Past Shows

Episode 5: Private Property
(aired Saturday Feb 3, repeated Tuesday Feb 6)

Companies say they own their trademarked names. Writers own the text they write. The Mapuche in Chile are going to court to prove they own their whole language. What's at stake when people claim words as their own private property?

Listen to the show: part 1 | part 2 | part 3
n.b. these sound files do not include the show's original music and sound effects.

Guests:

Chris Auclair, the corporate identity manager at Xerox.

Michael Erdel, president of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada.

Lautaro Loncon, a Mapuche lawyer and activist in Chile. His people are suing Microsoft over the corporation's decision to translate Windows into the Mapuche language.

Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Cory explains how he became a successful author while giving his work away for free.

Also, our in-house word nerd Tom Howell undergoes a rebranding at the hands of the creative team at Grip, a top advertising firm in Toronto. He emerges with a new word, one that belongs entirely to him. Tom’s quite happy to have it admired by other people, until Russell starts getting his own ideas about how to use it...

Comments from And Sometimes Y listeners:

It seems that our in-house word nerd's decision to spell "wordjolist" with a J was highly controversial...

You are spelling it wrong! I'm referring to Wordgilist, which you are spelling a different way. Since the connection between this and pugilist is not very obvious, Wordgilist should be spelled so as to emphasize this connection.

Mitchell Timin

Hi Russel, no one got Wordjolist because even though it's your word, you spelled it wrong :-)

Pugilist - Wordgilist -gulist? I think LexiKing.

Cheers!

Tana Clarke

Great word show!! Missed the tail end of Sat 3 Feb show in which you sought to "redefine" the Word Nerd. Was the final choice spelled wordujilist or wordgulist or ??? I feel privileged to have been able to hear the birth of a new word on-air.

Regards

Gord Hines
Regina, SK

Word Nerd rebranding ... still listening to the segment, but there is of course, the oldie but goodie (and "naughty" for the older generation): "Cunning Linguist".

Bonnie Robinson

WORDINISTA!!!!

Bruce Bourque

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