Podcasts about Dan Jurafsky

New Pulse of AI podcast is live! Season 6, episode 145. To be notified about future conversations with the leaders of the AI revolution sign up for our newsletter at www.thepulseofai.com  AI Pioneers: Andrew Maas on Pioneering Retrieval Systems and Deep Learning Join host Jason Stoughton in this exciting episode as he welcomes Andrew Maas, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Pointable. Andrew shares his journey through the world of artificial intelligence, from his groundbreaking work on data-centric deep learning at Apple to his pivotal role in founding roam Analytics, a natural language extraction platform acquired by Parexel. In this episode, Andrew delves into the innovative technologies behind Pointable, a startup revolutionizing retrieval systems for RAG-LLM workflows. He offers valuable insights for AI practitioners and founders, drawing from his extensive experience and academic background, including his PhD from Stanford University under the mentorship of Andrew Ng and Dan Jurafsky. Tune in to hear about Andrew's transformative work in AI, the future of retrieval systems, and what's next for Pointable. Whether you're an AI enthusiast or an aspiring entrepreneur, this conversation is packed with knowledge and inspiration!

C. Edward Watson talks about thinking with and about AI on episode 517 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Where will things be 2 and a half years? And how do you prepare students for that world that's rapidly evolving? -Eddie Watson You must use AI as a starting point in the real world. -Eddie Watson Even the best tool on the market says that it gets it wrong one out of 20 times. You know, there's a false positive. It'll accuse a student of cheating who did not cheat with AI. And that's the best in show tool. -Eddie Watson There are so many ethical concerns within this space just around AI detection. -Eddie Watson Resources Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson turbolearn ai AI Tutor Pro OpenStax Dialect prejudice predicts AI decisions about people's character, employability, and criminality, by Valentin Hofmann , Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, Dan Jurafsky, Sharese King The Myth of the AI First Draft, by Leon Furze How To Teach with AI and Still Put People First, by Jon Ippolito Whisper Memos Lance Eaton Michelle Miller Anna Mills

When he travels, he's a man of reflection. When he creates, he's a man of action. Utsav Mamoria joins Amit Varma in episode 376 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his philosophy towards travel, creating and living. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Utsav Mamoria on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. 2. Postcards From Nowhere -- Utsav Mamoria's podcast. 3. The 6% Club.. 4. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on the creator ecosystem with Roshan Abbas, Varun Duggirala, Neelesh Misra, Snehal Pradhan, Chuck Gopal, Nishant Jain, Deepak Shenoy, Abhijit Bhaduri and Gaurav Chintamani.. 5. The Universe of Chuck Gopal -- Episode 258 of The Seen and the Unseen. 6. Getting Meta. -- Chuck Gopal's podcast. 7. The legendary Simblified. 8. Sabbaticalling -- Episode 85 of Simblified (w Utsav Mamoria). 9. The Untravel Show -- Abhishek.Vaid's YouTube show. 10. Chuck Gopal interviews Utsav Mamoria. 12. Horizon -- Barry Lopez. 13. Imaginary Cities -- Darran Anderson. 14. Invisible Cities -- Italo Calvino. 15. The Hiking Episode -- Episode 35 of Everything is Everything. 16. I Play to Play -- Amit Varma. 17. Unboxing Bengaluru -- Malini Goyal and Prashanth Prakash. 18. Lords of the Deccan -- Anirudh Kanisetti. 19. Anirudh Kanisetti's podcasts. 20. Are You Just One Version of Yourself? -- Amit Varma. 21. Don't Get Into a Box -- Amit Varma. 22. Shoveling Smoke -- William Mazzarella. 23. Swapna Liddle and the Many Shades of Delhi — Episode 367 of The Seen and the Unseen. 24. From Cairo to Delhi With Max Rodenbeck — Episode 281 of The Seen and the Unseen. 25. The Stanford Prison Experiment. 26. Imagined Communities — Benedict Anderson. 27. Indian Society: The Last 30 Years — Episode 137 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Santosh Desai). 28. Santosh Desai is Watching You — Episode 356 of The Seen and the Unseen. 29. Dhadak Dhadak -- Song from Bunty and Babli. 30. The Prem Panicker Files — Episode 217 of The Seen and the Unseen. 31. The Language of Food -- Dan Jurafsky. 32. Bihar Review -- Kumar Anand's twitter account on Bihar. 33. Interior design for 10 crore kids. 34. Amitava Kumar Finds His Kashmiri Rain -- Episode 364 of The Seen and the Unseen. 35. Amadeus -- Miloš Forman. 36. Arctic Dreams -- Barry Lopez. 37. The Art of Travel -- Alain De Botton. 38. The School of Life. 39. Robert Macfarlane and Pico Iyer on Amazon. 40. Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. 41. Marginlands -- Arati Kumar-Rao. 42. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 43. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 44. Tarana Husain Khan, Sadaf Hussain and Krish Ashok on Amazon. 45. The Language of Cities -- Deyan Sudjic. 46. Italo Calvino on Amazon. 47. When Breath Becomes Air -- Paul Kalanithi. 48. Coke Studio Pakistan. 49. Kabir, Kabir Cafe and Songs of Kabir. 50. The soundtracks of Qala, Udaan and Lootera. 51. Ud Jayega Hans Akela -- Kumar Gandharva. 52. Spotlight -- Tom McCarthy. 53. Grave of the Fireflies -- Isao Takahata. 54. My Neighbour Totoro -- Hayao Miyazaki. 55. Woman in the Dunes -- Hiroshi Teshigahara. 56. Departures -- Yōjirō Takita. 57. Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Tahmineh Milani and Yasujirō Ozu. Amit's newsletter is explosively active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Travel' by Simahina.

