Radiolab: “Vanishing Words”
Original Air Date: May 5, 2010
Hosts: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
Overview
“Vanishing Words” explores the hidden, often startling information encoded in the words we use—how the way we write and speak can reveal critical information about our minds, even predicting onset of conditions like Alzheimer’s decades before symptoms appear. Hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich talk to researchers and analyze two intriguing stories: the shifting language of Agatha Christie late in her prolific career, and a groundbreaking study involving nuns whose youthful writing foretold mental decline many years later.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
The Fascination with Words and Data
- [01:38] Main Question: How closely can we get to an author’s mind through their words?
- Robert Krulwich, imagining: “Take off your shoes, you take off your socks, and you stand on the book … your whole body says, let me in.” [01:52]
- Jad Abumrad introduces idea: Not just physically, but by turning texts into data with computers. [02:02]
The Origins of Text Dissection: Concordances
- Ian Lancashire, Professor of English & computer scientist:
- Explains monks’ meticulous creation of concordances for the Bible—listing every word in context—done by hand and taking a lifetime.
- “There are 960,243 [words in the King James Bible] … They were going to list them all alphabetically, notate each time every single word was used, and the context.” [02:49]
- Now, computers can do it in under 15 seconds. [03:50]
Agatha Christie and Vanishing Vocabulary
- Lancashire’s project: Feeding Christie’s novels (spanning 50 years) into a computer to analyze word use.
- Finding:
- Early books: “Her use of language was relatively consistent and normal for the first 72 …” [05:32]
- Book 73 (“Elephants Can Remember”): Sudden, drastic rise in “indefinite words” (thing, anything, something, nothing)—these increased sixfold.
- Simultaneously, a striking drop in vocabulary diversity; 20% fewer different words used in the sample. [05:59]
- Lancashire: “That is astounding. That’s 1/5 of her vocabulary lost.” [06:03]
- The implication: These shifts may signal the onset of Alzheimer’s, well before her death, though Christie was never formally diagnosed.
Can our Own Writings Reveal Early Cognitive Decline?
- Jad’s Reflection:
- “We all write a bazillion emails a day... Does that stuff hold clues about what we’ll be like, early warning signs?” [07:19]
- Lancashire:
- “I think it’s possible it does, yes. And it’s well worth doing research about how a loss of vocabulary can be determined, let’s say, in one’s email over five or six years.” [07:34]
The Nun Study: Language as a Predictor
- Background: David Snowden’s longitudinal study of ~700 elderly nuns began in 1990 to examine aging and cognitive decline.
- Nuns were chosen for their healthy, uniform lifestyles.
- Key Discovery:
- Archivist found essays written by each nun upon entering the convent, typically at age 18 (60+ years before).
- Sergei Pakhomov (current analyst):
- Researchers analyzed for “grammatical complexity and idea density.” [11:23]
- Idea density = the amount of discrete meaning units per sentence/word.
- Example:
- Low idea density (Sister Helen): “I was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on May 24, 1913, and was baptized in St. James Church.”
- High idea density (Sister Emma): “It was about a half hour before midnight between February 28th and 29th of the leap year 1912, when I began to live and to die as the third child of my mother, whose maiden name is Hilda Hoffman and my father, Otto Schmidt.” [12:28]
- Finding: Nuns with low idea density at 18 were vastly more likely to develop dementia decades later. Researchers could predict, with 85% accuracy, whose brains would show Alzheimer’s pathology. [12:59-13:16]
Correlation vs. Causation
- Robert Krulwich expresses skepticism: “Here’s a man who … has found the ones who got sick and working backwards, found certain incidences … and says, ah, this is a cause that produces this effect.” [13:34]
- Clarification by Snowden: “These studies are demonstrating associations, right? They’re not demonstrating causality. It’s a very important distinction.” [13:56]
Limits and Questions for Modern Life
- Do these findings translate to short-form writing like Twitter or texts?
- Jad: “Would this kind of linguistic analysis actually be relevant in the age of Twitter, where everything is short and …” [14:14]
- Debate among hosts: Language may still reflect inner thought structure, but context matters.
Revisiting Agatha Christie—A Literary Farewell
- Lancashire’s interpretation:
- Christie’s later book, though regarded as a poor read, may intentionally reflect memory loss, mirroring her own struggles.
- Lancashire: “I began to see that Christie was heroic, still writing despite this handicap and her willingness to do that at an age of 81, 82 struck me as heroic in a way.” [15:52-16:10]
- Robert Krulwich, poignantly: “I understand that the muse wouldn’t quit, but the … tools all left the room.” [16:26]
Notable Quotes & Moments
-
“That is astounding. That’s 1/5 of her vocabulary lost.”
— Ian Lancashire [06:03] -
“She was losing her vocabulary, she was losing her language. I began to see that Christie was heroic, still writing despite this handicap…”
— Ian Lancashire [15:52] -
“Nuns [writing in] that journalistically very precise, low idea density sort of way... 60 years later were vastly more likely to develop dementia.”
— Jad Abumrad [12:59] -
“These studies are demonstrating associations, right? They’re not demonstrating causality.”
— David Snowden [13:56] -
“I understand that the muse wouldn’t quit, but the … tools all left the room.”
— Robert Krulwich [16:26]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [02:13] Introduction of Ian Lancashire & computerized text analysis
- [04:05] Lancashire’s analysis of Agatha Christie’s novels
- [05:32] Discovery of drastic vocabulary decline in Christie’s later years
- [06:17] Alzheimer’s implications and publishing hesitations
- [07:19] Application to modern writing (emails, correspondence)
- [08:01] The Nun Study: setup and methodology
- [11:23] Analysis of idea density in nuns’ essays
- [12:59] Predictive power of early-life writing for cognitive decline
- [13:56] Discussion of association vs. causation
- [14:40] Return to Christie: the meaning behind “Elephants Can Remember”
- [16:26] Robert Krulwich’s final reflection on artistic persistence
Tone & Style
The episode weaves curiosity, empathy, and wonder—hallmarks of Radiolab’s storytelling. There’s gentle humor in self-examination and interviews. Strikingly, it ends not in morbid fascination with decline, but with admiration for human creativity and resilience, even as words begin to vanish.
For anyone who hasn’t heard “Vanishing Words,” this episode offers a breathtaking look at how the most ordinary acts of writing reveal the hidden currents of our minds, the inevitability of decline, and the dignity with which we might face it.