Where do our modern English words come from? And what do their long histories tell us about the wider world today? On Original Public Meaning, we unearth ancient etymology and consider how our vast, rich literature—fiction, essays, science, and more—can help us savor our words today.
The phenomenon of time has always puzzled humans. In today's episode, we consider "perpetual," a word that asks us to think about the infinite expanse of time that we all rush forward into. There are some other words relating to movement or stillness—impetus, permanent, momentum, inertia—that come up in our consideration of perpetuity here. We also take a moment to recognize Anne Carson, the celebrated classicist, poet, and translator, who just last week was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her translation of a poem of Catullus considers the perpetual grief of losing a loved one.
Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords)
Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Ravel_-_Sonatine_-_1._Mod%C3%A9r%C3%A9.flac), CC BY-SA 3.0)
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4 Oct 2026
Episode 48: cyber
Our era is defined by technological development: artificial intelligence, speedy data connections, the very Internet itself. In this episode, we consider a word at the heart of modern technology: cyber. It's a word with a strange-sounding Greek ancestor (κυβερνήτης), whose widely used derivatives are hiding in plain sight in modern English. "Cyber" is also a welcome opportunity to revisit Patricia Lockwood's 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This, in which the narrator finds herself celebrated in cyberspace in ways that escape her control.
Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords)
Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Ravel_-_Sonatine_-_1._Mod%C3%A9r%C3%A9.flac), CC BY-SA 3.0)
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https://originalpublicmeaning.com (https://originalpublicmeaning.com)
27 Sept 2026
Episode 47: paradox
There are lots of ideas that seem like they shouldn't be true: that one infinity might be larger than another or that mass could somehow be equated with energy. We consider a related concept in today's episode: paradox. Today, a paradox is generally understood as a statement that is self-contradicting or even nonsensical but that nevertheless contains some element of truth. It's a word that comes to us from Greek and its own rich vocabulary surrounding belief and opinion. To close out, we consider a paradox that appears in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's a reminder that what seems at first to be a paradox might simply turn out to be wrong.
Suggest a word for a future episode or support this podcast at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wordswordswords)
Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Ravel_-_Sonatine_-_1._Mod%C3%A9r%C3%A9.flac), CC BY-SA 3.0)
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https://originalpublicmeaning.com (https://originalpublicmeaning.com)
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