This episode features Dora Demszky, a PhD student in Linguistics at Stanford University. Dora works at the intersection of natural language processing and education. We discuss her ACL 2021 paper titled "Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Interactions", co-authored with Jing Liu, Zid Mancenido, Julie Cohen, Heather Hill, Dan Jurafsky, and Tatsunori Hashimoto. Dora's work is motivated by creating tools that are useful for educators, so her research is not only descriptive or predictive, but also applicable to classrooms. She talks about managing large interdisciplinary teams, approaching research with care, and working with actual teachers to annotate data.

Rachael Tatman is a senior developer advocate for Rasa, where she's helping developers build and deploy ML chatbots using their open source framework. Rachael has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Washington where her research was on computational sociolinguistics, or how our social identity affects the way we use language in computational contexts. Previously she was a data scientist at Kaggle and she's still a Kaggle Grandmaster. In this conversation, Rachael and I talk about the history of NLP and conversational AI//chatbots and we dive into the fascinating tension between rule-based techniques and ML and deep learning – we also talk about how to incorporate machine and human intelligence together by thinking through questions such as “should a response to a human ever be automated?” Spoiler alert: the answer is a resounding NO WAY! In this journey, something that becomes apparent is that many of the trends, concepts, questions, and answers, although framed for NLP and chatbots, are applicable to much of data science, more generally. We also discuss the data scientist's responsibility to end-users and stakeholders using, among other things, the lens of considering those whose data you're working with to be data donors. We then consider what globalized language technology looks like and can look like, what we can learn from the history of science here, particularly given that so much training data and models are in English when it accounts for so little of language spoken globally. Links Rachael's website (https://www.rctatman.com/) Rasa (https://rasa.com/) Speech and Language Processing (https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/) by Dan Jurafsky and James H. Martin Masakhane (https://twitter.com/MasakhaneNLP), putting African languages on the #NLP map since 2019 The Distributed AI Research Institute (https://www.dair-institute.org/), a space for independent, community-rooted AI research, free from Big Tech's pervasive influence The Algorithmic Justice League (https://www.ajl.org/), unmasking AI harms and biases Black in AI (https://blackinai.github.io/#/), increasing the presence and inclusion of Black people in the field of AI by creating space for sharing ideas, fostering collaborations, mentorship and advocacy Hugo's blog post on his new job and why it's exciting for him to double down on helping scientists do better science (https://outerbounds.com/blog/hba-excited-to-join-metaflow-and-outerbounds/)

Our guests on this episode are Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, who was a computer science postdoc at Stanford and now a senior research scientist at Google, and Camilla Griffiths, who is a postdoc at Stanford SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions). With Hang Su, Prateek Verma, Nelson Morgan, Jennifer Eberhardt, and Dan Jurafsky, they are co-authors on a TACL 2018 paper, "Detecting Institutional Dialog Acts in Police Traffic Stops". Vinod and Camilla share with us how this collaboration formed over a common goal and a deep respect for each other's disciplines. We discuss the considerations that went into forming community partnerships, handling sensitive police body-camera data, and recognizing the implications of their findings.

In episode 19 of The Gradient Podcast, we talk to Rishi Bommasani, a Ph.D student at Stanford focused on Foundation Models. Rish is a second-year Ph.D. student in the CS Department at Stanford, where he is advised by Percy Liang and Dan Jurafsky. His research focuses on understanding AI systems and their social impact, as well as using NLP to further scientific inquiry. Over the past year, he helped build and organize the Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM).Sections:(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:05) How did you get into AI?(00:09:55) Towards Understanding Position Embeddings(00:14:23) Long-Distance Dependencies don't have to be Long(00:18:55) Interpreting Pretrained Contextualized Representations via Reductions to Static Embeddings(00:30:25) Masters Thesis(00:34:05) Start of PhD and work on foundation models(00:42:14) Why were people intested in foundation models(00:46:45) Formation of CRFM(00:51:25) Writing report on foundation models(00:56:33) Challenges in writing report(01:05:45) Response to reception(01:15:35) Goals of CRFM(01:25:43) Current research focus(01:30:35) Interests outside of research(01:33:10) OutroPapers discussed:Towards Understanding Position EmbeddingsLong-Distance Dependencies don't have to be Long: Simplifying through Provably (Approximately) Optimal PermutationsInterpreting Pretrained Contextualized Representations via Reductions to Static EmbeddingsGeneralized Optimal Linear OrdersOn the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation ModelsReflections on Foundation Models Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

In episode 14 of The Gradient Podcast, we interview Stanford PhD Candidate Peter HendersonSubscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSPeter is a joint JD-PhD student at Stanford University advised by Dan Jurafsky. He is also an OpenPhilanthropy AI Fellow and a Graduate Student Fellow at the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab. His research focuses on creating robust decision-making systems, with three main goals: (1) use AI to make governments more efficient and fair; (2) ensure that AI isn't deployed in ways that can harm people; (3) create new ML methods for applications that are beneficial to society.Links:Reproducibility and Reusability in Deep Reinforcement Learning. Benchmark Environments for Multitask Learning in Continuous DomainsReproducibility of Bench-marked Deep Reinforcement Learning Tasks for Continuous Control.Deep Reinforcement Learning that MattersReproducibility and Replicability in Deep Reinforcement Learning (and Other Deep Learning Methods)Towards the Systematic Reporting of the Energy and Carbon Footprints of Machine LearningHow blockers can turn into a paper: A retrospective on 'Towards The Systematic Reporting of the Energy and Carbon Footprints of Machine LearningWhen Does Pretraining Help? Assessing Self-Supervised Learning for Law and the CaseHOLD Dataset”How US law will evaluate artificial intelligence for Covid-19Podcast Theme: “MusicVAE: Trio 16-bar Sample #2” from "MusicVAE: A Hierarchical Latent Vector Model for Learning Long-Term Structure in Music" Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Can you have your cake and eat it? Do you have bigger fish to fry? Are you seduced by food imagery in literature, and lured into rash purchases by the purple prose of food packaging? This, then, is the programme for you! Sheila Dillon is joined by author, poet and presenter of Radio 4's 'Word of Mouth', Michael Rosen, to discuss the origins and impacts of food language: from the everyday idioms that hark back to ancient dietary habits, to the seductive language of advertising. Exploring food language in various forms, they hear from Dan Jurafsky, a professor of linguistics and computer science at Stanford University and author of ‘The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu'; Melissa Thompson, a food and drink writer who runs the recipe sharing project Fowl Mouths, and advocates for the promotion of black and minority ethnic voices in the food industry; and Dinah Fried, author of ‘Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literature's Most Memorable Meals'. Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Lucy Taylor in Bristol * * * The literary excerpts featured in this programme are from: - Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen (from his YouTube channel) - Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams - Hot Food by Michael Rosen

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E141 | Dan Jurafsky: How AI is changing our understanding of language A linguist and computer scientist explores how AI is expanding from capturing individual words and sentences to modeling the social nature of language. Words are a window into human psychology, society, and culture, says Stanford linguist and computer scientist Dan Jurafsky. The words we choose reveal what we think, how we feel and even what our biases are. And, more and more, computers are being trained to comprehend those words, a fact easily apparent in voice-recognition apps like Siri, Alexa and Cortana. Jurafsky says that his field, known as natural language processing (NLP), is now in the midst of a shift from simply trying to understanding the literal meaning of words to digging into the human emotions and the social meanings behind those words. In the social sciences, our great digital dialog is being analyzed to tell us who we are. And, by looking at the language of the past, language analysis promises to reveal who we once were. Meanwhile, in fields such as medicine, NLP is being used to help doctors diagnose mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, and to measure how those patients respond to treatment. The next generation of NLP-driven applications must not only hear what we say, but understand and even reply in more human ways, as Dan Jurafsky explains in his own words to host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

Words are a window into human psychology, society, and culture, says Stanford linguist and computer scientist Dan Jurafsky. The words we choose reveal what we think, how we feel and even what our biases are. And, more and more, computers are being trained to comprehend those words, a fact easily apparent in voice-recognition apps like Siri, Alexa and Cortana.Jurafsky says that his field, known as natural language processing (NLP), is now in the midst of a shift from simply trying to understanding the literal meaning of words to digging into the human emotions and the social meanings behind those words. In the social sciences, our great digital dialog is being analyzed to tell us who we are. And, by looking at the language of the past, language analysis promises to reveal who we once were. Meanwhile, in fields such as medicine, NLP is being used to help doctors diagnose mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, and to measure how those patients respond to treatment.The next generation of NLP-driven applications must not only hear what we say, but understand and even reply in more human ways, as Dan Jurafsky explains in his own words to host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

