5 ms·

This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asl

This is going to sound like damning with faint praise, but it's not meant that way -- this is absolutely my favorite thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep. His voice is quite soothing, and it's interesting enough to constantly hold your attention, while not being _so_ interesting that it keeps you awake, and while it's loosely organized chronologically on an episode-by-episode basis, within each episode it's sort of arranged thematically, so you can dip in and out of consciousness and not be confused as to what he's talking about, and you can pick it up the next night at some random spot and not really feel like you missed much. It also has long stretches where he's just sort of listing off words and etymologies, which are the kinds of trivial facts I love, but I think my brain also takes as a signal to turn off.

devilbunny 2y ago
I used to listen to the podcast when it was still young. His original goal was to do it in maybe 100 episodes or so. After he started making money from Patreon, it slowed to a crawl in terms of progressing through the history of the language. Eventually, I gave up. I’m not one of his backers, so he doesn’t owe me anything, but I would have preferred it if he did something more like Dan Carlin (there are plenty of quibbles about his historiography, but you have to admit he’s very good at storytelling), doing deep dives on various subjects instead of beating Middle and early Modern English to death. Yes, they were very important times in the language, where the mostly-comprehensible Middle English turned into the entirely-comprehensible (if you have footnotes for words whose meaning has changed and cultural references that no longer apply) early Modern English, but the language hasn’t been static since 1500.
- empath75 2y ago
  I think he's just being comprehensive.

devilbunny 2y ago

I used to listen to the podcast when it was still young. His original goal was to do it in maybe 100 episodes or so. After he started making money from Patreon, it slowed to a crawl in terms of progressing through the history of the language. Eventually, I gave up. I’m not one of his backers, so he doesn’t owe me anything, but I would have preferred it if he did something more like Dan Carlin (there are plenty of quibbles about his historiography, but you have to admit he’s very good at storytelling), doing deep dives on various subjects instead of beating Middle and early Modern English to death. Yes, they were very important times in the language, where the mostly-comprehensible Middle English turned into the entirely-comprehensible (if you have footnotes for words whose meaning has changed and cultural references that no longer apply) early Modern English, but the language hasn’t been static since 1500.

empath75 2y ago
I think he's just being comprehensive.