All you need to know about the English language is to be found in the great Oxford dictionary, except the tale of the strange genius who conceived and organized it and the many unusual assistants – including a murderer and a madman – who worked with him. All of that is to be found in Simon Winchester’s book on the subject and in this extended 2003 conversation.

That is to say, the language, literature, music and spirit of the culture of the East European Jews. The key to the post-Holocaust  survival of that culture was and remains the Yiddish language. Our guest in this podcast, Jonathan Brent, is the Executive Director of YIVO, the Yiddish Research Institute which was founded in Poland in 1925 and fled the Holocaust by moving to New York in 1940. Before he came to YIVO about three years ago Jonathan was Editorial Director of Yale University Press and helped to open the Stalin Archives in Moscow. He then commissioned more than 20 books revealing the barbarism and evil of that epoch.

We’re joined by Craig Sirles, professor of English at DePaul University, to discuss the current state of English usage. Is it whom or who? Milt and I or Milt and me? And, what are some of our pet peeves?

We talk with Arthur Plotnik, author of Better than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives.