What do we lose when a language dies?

Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. Over half of them are expected to vanish in the next century – along with the wealth of information they contain, the family ties they represent, and the psychological benefits they confer.

In May 2026 journalist Sophia Smith Galer joined us live to explore how this mass extinction event is one of the most urgent cultural emergencies we’re facing today.

Drawing on her globe-spanning investigation, How to Kill a Language, Smith Galer shed light on linguicide, its root causes, and what we lose when a language dies. From Ghana to Greece, Ukraine to Ecuador, her research ultimately led her back home: to Italy, where piaśintein, the Gallo-Italian language of her grandparents, is on the brink of vanishing forever.

Smith Galer also discussed the communities bringing their languages back, from Kurdish activists in Iran to Karuk campaigners in the forests of California

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