‘Algospeak’ looks at algorithms' transformative impact on how we speak on and offline

NPR's Book of the Day

Words like "rizz" and "skibidi" didn’t exist just a few years ago, but now they’re used and understood by millions of people. In his new book, Algospeak, linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic argues our language is evolving at a rapid pace. And he says this is driven in large part by social media algorithms that amplify linguistic trends. In today’s episode, Aleksic speaks with NPR’s Adrian Ma about the engagement treadmill, influencer accents and why the word "skibidi" will be out of style within the year.


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Words like "rizz" and "skibidi" didn’t exist just a few years ago, but now they’re used and understood by millions of people. In his new book, Algospeak, linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic argues our language is evolving at a rapid pace. And he says this is driven in large part by social media algorithms that amplify linguistic trends. In today’s episode, Aleksic speaks with NPR’s Adrian Ma about the engagement treadmill, influencer accents and why the word "skibidi" will be out of style within the year.


To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

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2025-08-05 8 min
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