Fry's Planet Word is a documentary series about language. Written and presented by Stephen Fry, five hour-long episodes were first broadcast in September and October 2011 on BBC Two and BBC HD. The series was produced and directed by John-Paul Davidson who worked with Fry on two other documentaries: Stephen Fry In America (2008) and Last Chance to See (2009). There is a book to accompany the series published by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Group.
Focusing on the origins of language with topics covered including:
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and communication between primatesThe Turkana languageThe FOXP2 gene and its effect on languageBrain patterns from an MRI scan while talkingVictor of Aveyron, feral children, and language acquisition (discussion with psycholinguist Steven Pinker)The wug test by Jean Berko GleasonThe Klingon language and how d'Armond Speers taught it as the first language to his sonSign languageThe Tower of BabelPhilology, the Proto-Indo-European language, and Grimm's lawWorking languages and official languages of the United NationsFocusing on how one identifies through language
Regional accents of English through Yorkshire and Newcastle upon Tyne (discussion with poet Ian McMillan)MultilingualismJewish humour and the Yiddish language (Discussion with comedians Ari Teman and Stewie Stone at The Friar's Club)Language death and globalisationIrish language and the Connacht Irish dialect on Ros na RúnBasque language and cuisineThe loss of the Occitan language and its Provençal dialectThe Académie française and inventing new French wordsThe Maghreb French dialect's effect on standard FrenchIsrael and the revival of the Hebrew language as a modern language (discussion with linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann)Kenya's Turkana people and the use of English, Swahili, and Turkana"Uses and Abuses"
The evolution of slang and profanity
Common sources of obscenities in the Turkana and English languages"Fuck", Tourette syndrome, and coprolaliaSwearing and the basal gangliaBrian Blessed, the Stroop effect, and the hypoalgesic effect of swearingThe Thick of It and Armando IannucciThe ban of Lady Chatterley's LoverStephen K. Amos and racial and sexual epithetsEuphemisms and weasel wordsOmid Djalili and the Persian politeness of taarofEuphemism and dysphemism in the hospitalPolari in Round the HorneTeenagers and slang at Berkeley High SchoolHip hop and popular media on the growth of languageEl Général and the Tunisian revolutionThe history of written language, from the earliest writing to blogging and tweeting
The Akha people of Thailand who have no written languageCuneiform, the history of bureaucracy, and the Epic of GilgameshEgyptian hieroglyphs and the Rosetta StoneClassical Greece, Homer, the Phoenicians, and the alphabetJerusalem, the Western Wall, and the resilience of Judaism by means of the Hebrew alphabetThe Dome of the Rock and the spread of the Arabic script with IslamThe Dead Sea Scrolls and the oldest record of the Ten CommandmentsPrinting and its roots in ChinaThe complexities of Written Chinese with David Tang and Johnson ChangThe development of pinyin during the Cultural RevolutionTypography, the development of the book, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the standardisation of the English languageThe democratisation of reading, the Age of Enlightenment, and Denis Diderot's EncyclopédieThe Bodleian Library and the digitisation of informationJimmy Wales and the Wikipedia projectSocial media and the Arab SpringBelle de Jour and the lure of bloggingHanif Kureishi and the evolution of the book, Robert Coover and electronic literature, and the researchers at the MIT Media Lab"The Power and the Glory"
The influence of storytelling and literature on language
The Turkana people and their rivalry with the Toposa peoplePlot with William Goldman and his Marathon ManHomer's Odyssey and IliadJames Joyce's Ulysses with David NorrisJ. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and the works of Stephen King with Peter JacksonWilliam Shakespeare and the emphasis on characterHamlet with Simon Russell Beale, David Tennant, Brian Blessed, and Mark RylanceShakespeare in French with Guillaume Gallienne of the Comédie-Française and in Mandarin Chinese with David Tang and Johnson ChangP. G. Wodehouse with Robert McCrumGeorge Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, its Newspeak, and business speak with Ian HislopW. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues", Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Coldplay's "Fix You" with Richard CurtisBob Dylan's music with Christopher RicksIn Australia, this programme was shown on ABC1 at 9:30pm on Sundays from 11 March 2012.
