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Wodcast

Wodcast

By: Into the Words
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Summary
 Every conversation begins with a single word. Wodcast (Word Of the Day, cast) is a fortnightly video podcast hosted by Benjamin Aston and Mabel Evans. Each episode opens with a word of the day, and every guest brings a word of their own. We approach the word slowly until it shows us how much it holds; about love, grief, freedom, belonging, faith, joy, and what it means to be human. Our guests are writers, poets, musicians, scientists and activists. Season one welcomed Stephen Fry, Sir Tim Rice, Elif Shafak, Waad Al-Kateab, Nick Mulvey, Hak Baker, David Larbi, Professor David Nutt and Remi Olajoyegbe. New episodes every other Wednesday. Between episodes, join us on Substack for word reflections, writing prompts and Wodcast Live events: wodcast.substack.com Unearthing Wisdom through Words.© 2026 Into the Words Ltd Art Language Learning Social Sciences
Episodes
  • E10 - Professor Sarah Ogilvie | The Secret Life of Words

    E10 - Professor Sarah Ogilvie | The Secret Life of Words
    4 Nov 2026
    Who really wrote the dictionary? And what happens to a word when the last person who speaks it is gone? We open season two with Sarah Ogilvie, Professor of Language and Lexicography at the University of Oxford, former editor on the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The Dictionary People. Sarah gave our season one guests their word of the season, human, so we begin with her reflections on their answers. She also explains why she chose that word for this moment: to ask what makes us human now that a machine is learning to talk. Her word of the day is Throughleeves Vita Sackville-West’s family word for small, intense joys. Think of the first cold glass of water when you’re parched, waking to snow, or a ball struck clean on the sweet spot. From there we get into family words, the private vocabulary that turns a household into a world of its own. Then we go down into the basement of Oxford University Press. Two million handwritten slips are stored there, and in one box Sarah found James Murray’s 150-year-old address book. It led her to the people who built the OED: around 3,000 volunteers, many of them self-taught, about one in six of them women, and some of them living in asylums. Among them was Joseph Wright, who could not read at fifteen and became a professor of comparative linguistics at Oxford. We also explore: how words change over time, from sad (once “satisfied”) to silly (once “blessed”); how English borrows from other languages, and what it has cost them; languages that are “sleeping” rather than dead, and how communities are waking them again; why the fringes of language, slang included, are where its life is; why your tweet might one day be a word’s first recorded use in the dictionary. “A word is nothing outside of its usage,” Sarah tells us. This episode is about the people behind the words, and the words that carry us. ───── Topics include: Word of the season: human, and what AI can’t grasp Is language being diluted? Throughleeves and the joy of small things Family words and how they bind us Diachronic: how a dictionary traces the life of a word Obsolete words, and how words come back The Dictionary People: James Murray’s lost address book The outsiders, autodidacts and women of the OED Endangered and sleeping languages Language and colonialism Joseph Wright and the English Dialect Dictionary Giggle-mug, cackle-fart and aquabob Semantic shift: how words change meaning Rizz, brain rot and the life of slang Tweets in the Oxford English Dictionary Graph theory and who spreads a word ───── Thank you to our sponsor: The How To Academy podcast, whose word is transform. ➟ www.howtoacademy.com ───── More from Sarah Ogilvie: ➟ The Dictionary People: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/452077/the-dictionary-people-by-ogilvie-sarah/9781529922578 ───── More from the Wodcast: ➟ Substack: live events, word reflections and writing between episodes. https://wodcast.substack.com/ ➟ Apple Podcasts: subscribers get exclusive extra content from this conversation. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wodcast/id1896893830 ➟ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@wodcast_channel ➟ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wod.cast/ ➟ Website: https://wodcast.co.uk/ Join us at Wodcast Live in London, where words come to life in the room.
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    59 min
  • What Does It Mean to Be Human? | Season One Bonus Episode

