Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer
Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer 8 episodes Nov 11, 2026
Word For Word is a podcast about storytellers and the languages that shaped them. Each episode, award-winning journalist and author Sophia Smith Galer sits down with writers, artists, and creators to explore the languages they grew up with, learned, lost, and gained, and how these languages influenced their imagination and creative practice. New episodes are released weekly.
Episodes
Hollie McNish: The languages that shaped her
Poet Hollie McNish on falling for French rap, her year abroad in Guadeloupe, and the Guadeloupean Creole she learned from the pupils she taught.Award-winning poet Hollie McNish wrote her first poem aged seven: mostly rhyming insults about her family. She went on to become the first poet to record an album at Abbey Road Studios, win the Ted Hughes Award for her poetic parenting memoir Nobody Told M
Max Klymenko: the languages that shaped him
Max Klymenko, the creator of Career Ladder, on being in the first class at his school taught entirely in Ukrainian, moving to the UK at 16, and going viral in his third language.Max has four degrees, a thousand job rejections behind him and what he calls the largest non-animated English-language series in the world. He and Sophia talk about Career Ladder’s origin story (two builders seen from a bu
Rebecca Kuang: the languages that shaped her
Rebecca Kuang (R. F. Kuang) on losing Mandarin as a child in Texas, finding it again in Taipei, and the conversations she never got to have with her grandfather.The bestselling author of Babel, Yellowface and Katabasis joins Sophia mid-way through her world tour for her new novel, Taipei Story, to open Season 2 of Word For Word. They talk about learning English from Star Wars, Sunday Chinese schoo
Update on this podcast's future...
It's been almost 6 months since we finished Season 1. So - will you get a Season 2? How will you get it? Find out by giving this a listen!Join a language nerd book club and support Word For Word with a Patreon subscription here: https://patreon.com/SophiaSmithGaler?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkBuy Sophia's critica
The languages that shaped Roy Bualuan
Roy Bualuan - better known online as human1011 - grew up in Indiana with Lebanese Arabic, French and English in his life.He studied physics at Notre Dame, picked up Modern Standard Arabic as a language requirement, and emerged from that first class with a surprise: the Arabic he'd grown up with and the Arabic he was now being taught were almost entirely different languages.In this episode, Roy
The languages that shaped Zing Tsjeng
Zing Tseng - journalist, author, and co-host of BBC's Good Bad Billionaire - grew up navigating Mandarin classes in Singapore, a Cantonese-speaking home, and the glorious linguistic chaos of Singlish. In this episode, she and Sophia trace the languages that shaped her: from a teacher who told her "foreigners speak better Chinese than you do," to discovering, decades later, on a trip to her ancestr
The languages that shaped Susie Dent
Dictionary Corner's secret weapon isn't English - it's German!In this episode of Word For Word, lexicographer, broadcaster and word detective Susie Dent joins Sophia Smith Galer at Casa Italiana in Clerkenwell to talk about the languages that made her - and made her one of the most trusted voices on the English language in Britain.Come for the etymology of "muscle" (hint: squ
The languages that shaped Hind Hassan
Speaking Iraqi Arabic opened doors in the field - while her Hull accent raised eyebrows in the newsroom.In this episode of Word For Word, multi-Emmy award-winning journalist Hind Hassan joins Sophia Smith Galer to talk about how her languages have shaped her life and work.Hind reflects on growing up as an Iraqi in Hull and shares how speaking Iraqi dialect transformed her reporting on the ground -
The languages that shaped Sathnam Sanghera
Sathnam Sanghera can remember pretending to speak English on his first day at school, lest he give away that he could only speak Punjabi. Today, he’s the prolific writer behind numerous works including Empireland, Empireworld, The Boy With The Top Knot and Marriage Material.In this episode of Word For Word, journalist Sophia Smith Galer speaks with the author and broadcaster about how language, em
The languages that shaped Maryam Moshiri
Many know BBC News presenter Maryam Moshiri for her ability to steer BBC news programmes through light and shade, helping us understand the world through its darkest moments as well as find a bit of relief and humour. But did you know she's also trilingual?In this episode of Word for Word, journalist Sophia Smith Galer talks to Maryam Moshiri about the languages that shaped her life - from spe
The languages that shaped Len Pennie
Len Pennie doesn’t feel entirely at home in English or in Scots. So she writes in both. In this episode of Word For Word, poet and broadcaster Len Pennie joins journalist Sophia Smith Galer to explore what it means to live between languages. From growing up immersed in Scots without stigma, to discovering the shame and suppression surrounding, Len reflects on how a language can be celebrated on st
Trailer: Word For Word with Sophia Smith Galer
Word For Word is a podcast about storytellers and the languages that made them.There'll be new interviews every week, hosted by award-winning journalist, author and content creator, Sophia Smith Galer.Season 1 starts very soon!!!CreditsThis is a Viralect original production, filmed by Omar Mehtab.Seren Jones is our executive producer. Sophia Smith Galer is the founder of Viralect and creator o