Rocky Road is just a good name for an ice cream flavor. So good, in fact, that two ice cream institutions have dueling claims to Rocky Road’s invention. It’s a story of alleged confessions and a whole lot of ice cream-fueled drama. If it were just the flavor that made Rocky Road so special, every company could have just made their own concoction of nuts, chocolate, and marshmallows, named it “Muddy Street” or “Pebble Lane,” and called it a day. But there’s a linguistic reason why Rocky Road just sounds so dang delicious—and it’s studied by linguists and marketers alike. Fenton's Creamery in Oakland, California, one of the institutions that lays claim to inventing Rocky Road. (Wikimedia Commons)     In this episode, we mention the Bouba Kiki Effect. Imagine two shapes: One is a pointy, jagged polygon, the other an ameboid-like splotch. Which shape would you name “Bouba,” and which would you name “Kiki?” In study after study, 90% of people agree—the pointy shape is “Kiki” and the rounded shape is “Bouba.” This so-called “Bouba-Kiki Effect” holds in many languages, and has even been demonstrated with toddlers. But why the near-universal agreement? Cognitive psychologists like Kelly McCormick have several theories. Watch this Science Friday video to learn more.    Guest:  Alissa Greenberg is a freelance journalist.  Dan Jurafsky is a professor of linguistics at Stanford, and the author of The Language of Food.  Will Leben is professor emeritus of linguistics at Stanford, and is the former director of linguistics at Lexicon Branding.  Footnotes And Further Reading:  Read Alissa Greenberg’s full (highly entertaining) story of the history of Rocky Road ice cream.  The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a word nerd’s dream, and contains more about his experiment on cracker and ice cream brand names.  Credits: Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our editor and producer is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Danya AbdelHameid. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer. Sound design and mastering by Chris Wood. Our Chief Content Officer is Nadja Oertelt. 

Science Diction is back! This time around, the team is investigating the science, language, and history of food. First up: Digging into America's favorite condiment, ketchup! At the turn of the 20th century, 12 young men sat in the basement of the Department of Agriculture, eating meals with a side of borax, salicylic acid, or formaldehyde. They were called the Poison Squad, and they were part of a government experiment to figure out whether popular food additives were safe. (Spoiler: Many weren’t.) Food manufacturers weren’t pleased with the findings, but one prominent ketchup maker paid attention. Influenced by these experiments, he transformed ketchup into the all-American condiment that we know and love today. Except ketchup—both the sauce and the word—didn't come from the United States. The story of America’s favorite condiment begins in East Asia. Want more Science Diction? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Harvey Wiley (back row, third from left) and the members of The Poison Squad. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) Members of the Poison Squad dining in the basement of the Department of Agriculture. Harvey Wiley occasionally ate with them, to offer encouragement and support. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)  The members of the Poison Squad came up with their own inspirational slogan, which hung on a sign outside the dining room. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration ) Guest Alan Lee is a freelance linguist and native Hokkien speaker.  Footnotes And Further Reading The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum tells the very entertaining history of Harvey Wiley, the early days of food regulation in the United States, and, of course, the Poison Squad. The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a word nerd’s dream, and contains more on ketchup’s early history. Special thanks to Dan Jurafsky for providing background information on the early history of ketchup for this episode.  Can't get enough ketchup history? Check out Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment With Recipes by Andrew F. Smith. Learn more about ketchup's early origins in Dan Jurafsky's Slate article on "The Cosmopolitan Condiment."  Credits Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our editor and producer is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey. Our Chief Content Office is Nadja Oertelt. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Danya AbdelHameid. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer, and they wrote our version of the “Song of the Poison Squad.” We had research help from Cosmo Bjorkenheim and Attabey Rodríguez Benítez. Sound design and mastering by Chris Wood.

At the turn of the 20th century, 12 young men sat in the basement of the Department of Agriculture, eating meals with a side of borax, salicylic acid, or formaldehyde. They were called the Poison Squad, and they were part of a government experiment to figure out whether popular food additives were safe. (Spoiler: Many weren’t.) Food manufacturers weren’t pleased with the findings, but one prominent ketchup maker paid attention. Influenced by these experiments, he transformed ketchup into the all-American condiment that we know and love today. Except ketchup—both the sauce and the word—didn't come from the United States. The story of America’s favorite condiment begins in East Asia. Harvey Wiley (back row, third from left) and the members of The Poison Squad. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) Members of the Poison Squad dining in the basement of the Department of Agriculture. Harvey Wiley occasionally ate with them, to offer encouragement and support. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)  The members of the Poison Squad came up with their own inspirational slogan, which hung on a sign outside the dining room. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration ) Guest Alan Lee is a freelance linguist and native Hokkien speaker.  Footnotes And Further Reading The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum tells the very entertaining history of Harvey Wiley, the early days of food regulation in the United States, and, of course, the Poison Squad. The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a word nerd’s dream, and contains more on ketchup’s early history. Special thanks to Dan Jurafsky for providing background information on the early history of ketchup for this episode.  Can't get enough ketchup history? Check out Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment With Recipes by Andrew F. Smith. Learn more about ketchup's early origins in Dan Jurafsky's Slate article on "The Cosmopolitan Condiment."  Credits Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our editor and producer is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey. Our Chief Content Office is Nadja Oertelt. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Danya AbdelHameid. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer, and they wrote our version of the “Song of the Poison Squad.” We had research help from Cosmo Bjorkenheim and Attabey Rodríguez Benítez. Sound design and mastering by Chris Wood.

