Science Diction is a bite-sized podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for our newsletter. Science has given us more than data.

This is a part of Science Diction, a series digging into the scientific origin stories behind our words and language. Find all our stories and previous issues here. Words like these weren’t just ...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The alphabet has only 26 letters. With these 26 magic symbols, however, millions of words are written every day. IRA FLATOW, HOST: That music means it's time for Howard Markel to ...

THE word “meme” wasn’t created to describe things that spread all over the internet. Rather, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term when he was hunting for an idea-focused counterpart ...

The number of people in the U.S. confirmed to be infected with the pandemic-level respiratory coronavirus continues to rise, even as testing and diagnosis capacity continues to lag behind other ...

Cobalt has been hoodwinking people since the day it was pried from the earth. Named after a pesky spirit from German folklore, trickery is embedded in its name. In 1940s Netherlands, cobalt lived up ...

The Rise Of The Myers-Briggs, Chapter 3: What Is It Good For? August 31, 2021 • When Isabel Briggs Myers imagined that her homegrown personality test would change the world, she couldn't have pictured ...