During the first podcast Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "welcomed" Iranian expats by using crude expressions such as "the bogeyman snatched the boob". The people found this shocking not because of the vulgarity but beacuase it came from a political man. Many said that it was "shameful" and were disgraced. Now seen all over the world, Mahmoud says the reason for speaking this way is because of linguistic populism, that he was trying to show that he is "a man of the people".
In the second podcast Stephen Leonard is documenting planet's northern most dialect by spending a year in Northwest Greenland. About 1,000 people live there, and not a lot of information has been documented about the Inuit group so he's going to record his discoveries about them and their language. Leonard will later publish his documentary in their own language so they can see how they live from an outsiders view. The Inuit group could also be extinct by the next 10-15 years because of immigration farther south.
Foreign films in the United States was the main topic in the third podcast. Before there were almost foreign film blockbusters but now they aren't even in box offices anymore because of the demand of foreign films has drastically decreased. Movies theaters are also having less and less foreign films, which makes it even more difficult to get people's attention. Also, thanks to Hollywood United States is the center of the world film culture so for a foreign film to be well know and popular it also has to be very entertaining.
In the last podcast Sofia Javed talks about how certain words in Urdu and Hindi are the same word and pronounced the same way but have a different meaning. For example the words yesterday and tomorrow are the same word, but you can tell their different meaning by which tense the verb is in. However, the words right and straight are also the same word, and when driving it can be very difficult to tell which is with if someone is giving you directions.
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