A squad of researchers analysed a month's worth of police body camera footage from routine traffic stops in Oakland, California. Their findings highlight a racial bias that contributes towards the dysfunction relationship between Black Americans and the police. Dan and Akin squeeze the findings. - Research Paper: 'Language from Police Body Camera Footage Shows Racial Disparities in Officer Respect' by Rob Voigt, Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William L. Hamilton, Rebecca C. Hetey, Camilla M. Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Host Kathleen Flinn talks food with culinary linguist Dan Jurafsky, author of "The Language of Food" as they nibble on coconut macaroons. Get the recipe and more about Dan on the episode page at http://hungryforwords.show Special Guest: Dan Jurafsky.

Today’s AnthroDish interview is with Owen Campbell, a trans man with a passion for cooking, baking, and za’atar spice. He started his culinary journey with a small fib, in order to get a job at a soon-to-open restaurant on the West coast. After landing the job, and working his way up, he eventually left the restaurant industry to cook for a housing program in Vancouver’s downtown east side, where he remained, until he and his husband decided to move to Manitoba. After a brief “retirement” from the food industry, to start and finish a BA and then a Masters in Linguistics, he came back to his first love, food, to find a career in food security at Food Matters Manitoba. We talk about his experiences working with youth in Winnipeg through Food Matters Manitoba, and some barriers youth face when accessing food. We speak about the gendering that goes on in different food realms, and how these impact queer and trans youth particularly. We also look at the food landscape in Winnipeg and discuss some of the challenges and creative ways he teaches youth to overcome these barriers. You can find the Dan Jurafsky lecture he was referring to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_tceXVOcls Want to learn more about Owen? Contact him here: owenrcampbell@gmail.com or check out some of his work with Food Matters Manitoba here:  http://www.foodmattersmanitoba.ca/2018/07/a-queer-cook-off/

