On shortly

“The creators picked the wrong woman here” too bloody right! It’s me vs AI slop this Sunday on Radio 4

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

Really enjoying this podcast (halfway through it) - glad to see Len's learning about Scotland while being a Scot is vastly different to my almost non-existent, as you can read in the introduction of my SCOTLAND THE STRANGE.

Up there with one of my favourite things I’ve ever made. Episode 1 of Word For Word is here, and it’s with the inimitable poet Len Pennie. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnyl...

kind of incredible Radio 3 isn't working with Lebrecht any more after this week's email when he wrote this in 2021 - what an awful, misogynistic piece of writing. Of course she wouldn't want an interview with him!? thecritic.co.uk/issues/novem...

people saying journalists have to be hot to tiktok: I got 22k new followers across platforms over the last 2 months with a pretty grisly eye infection People actually follow you - *gasp* - because they like your work

Turns out (says @jburnmurdoch.ft.com) it's not so much an oversupply of graduates in the UK (the same would be true of other similar countries but it's not) as an undersupply of the kind of jobs that a better-performing, more productive economy would supply.

They say to never meet your heroes but one of mine interviewed me for my upcoming book on language loss, How To Kill A Language, on today’s Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4. It was wonderful. Michael Rosen told me he translates a line of Yiddish a day to keep it going & growing ☺️

I was just on Nick Ferrari's LBC show, having been asked to comment on Sir Keir Starmer's TikTok. If you look at today's, it's light-hearted, fairly harmless, by no means his cringiest work but it's enough to get LBC on the phone to me! 1/

psssst….a little bird told me this is the absolute cheapest way to get my book that’s out in May. Thank you @waterstones.bsky.social!

boring people: why make videos? me:

↕️ Language may not be so hierarchical after all: A new study challenges 70 years of linguistic theory 🐶 Some dogs learn words like children ☠️ “How to kill a language”: A new book by Sophia Smith Galer 📜 The deep roots of writing: Was writing invented for accounting and trade, or religion?

Political journalists who want to start making Reels and TikToks! Welcome. I've spent the last few years making tools + training for reporters *just like yourself*, all of which are very cheap and you can do wherever, whenever:

They’ll ban teens from social media and realise they forgot to fund what young people always deserved anyway: third spaces, well funded community services, high quality media education…

NEW article by me! We can now visualize pathogens down to atoms; design vaccines in weeks; manufacture them in microbial factories; engineer them more precise than ever before. We're living through a golden age of vaccine development, but only if we continue to invest in them.

Me in the @theguardian.com today on the Grok clustermusk www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Champion of champions Durham! We won 2 years in a row. What an honour to play with such masterful quizzers. We’ve all become great mates and I’m so grateful for the opportunity.

Tonight, 20:30, BBC Two - Durham are back to DEFEND THE CROWN 👑 in the Xmas University Challenge final! It’s us vs the lethal brain boxes of Keble. Cross all your fingers and toes for us. Here’s our band photo.

tonight!!!! (We made it to the semis)

These are bad times for the BBC: Trump is suing, its leaders have resigned, GB News snaps at its heels. In our winter issue, @aiannucci.bsky.social, @lewisgoodall.com, @sophiasgaler.bsky.social and others suggest how it could change.

Prospect asked me how I’d futureproof the BBC…

The BBC faces threats from inside and out. We asked a panel of past and present BBC voices, including @sophiasgaler.bsky.social, @aiannucci.bsky.social and @lewisgoodall.com, how it must change to survive. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

@mrjamesob.bsky.social I will happily come on air and rhapsodise about languages!!! speak 4 and I write about language diversity & loss

Many miles, years and languages made How To Kill A Language come together. I am so happy to finally share the book covers with you this week for the UK and US. This is getting real!

Stephen Flynn criticises Nigel Farage from attacking children who speak more than one language #BBCQT "A man who aspires to be PM of these isle would pick a fight with school kids, would hold school kids up as an object to beat, absolutely repulses me and it should repulse all of you as well"

A pleasure to give a Nieman Lab prediction for the first time. "As explainer journalism in vertical video formats becomes increasingly normalized, many will learn for the first time that high view counts don’t translate to high conversion in other ways…”

"As explainer journalism in vertical video formats becomes increasingly normalized, many will learn for the first time that high view counts don’t translate to high conversion in other ways." www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/news... by @sophiasgaler.bsky.social

Know a journalist with a powerful idea for a story that would lead to social change? Tell them they have one month left to apply for a Tenacious Journalist Award of £10k! 💪 More details: www.tenaciousawards.org/about-the-jo... #journalism ✒️ 📲 📷 🗞️

I run a monthly Language Bar in Clerkenwell where you can speak Italian all night and drink £3 glasses of wine. What’s not to love? Next one is tomorrow: www.eventbrite.com/e/italian-la...

I’m back from my honeymoon in Japan - please behold my new food discoveries

Wedding cake ❌ Oyster cake ✅ :)

not to blow my own trumpet too much - sorry - but someone needs to take notice of how many women journalists are using Sophiana. They’re not only lots of my users but they’re the users specifically *overperforming* with Sophiana. I am certain more women innovators = more women adopters!!!

Yes, we have lots of detail about which groups are getting news from various social media sites! www.pewresearch.org/journalism/f...

Can highly recommend listening to this. Top university sector voices like @viviennestern.bsky.social are very clear and articulate about the local economic role universities play.

My brand new Radio 4 series Universities Challenged - the crisis facing our higher education sector - is on RIGHT NOW!!!

My brand news Radio 4 series Universities Challenged - the crisis facing our higher education sector - is on RIGHT NOW!!!

the AI bio losers have come for me - as one follower put it “why do you look like a Democrat candidate” 🙃 Amazon: you’re a joke!!

I'm so happy to announce the winners of the Sophiana x Women in Journalism fellowship. I promised I’d pay my Georgina Henry Award win forward - here we go! Vertical video training & Sophiana access for 6 months for my 14 fellows :)

The Guardian asked me to write about multilingualism in the UK. You don’t need to ask me twice! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If your pupils get a grade lower in MFL than their other subjects, that is in line with how the grades are handed out. If your pupils got the same grade as in other subjects, that means someone else's pupils are getting 2 grades lower. whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2025/08/unfa...

yuck - I guess it was inevitable but the deepfake ghouls have finally come for me. There are so many fake accounts on TikTok pretending to me - but pretty sure this is the first to use AI in this way.

A theme emerging from #LingComm25 is "niche-blending" aka combining linguistics with something else to stand out more Started with Sophia Smith Galer applied to linguistics + food, picked up by @languageatplay.de re linguistics + videogames

I'm a huge fan of @molly.wiki. The work she does is inspiring - and this is a great interview. www.niemanlab.org/2025/08/inde...

Bet you’ve never seen an artichoke flower before! Here it is, growing in my garden, having defied the English frost after planting it last year.

Coucou les gars 😎 French Sophiana is here!

@sophiasgaler.bsky.social - first time trying out Sophiana & found it a great, simplistic tool to use. Especially for journalists, it opens up creative doorways which have previously only been ajar; there is now no excuse for trad journalists to abstain from content creation 👍

I have a million thoughts about Dave leaving WAPO and will write something up tomorrow Till then:

Dear Jeff Bezos …

"I'll never forget the day when an editor at the BBC told a 25-year-old me that journalists shouldn’t be on TikTok because 'there’s so much misinformation on there.'” I wrote about my career, and the wild attitudes I’ve encountered along the way, for IJNet. ijnet.org/en/story/i-b...