Lera Boroditsky: Are You A Different Person in Another Language?

Does the language you speak shape how you see the world?

Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky joins Trevor, Eugene, and Dave to explore how our native tongue can influence everything from our personalities to who we blame when things go wrong, and why bilingual people can feel different depending on which language they're speaking.

They dive into cultures that navigate using north, south, east, and west instead of left and right, the relationship between language and thought, and why we're all susceptible to the illusion that we're better at communicating than we actually are.

It’s a funny, mind-expanding conversation about how the words we use may shape far more of our world than we realize.

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00:00 – Can You Hear When Someone Learned English?
01:32 – The Soap Debate
04:00 – Trevor’s Bathroom Rules
06:00 – Why We Wash Our Hands Differently
09:00 – How We Imagine Ourselves in the Afterlife
14:00 – Why Everyone Experiences Reality Differently
19:00 – How Language Makes Humans Smarter
20:00 – Does Speaking Another Language Change Who You Are?
23:00 – Why Some Things Get Lost in Translation
30:00 – What Language Do You Dream In?
35:00 – Are We Fighting Because We Don't Understand Each Other?
43:00 – Is AI Actually Intelligent?
47:00 – The Language That Changes How You See Space
54:00 – What Other Cultures Can Teach Us About the Brain
56:00 – Are Some Languages Better at Expressing Certain Things?
1:00:00 – What Happens When a Language Has No Numbers?
1:07:00 – How Language Changes Blame
1:15:00 – Can Language Change How We Assign Responsibility?
1:19:00 – What Is Justice? Punishment vs. Forgiveness
1:24:00 – Why English Speakers Blame People More
1:28:00 – Could We Create a “Super Language”?
1:34:00 – No Language Can Capture Reality Perfectly
1:39:00 – How to Argue Without Making Things Worse
1:43:00 – Which Language Is Best for Getting Angry?
1:45:00 – Why Lera Became a Cognitive Scientist
1:47:00 – Are We All Trapped by the Languages We Speak?
1:49:00 – “Your Vocabulary Is Like Clothes in a Suitcase”