Dear listeners: We would like to solicit questions from our audience for upcoming episodes. If you have questions you'd like us to tackle (either with a guest, or on our own). Please ask them here in this space. Or send us an email at: [email protected]. Happy New Year!

Wow, Zweig is really great writing! I have The World Of Yesterday to read after this

I agree. The tech is only highlighting existing issues. Publishing, reviewing, citations as proxy indicators of quality: all of this is a mess and anybody paying attention knows it. LLMs are just exploiting what is already there

Excellent piece by @mmitchell.bsky.social. AI excels at predictive tasks but is poor with generative tasks I like the predictive-generative distinction. Important but easy to lose sight of www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1...

The real breakthrough of the year -- something that matters far, far more than generative AI ever will.

Thanks Ben! Very happy to read this cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...

Thom Scott-Phillips presents a novel analysis of people's spontaneous intuitions about sentence acceptability "grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge from cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and evolutionary approaches to the mind." cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...

Why do humans have linguistic intuition? And why should you care? A short thread about my new paper in @cadlin.bsky.social This work has the most original insight I've ever had, a genuinely new idea about the nature of language cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca... 1/20

‘There is a distinction between AI safety, which is hypothetical, and AI harm, which is happening now. For one thing, much of the data on which AI models have been trained is stolen – including, as it happens, from me.’ John Lanchester in the new issue, online early. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

What if the feeling that a sentence is “odd” doesn’t come from grammar at all? An open review highlights how Why Do Humans Have Linguistic Intuition? reframes acceptability as a matter of communicative relevance, not rule checking. Read the article: doi.org/10.25189/267...

Why do humans have linguistic intuition? And why should you care? A short thread about my new paper in @cadlin.bsky.social This work has the most original insight I've ever had, a genuinely new idea about the nature of language cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca... 1/20

Like the Penrose triangle, some sentences seem possible at first glance but collapse when we try to interpret them. Thom Scott Phillips shows that linguistic intuition reacts to communicative failure, not to grammar. doi.org/10.25189/267... #langsky #linguistics

Judgements of acceptability are often treated as evidence about grammar. This paper argues they are better understood as evidence about how humans interpret signals as communication, linking construction based models to relevance driven cognition. doi.org/10.25189/267... #langsky #linguistics

I don’t understand why the conversation about demography isn’t more connected to cost of living Once upon a time a child was a net economic benefit. People had many births. Now children are a net economic cost It’s not romantic to put it in these terms, but it is relevant and true

No question, this is the most original paper I have ever written It says that something that seems plain and obvious - humans have an intuitive sense of what is and is not grammatical - and describes how this apparent common sense is actually misleading Thread coming soon!

No question, this is the most original paper I have ever written It says that something that seems plain and obvious - humans have an intuitive sense of what is and is not grammatical - and describes how this apparent common sense is actually misleading Thread coming soon!

Great episode.

Well, that’s more left liberal votes down the drain. I’m defo not voting Labour next time unless this abhorrent strategy is abandoned Probably Lib Dem instead, but we’ll see

There's a straight line from the EU's failure to invoke Art 7 over Orban's democratic backsliding in the early 2010s and the far-right crisis across Europe today. Many have correctly attributed that failure to weakness. I'd argue it was also due to arrogance.

As some here might have noticed, I 'm kinda into ;) the original Jazz Dances, their social and cultural history and impact. For those more interested on the topic, here's a substack article on Lindy Hop and its history I gotta recommend! :)

Superb. Egalitarianism is best understood in terms of process, not outcome I think this conclusion has important consequences for political philosophy, open society, etc.

This was a lot of work but I'm proud of the paper. An adversarial collaboration on a theoretical / quasi-philosophical issue: Scott-Phillips, T., Laland, K., Shuker, D., Dickins, T., & West, S. (2014). The niche construction perspective: A critical appraisal static1.squarespace.com/static/64e38...

Happy World Linguistics Day from Budapest, capital of a peculiar linguistic phenomenon--the Hungarian language!

It puzzles me that reference letters are still being demanded for all kinds of applications within university systems. It is extremely inequitable to ask applicants to solicit them. Their production is costly and there are doubts about the quality of their contribution to decision-making processes.

2. The norm of reference letters creates massive power asymmetry btw faculty and PhDs/postdocs. We want people to speak out about toxic PIs, but we tie their hands by supporting the norm of reference letters Every other sector does without such letters. We should too

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A tour-de-force on the history of the lindy hop, written with an infectious joy that appeals even to someone like me who can barely manage the Hokey Cokey.

New post: How migration and technology enabled a special form of togetherness: A multimedia origins story for the lindy hop thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/modernity-...

Just watched Traitors finale. Shocked at the lack of embarrassment expressed by David and especially Nick at the end. Like, do people not feel shame when they are incompetent??

New post: Modernity In Rhythm A multimedia origins story for the lindy hop. Migration, technology and a special form of togetherness. thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/modernity-...

Why does Sally’s apartment have so many penguins?

Adding @plosone.org to my personal blacklist of journals

For any of my followers who are interested in football: Libero is the best football podcast out there, imo. Intelligent and analytical in ways others are not

Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014... A short thread [1/5]👇

Very few Nobelists are eligible, I’m afraid. go.bsky.app/H61xswq

Does anyone know of articles, or collections of articles, worrying about what the advent of the electronic calculator (especially the pocket calculator) might mean for citizens’ arithmetic and mathematical abilities? Were such articles written? I assume so but I want to see what they said

A lot of psych is already conducted with online convenience samples & ppl are probably excited about silicon samples bc it would allow them to crank out more studies for even less 💸 How about we reconsider the idea that sciencey science involves collecting own data. www.science.org/content/arti...

Went to see One Battle After Another yesterday at Corvin Mozi in Budapest. So we saw it with Hungarian subtitles Funny detail: “Christmas Adventurer’s Club” translates into Hungarian as “Karácsonyi Kalandorok Klubja”, which has the initials KKK. So even more apt than the English name

The older I get and the more I listen to jazz, the closer my philosophy of science gets to Feyerabend. Anything goes The only thing that ever holds it all together is scientists’ individual commitment to uncovering truths

The older I get and the more I listen to jazz, the closer my philosophy of science gets to Feyerabend. Anything goes The only thing that ever holds it all together is scientists’ individual commitment to uncovering truths

I am not a golf fan at all, but once every two years it gives us a team representing Europe, which is cool And this year it highlights a stark difference between European and US cultural attitudes to wealth. I think this contrast goes much deeper than golf www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

Theoretical precision isn't everything and there's a lot of room for mistaking it for rigor in general. Regardless, a modicum of appreciation for precision is necessary to avoid the trap of abusing ambiguity to claim unearned epistemic status for methodological claims

The Poznań #Linguistics Meeting 2025 Grand Debate: "Human #Language: is it unique?" feat. Wolfgang Dressler, Magdalena Wrembel, Raymond Hickey, Nikki Ritt, @thematzing.bsky.social and @neilcohn.bsky.social

The thing with universities is that you cannot have professional staff trained to do one thing and then try and have institutions do something else entirely

Saw The Conversation last night. The 'small' film that Coppola made in between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II And its brilliant. I'm amazed it's not better known www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFgi...

Mel speaks for me. And many others too, no doubt

A perfect example. We all live in bespoke realities now The end of mass media is a transformational moment

The FT has, among the media, the best incentives to be sensitive to reality.

I poke around Reddit a fair bit, including topics on Psychology. Every other week a high schooler or undergrad is asking for a primer on the discipline. There is no, agreed-upon, singular 'go to' book. Psychology really needs an accessible history, with simple take-aways and frames-of-reference.