Michael Erard Ph.D.

Michael Erard, Ph.D. has graduate degrees in linguistics and rhetoric from the University of Texas at Austin. He's written about language, linguists, and linguistics for Science, Slate, Wired, The Atlantic, The New York Times, New Scientist, and many other publications. His first book, Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean (Pantheon, 2007) is a natural history of things we wish we didn't say (but do), as well as a look at what happens in our culture when people do (and wish they didn't). His second book, Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners (Free Press, 2012) is about historical polyglots, contemporary language superlearners, and the upper limits of the ability to speak, learn, and use languages. Michael received the Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters to work onBabel No More. He is a senior researcher at the FrameWorks Institute.