In 1897, confused physician Edward J. Goodwin submitted a bill to the Indiana General Assembly declaring that he'd squared the circle -- a mathematical feat that was known to be impossible. In today's show we'll examine the Indiana pi bill, its colorful and eccentric sponsor, and its celebrated course through a bewildered legislature and into mathematical history. We'll also marvel at the confusion wrought by turkeys and puzzle over a perplexing baseball game. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Sources for our feature on the Indiana pi bill: Edward J. Goodwin, "Quadrature of the Circle," American Mathematical Monthly 1:7 (July 1894), 246–248. Text of the bill. Underwood Dudley, "Legislating Pi," Math Horizons 6:3 (February 1999), 10-13. Will E. Edington, “House Bill No. 246, Indiana State Legislature, 1897,” Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 45, 206-210. Arthur E. Hallerberg, "House Bill No. 246 Revisited," Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 84 (1974), 374–399. Arthur E. Hallerberg, "Indiana's Squared Circle," Mathematics Magazine 50:3 (May 1977), 136–140. David Singmaster, "The Legal Values of Pi," Mathematical Intelligencer 7:2 (1985), 69–72. Listener mail: Zach Goldhammer, "Why Americans Call Turkey 'Turkey,'" Atlantic, Nov. 26, 2014. Dan Jurafsky, "Turkey," The Language of Food, Nov. 23, 2010 (accessed April 21, 2016). Accidental acrostics from Julian Bravo: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:STASIS starts at line 7261 (“Says I to myself” in Chapter XXVI). Frankenstein:CASSIA starts at line 443 (“Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent” in Letter 4).MIGHTY starts at line 7089 (“Margaret, what comment can I make” in Chapter 24). Moby Dick:BAIT starts at line 12904 (“But as you come nearer to this great head” in Chapter 75). (Note that this includes a footnote.) The raw output of Julian's program is here; he warns that it may contain some false positives. At the paragraph level (that is, the initial letters of successive paragraphs), Daniel Dunn found these acrostics (numbers refer to paragraphs): The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: SEMEMES (1110) Emma: INHIBIT (2337) King James Bible: TAIWAN (12186) Huckleberry Finn: STASIS (1477) Critique of Pure Reason: SWIFTS (863) Anna Karenina: TWIST (3355) At the word level (the initial letters of successive words), Daniel found these (numbers refer to the position in a book's overall word count -- I've included links to the two I mentioned on the show): Les Miserables: DASHPOTS (454934) Critique of Pure Reason: TRADITOR (103485) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: ISATINES (373818) Through the Looking Glass: ASTASIAS (3736) War and Peace: PIRANHAS (507464) (Book Fifteen, Chapter 1, paragraph 19: "'... put it right.' And now he again seemed ...") King James Bible: MOHAMAD (747496) (Galatians 6:11b-12a, "... mine own hand. As many as desire ...") The Great Gatsby: ISLAMIC (5712) Huckleberry Finn: ALFALFA (62782) Little Women: CATFISH (20624) From Vadas Gintautas: Here is the complete list of accidental acrostics of English words of 8 letters or more, found by taking the first letter in successive paragraphs: TABITHAS in George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings by René Doumic BASSISTS in The Pilot and his Wife by Jonas Lie ATACAMAS in Minor Poems of Michael Drayton MAINTAIN in The Stamps of Canada by Bertram W.H. Poole BATHMATS in Fifty Years of Public Service by Shelby M. Cullom ASSESSES in An Alphabetical List of Books Contained in Bohn's Libraries LATTICES in History of the Buccaneers of America by James Burney ASSESSES in Old English Chronicles by J. A. Giles BASSISTS in Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other Stories by Barnes CATACOMB in Cyrano De Bergerac PONTIANAK in English Economic History: Select Documents by Brown, Tawney, and Bland STATIONS in Haunted Places in England by Elliott O'Donnell TRISTANS in Revolutionary Reader by Sophie Lee Foster ALLIANCE in Latter-Day Sweethearts by Mrs. Burton Harrison TAHITIAN in Lothair by Benjamin Disraeli Vadas' full list of accidental acrostics in the King James Bible (first letter of each verse) for words of at least five letters: ASAMA in The Second Book of the Kings 16:21TRAIL in The Book of Psalms 80:13AMATI in The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel 3:9STABS in The Acts of the Apostles 23:18ATTAR in The Book of Nehemiah 13:10FLOSS in The Gospel According to Saint Luke 14:28SANTA in The First Book of the Chronicles 16:37WATTS in Hosea 7:13BAATH in The Acts of the Apostles 15:38ASSAM in The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel 12:8CHAFF in The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans 4:9FIFTH in The Book of Psalms 61:3SAABS in The Third Book of the Kings 12:19SATAN in The Book of Esther 8:14TANGS in Zephaniah 1:15STOAT in The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah 16:20IGLOO in The Proverbs 31:4TEETH in Hosea 11:11RAILS in The Book of Psalms 80:14STATS in The First Book of the Kings 26:7HALON in The Fourth Book of the Kings 19:12TATTY in The Gospel According to Saint John 7:30DIANA in The Second Book of the Kings 5:4ABAFT in The Third Book of Moses: Called Leviticus 25:39BAHIA in The Book of Daniel 7:26TRAILS in The Book of Psalms 80:13FIFTHS in The Book of Psalms 61:3BATAAN in The First Book of Moses: Called Genesis 25:6DIANAS in The Second Book of the Kings 5:4BATAANS in The Second Book of the Chronicles 26:16 Vadas' full list of accidental acrostics (words of at least eight letters) found by text-wrapping the Project Gutenberg top 100 books (for the last 30 days) to line lengths from 40 to 95 characters (line length / word found): Ulysses58 / SCOFFLAW Great Expectations75 / HIGHTAIL Dracula58 / PONTIACS Emma52 / BRAINWASH War and Peace43 / MISCASTS The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian Erotic Novel by Anonymous42 / FEEBLEST77 / PARAPETS Steam, Its Generation and Use by Babcock & Wilcox Company52 / PRACTISE The Count of Monte Cristo46 / PLUTARCH The Republic57 / STEPSONS A Study in Scarlet61 / SHORTISH The Essays of Montaigne73 / DISTANCE Crime and Punishment49 / THORACES Complete Works--William Shakespeare42 / HATCHWAY58 / RESTARTS91 / SHEPPARD The Time Machine59 / ATHLETIC Democracy in America, VI89 / TEARIEST The King James Bible41 / ATTACKING56 / STATUSES61 / CATBOATS69 / ASTRAKHAN85 / SARATOVS Anna Karenina46 / TSITSIHAR74 / TRAILING David Copperfield48 / COMPACTS58 / SABBATHS Le Morte d'Arthur, Volume I55 / KAWABATA Vadas also points out that there's a body of academic work addressing acrostics in Milton's writings. For example, in Book 3 of Paradise Lost Satan sits among the stars looking "down with wonder" at the world: Such wonder seis'd, though after Heaven seen,The Spirit maligne, but much more envy seis'dAt sight of all this World beheld so faire.Round he surveys, and well might, where he stoodSo high above the circling CanopieOf Nights extended shade ... The initial letters of successive lines spell out STARS. Whether that's deliberate is a matter of some interesting debate. Two further articles: Mark Vaughn, "More Than Meets the Eye: Milton's Acrostics in Paradise Lost," Milton Quarterly 16:1 (March 1982), 6–8. Jane Partner, "Satanic Vision and Acrostics in Paradise Lost," Essays in Criticism 57:2 (April 2007), 129-146. And listener Charles Hargrove reminds us of a telling acrostic in California's recent political history. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Lawrence Miller, based on a Car Talk Puzzler credited to Willie Myers. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

This week on A Way with Words: The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What's the best way to use a thesaurus? DON'T -- unless, that is, you already know the definition of the word in question. From careless plagiarists to a former president, a look at the embarrassing results when people try using a big word they don't quite understand. Plus, the story behind "Hell's Bells," and what your clothes look like if they're "swarpy." Also, wake vs. awaken, this weekend vs. next weekend, rat-finking, balderdash, Hell's bells!, and widdershins.FULL DETAILSWhatever Roget's Thesaurus may have you believe, sinister buttocks is not a synonym for "left behind." But a growing number of students are blindly using the thesaurus, or Rogeting, trying mask plagiarism. And it's not working.Next Thursday could mean this coming Thursday or the Thursday after. And despite the push to make oxt weekend a term for the weekend after next, even grammarians haven't settled on what next refers to, so it's always important to clarify with the person you're talking to.Among Grant's candidates for his 2014 Words of the Year list are the phrases I can't even and Can you not. The origin of the exclamation Balderdash!, meaning "nonsense," isn't entirely known. It is clear, however, that back in the 17th century balderdash could refer to a frothy mix of liquids, such as beer and buttermilk, or brandy and ale, and later to a jumbled mix of words.The Irish writer Roddy Doyle has some good advice about using a thesaurus: "Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort."Our quiz guy John Chaneski is back with a game of wedding puns. For example, if Ella Fitzgerald married Darth Vader, she'd be, well, a kind of shoe, or something that might convey you to the top floor of a building. Hell's Bells!, an exclamation along the lines of darn!, is likely just variation of hellfire, and reinforced by its rhyme.Back when George W. Bush was a student at a New England prep school, he took to the thesaurus to impress a teacher, and wound up using a synonym for the wrong meaning tear. Hence, the telltale phrase lacerates falling from my eyes wound up in one of his papers. In addition to being the name of  a plastic toy from the 60's, the term rat fink was once used specifically to mean a narc or stool pigeon. Today, it's used generally to mean a despicable person. Like the boy when the calf ran over him, I had nothing to say, is an old saying describing someone who's speechless, and goes back to the mid-19th century.A caller whose wife is from eastern Kentucky says she uses the term swarpy to describe clothing that's too big, ill-fitting, and may even drag on the ground. This term probably derives from an old Scots verb "swap," meaning to "sweep" or "swing," or otherwise "move downward forcibly."Are we a proverb culture anymore? In a largely urban society, we're not likely to immediately recognize the meaning of the saying between hay and grass, meaning "weak" or "feeble."The longer the description of an item on a menu, the more expensive it'll likely be. In The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, Stanford University linguist Dan Jurafsky  shows that with each extra letter in a menu description, the price goes up about 69 cents. For a really comprehensive collection of menus, from the earliest Chinese American restaurants to old cruise ship menus, we recommend the New York Public Library's menu database.Spleeny, meaning "hypersensitive" or "hypochondriacal," is chiefly heard in New England and goes back to an old sense of the spleen affecting one's mood.The writer Clay Shirky tipped us off to a morbid bit of slang used in the dying business of print newspapers, where obituaries are referred to as subscriber countdowns.Widdershins, also spelled withershins, means "counterclockwise," and can also refer to someone or something that's off or backwards. Another word for "the opposite of widdershins," by the way, is deasil.Before you insult a man, try walking a mile in his shoes. That way, when you insult him, you're a mile away -- you have his shoes.For a good time, google wake vs. awaken. Perhaps the most vexing verb in English, the term for waking up still puzzles the experts.Ingrid Bergman once said, "a kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2015, Wayword LLC.

"Why does ""macaroon"" sound like ""macaroni""? Did ketchup really come from China? Do the adjectives on a menu predict how much your dinner will cost? Do men and women use different words in restaurant reviews? The language we use to talk about food offers surprising insights on world history, economics and psychology. Dan Jurafsky is professor of linguistics and computer science, and chair of linguistics. A 2002 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, he teaches computational linguistics—he co-wrote the popular textbook Speech and Language Processing and co-created the first massively open online course in “Natural Language Processing.” Professor Jurafsky's research focuses on the automatic extraction of meaning from speech and text in English and Chinese, with applications to the behavioral and social sciences. His most recent book is The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. Classes Without Quizzes are presented by the Stanford Alumni Association. Filmed on location at Stanford Reunion Homecoming 2014."

This week on A Way with Words: The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What's the best way to use a thesaurus? DON'T -- unless, that is, you already know the definition of the word in question. From careless plagiarists to a former president, a look at the embarrassing results when people try using a big word they don't quite understand. Plus, the story behind "Hell's Bells," and what your clothes look like if they're "swarpy." Also, wake vs. awaken, this weekend vs. next weekend, rat-finking, balderdash, Hell's bells!, and widdershins.FULL DETAILSWhatever Roget's Thesaurus may have you believe, sinister buttocks is not a synonym for "left behind." But a growing number of students are blindly using the thesaurus, or Rogeting, trying mask plagiarism. And it's not working.Next Thursday could mean this coming Thursday or the Thursday after. And despite the push to make oxt weekend a term for the weekend after next, even grammarians haven't settled on what next refers to, so it's always important to clarify with the person you're talking to.Among Grant's candidates for his 2014 Words of the Year list are the phrases I can't even and Can you not. The origin of the exclamation Balderdash!, meaning "nonsense," isn't entirely known. It is clear, however, that back in the 17th century balderdash could refer to a frothy mix of liquids, such as beer and buttermilk, or brandy and ale, and later to a jumbled mix of words.The Irish writer Roddy Doyle has some good advice about using a thesaurus: "Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort."Our quiz guy John Chaneski is back with a game of wedding puns. For example, if Ella Fitzgerald married Darth Vader, she'd be, well, a kind of shoe, or something that might convey you to the top floor of a building. Hell's Bells!, an exclamation along the lines of darn!, is likely just variation of hellfire, and reinforced by its rhyme.Back when George W. Bush was a student at a New England prep school, he took to the thesaurus to impress a teacher, and wound up using a synonym for the wrong meaning tear. Hence, the telltale phrase lacerates falling from my eyes wound up in one of his papers. In addition to being the name of  a plastic toy from the 60's, the term rat fink was once used specifically to mean a narc or stool pigeon. Today, it's used generally to mean a despicable person. Like the boy when the calf ran over him, I had nothing to say, is an old saying describing someone who's speechless, and goes back to the mid-19th century.A caller whose wife is from eastern Kentucky says she uses the term swarpy to describe clothing that's too big, ill-fitting, and may even drag on the ground. This term probably derives from an old Scots verb "swap," meaning to "sweep" or "swing," or otherwise "move downward forcibly."Are we a proverb culture anymore? In a largely urban society, we're not likely to immediately recognize the meaning of the saying between hay and grass, meaning "weak" or "feeble."The longer the description of an item on a menu, the more expensive it'll likely be. In The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, Stanford University linguist Dan Jurafsky  shows that with each extra letter in a menu description, the price goes up about 69 cents. For a really comprehensive collection of menus, from the earliest Chinese American restaurants to old cruise ship menus, we recommend the New York Public Library's menu database.Spleeny, meaning "hypersensitive" or "hypochondriacal," is chiefly heard in New England and goes back to an old sense of the spleen affecting one's mood.The writer Clay Shirky tipped us off to a morbid bit of slang used in the dying business of print newspapers, where obituaries are referred to as subscriber countdowns.Widdershins, also spelled withershins, means "counterclockwise," and can also refer to someone or something that's off or backwards. Another word for "the opposite of widdershins," by the way, is deasil.Before you insult a man, try walking a mile in his shoes. That way, when you insult him, you're a mile away -- you have his shoes.For a good time, google wake vs. awaken. Perhaps the most vexing verb in English, the term for waking up still puzzles the experts.Ingrid Bergman once said, "a kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.....Support for A Way with Words comes from The Ken Blanchard Companies, celebrating 35 years of making a leadership difference with Situational Leadership II, the leadership model designed to boost effectiveness, impact, and employee engagement. More about how Blanchard can help your executives and organizational leaders at kenblanchard.com/leadership.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2014, Wayword LLC.

Few things ignite all of our senses to the degree that food does.  Once simply a form of sustenance, food today, in restaurants or in markets, represents status, sexuality, politics, and education. Where all of this comes together, is not just in taste, or smell, or texture, but in the language that is used by purveyors of food, and the language that we all use, in talking about food. Stanford linguistics Professor and MacArther Fellow, Dan Jurafsky gives us a menu to interpret this in The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. My conversation with Dan Jurafsky:

In a recent article for The New Republic, Tom A. Peter explains why he considers war reporting no longer worth the risk. On The Gist, we ask him and his war correspondent peer Carmen Gentile to discuss how they decide when it’s worth risking everything for today’s news consumer. Plus, we explore The Language of Food with Dan Jurafsky. For the Speil, Mike’s hacked the news with a little boy-yoy-yoing. Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices