Can linguistics help predict a war? This past weekend, Planet Word Advisor James Pennebaker and his colleagues Ryan Boyd and Ashwini Ashokkumar posted a short article on their blog, Wordwatchers,…
Planet Word is located in the DMV — that’s the junction of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia — so we need to track what’s happening around us in…
A while ago I was invited to be a judge for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. My husband, Tom Friedman of the New York Times, had served a 9-year…
If you’ve been following the “word news” lately, you’ll know that the big issue of the last few weeks has been book banning. Wait a minute, you might be excused…
Planet Word opened officially on October 22, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. People asked me why we’d open at such a risky time health-wise and financially, but I…
Today, September 24, 2021, the DowntownDC BID celebrated the reopening of Franklin Park, the five-acre park opposite the Franklin School, where Planet Word is housed. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser oversaw…