# BN+: Valerie Fridland, "Why We Talk Funny" Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/c-span-bookshelf-6416723/bn-valerie-fridland-why-we-talk-funny Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/c-span-bookshelf-6416723/bn-valerie-fridland-why-we-talk-funny.md Podcast: [C-SPAN Bookshelf](https://stenobird.com/podcast/c-span-bookshelf-6416723) Published: 2026-07-14T08:30:00+00:00 Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CSPAN8439128807.mp3 Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CSPAN8439128807.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/c-span-bookshelf-6416723/episodes/bn-valerie-fridland-why-we-talk-funny Duration seconds: 4408 ## Resource After 47 years of C-SPAN televising the Congress of United States, we feel there is no better place to hear accents and dialects of the American people 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In her book "Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents," Valerie Fridland promises to unlock "the secrets of what linguistic science, psychology and history tell us about the evolution of human speech." Valerie Fridland teaches in the Great Courses series at the University of Nevada, Reno. She did her undergraduate work at Georgetown in 1990 and received her PhD from Michigan State in 1998. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/c-span-bookshelf-6416723/episodes/bn-valerie-fridland-why-we-talk-funny/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/c-span-bookshelf-6416723/bn-valerie-fridland-why-we-talk-funny.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.