    What Does It Mean to Be Human? | Season One Bonus Episode
    21 Oct 2026
    For our Season One bonus episode, we return to the question at the heart of so many of our conversations: what can a single word reveal about the way we live, the way we relate to one another, and the world we share? This season, we’ve explored where words come from, what they carry, and how their meanings shift through the people who use them. Now, thanks to Sarah Ogilvie, Professor of Language and Lexicography at the University of Oxford, we have our word of the season: Human. We invited each of our Season One guests to offer their own definition. What follows is a collection of reflections that move between science and feeling, instinct and free will, individual experience and our shared existence. For some, being human is to care for others as much as we care for ourselves. For others, it is to feel the full range of our emotions, to connect through language, or to recognise that we are part of a delicate ecosystem rather than separate from it. We explore the relationship between human and humane, the responsibilities we carry towards one another and the natural world, and the possibility that humanity is not simply a state we inhabit, but something we must continually aspire to. There is no single definition that captures every voice. Thank you to each of our season one guests for all their time and words: Elif Shafak, Hak Baker, Prof. David Nutt, David Larbi, Nick Mulvey, Remi Olajoyegbe, Waad Al-Kateab, Tim Rice & Stephen Fry. As we bring Season One to a close, we leave you with the same question we put to our guests: What does it mean to be human? We’d love to hear your answer. Join the Wodcast on Substack Explore the words between episodes, discover our upcoming live events, and subscribe to join us along the way. More from the Wodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wod.cast/ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wodcast/id1896893830 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@wodcast_channel Substack: https://wodcast.substack.com/ Website: https://wodcast.co.uk/ Season two coming November 4th 2026
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    11 min
  • E9 - There Is No Perfect Word | with Stephen Fry

    E9 - There Is No Perfect Word | with Stephen Fry
    7 Oct 2026
    What if words can never mean exactly what we want them to mean? Stephen Fry has spent a lifetime exploring language: writing it, performing it, studying its history, and delighting in its strange contradictions. In this final episode of Season One, we sit down with Stephen to explore what words can and perhaps cannot do. We begin with “happy”, a word Stephen traces back to hap, meaning chance or what happens. From there, the conversation opens into a much bigger question: if language is metaphorical, and words can never map perfectly onto the things they describe, how do we ever understand one another? Stephen argues that “there isn't a pure word for anything” and that we couldn't find “absolute words for absolute things.” We move through etymology, translation and the peculiarities of English; the relationship between language and thought; and the way AI is forcing us to reconsider how our own minds process ideas and language. Stephen reflects on anagnorisis, the moment of recognition or discovery in a story, and why real life rarely gives us the neat revelations that fiction does. And then we talk about writing. What makes someone a writer? Stephen's answer is refreshingly uncompromising: writing is difficult because the story comes hard. The mechanics of writing matter far less than whatever is happening underneath them, the thing that is trying to push the words out. Throughout, Stephen returns to his love of words not simply for what they mean, but for how they sound, move through the mouth and feel when spoken. Language, he says, is our treasure. And at the very end, we ask Stephen the question we ask every guest: if there were one word you would like to be remembered by, what would it be? Topics include: The strange origins of the word happy Why there are no “pure” or absolute words Why words are not mathematical Etymology and the history hidden inside language Translation and why English is so peculiar AI, language and how we understand our own minds Anagnorisis, revelation and the turning points in stories Why writing is supposed to be difficult The difference between words and stories The sensory pleasure of language Finding the word underneath all the words More from the Wodcast Instagram @wod.cast (https://www.instagram.com/wod.cast/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Apple Podcasts Listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wodcast/id1896893830?utm_source=chatgpt.com) YouTube Watch on YouTube Substack Join us on Substack (https://wodcast.substack.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Website wodcast.co.uk A note as we reach the end of Season One For a whole season, we’ve been asking what words mean, where they come from, what they carry, and how they change when we use them. And perhaps, as Stephen Fry reminds us in this final episode, there are no absolute words for absolute things. What matters is the meaning we make with them. Next week, we’ll gather for our final Season One live on Substack, taking three of Stephen’s weight-bearing words and exploring their origins, histories and the meanings they carry. Then, before we close the season, we’ll release a special bonus episode, in which we ask each of our guests to reflect on one final word: our word of the season given to us by Sarah Ogilvie. Join us on Substack for the final live and stay with us for the bonus episode that brings Season One to a close. ✨
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    1 hr and 8 min
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