How Do We Turn Squiggles Into Meaning? with Danny Bate

How can we use 26 symbols to capture everything in the cosmos of human experience? Where do our written symbols in English come from? What ancient ghosts are still hiding inside the letters you read every day? Does learning to read reconfigure the circuitry of your brain? Does dyslexia reveal how unnatural reading really is? And could AI freeze the evolution of language for the first time in history? Today we dive into the alphabet with linguist Danny Bate, who’s just written a book on the surprising history of every letter.

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Danny Bate. Why Q needs U.

Derrick de Kerckhove, Charles J. Lumsden. The Alphabet and the Brain: The Lateralization of Writing.

De Kerckhove D. Alphabetic literacy and brain processes. In Indigenous Cognition: Functioning in Cultural Context 1988 (pp. 85-103). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

David Eagleman. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

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