, 2009

Steven Pinker's new book about language is called "The Stuff of Thought." The relation between language and thought is clear, but controversial. Is language the stuff of thought, or is thought the stuff of language? Pinker tells us what came first, the word or the thought. We'll also talk about why so much of our language depends on metaphor, why we use profanity, what's in a name and why some words catch on and others don't.