But I don't think that it's always clear to us that language has to change in that things are going to come in that we're going to hear as intrusions or as irritating or as mistakes, despite the fact that that's how you get from, say, old Persian to modern Persian. It's just how I feel. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. Now, in a lot of languages, you can't say that because unless you were crazy, and you went out looking to break your arm, and you succeeded - right? al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. Opening scene of Lady Bird Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. Hidden Brain Host Explains Why We Lie to Ourselves Every Day But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? John, you've noted that humans have been using language for a very long time, but for most of that time language has been about talking. And you suddenly get a craving for potato chips, and you realize that you have none in the kitchen, and there's nothing else you really want to eat. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. That's what it's all about. You-uh (ph). Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to savor the beauty in nature, art, or simply the moral courage of those around us. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. I want everybody to have the fun I'm having. I just don't want to do it. And I thought, wow, first of all, it would be almost impossible to have a conversation like that in English where you hadn't already revealed the gender of the person because you have to use he or she. Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. There's a lowlier part of our nature that grammar allows us to vent in the absence of other ways to do it that have not been available for some decades for a lot of us. Later things are on the right. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts BORODITSKY: My family is Jewish, and we left as refugees. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable Hidden Brain Episodes Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. But also, I started wondering, is it possible that my friend here was imagining a person without a gender for this whole time that we've been talking about them, right? MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. Well, if you have a word like that and if it's an intensifier of that kind, you can almost guess that literally is going to come to mean something more like just really. All of these are very subjective things. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. VEDANTAM: Would it be possible to use what we have learned about how words and languages evolve to potentially write what a dictionary might look like in 50 years or a hundred years? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. And if you don't have a word for exactly seven, it actually becomes very, very hard to keep track of exactly seven. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Hidden Brain. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. You know, lots of people blow off steam about something they think is wrong, but very few people are willing to get involved and do something about it. In this episode, we explore how long-term relationships have changed over time and whether we might be able to improve marriage by asking less of it. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. BORODITSKY: Yeah. 4.62. Accuracy and availability may vary. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. And all of a sudden, I noticed that there was a new window that had popped up in my mind, and it was like a little bird's-eye view of the landscape that I was walking through, and I was a little red dot that was moving across the landscape. That said, if you hear one or two pieces of music that you really love, feel free to email us at [emailprotected] and well do our best to respond to your request. And so even though I insist that there is no scientific basis for rejecting some new word or some new meaning or some new construction, I certainly have my visceral biases. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. VEDANTAM: I understand that there's also been studies looking at how artists who speak different languages might paint differently depending on how their languages categorize, you know, concepts like a mountain or death. How big are the differences that we're talking about, and how big do you think the implications are for the way we see the world? Hidden Brain Claim By Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Podcasts RSS Web PODCAST SEARCH EPISODES COMMUNITY PODCASTER EDIT SHARE Listen Score LS 84 Global Rank TOP 0.01% ABOUT THIS PODCAST Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Trusted by 5,200 companies and developers. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. This week, a story about a con with a twist. So I think it's an incredible tragedy that we're losing all of this linguistic diversity, all of this cultural diversity because it is human heritage. Relationships 2.0: What Makes Relationships Thrive | Hidden Brain Media And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. I'm Shankar Vedantam. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." Physicist Richard Feynman once said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." One way we fool ourselves is by imagining we know more than we do; we think we are experts. That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. (Speaking Japanese). Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. That is exactly why you should say fewer books instead of less books in some situations and, yes, Billy and I went to the store rather than the perfectly natural Billy and me went to the store. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Speaking foreign language). I'm Shankar Vedantam. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. But they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. Additional Resources Book: VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. We always knew that certain species of animals had abilities to orient that we thought were better than human, and we always had some biological excuse for why we couldn't do it. In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologistAdam Grantpushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy | Hidden Brain Media Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. Languages are not just tools. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes Toward Understanding Understanding:The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships, by Harry Reis, Edward P. Lemay Jr, and Catrin Finkenauer, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2017. The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators and The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, by Neil Rackham and John Carlisle, Journal of European Industrial Training, 1978. So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? So the way you say hi in Kuuk Thaayorre is to say, which way are you heading? What we think of today as a word undergoing some odd development or people using some new construction is exactly how Latin turned into French. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. So to go back to the example we were just talking about - people who don't use words like left and right - when I gave those picture stories to Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, who use north, south, east and west, they organized the cards from east to west. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. And if that is true, then the educated person can look down on people who say Billy and me went to the store or who are using literally, quote, unquote, "wrong" and condemn them in the kinds of terms that once were ordinary for condemning black people or women or what have you. Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. My big fat greek wedding, an american woman of greek ancestry falls in love with a very vanilla, american man.