Intelligence Squared presents
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words
with Sophia Smith-Galer
What do we lose when a language dies?
Roughly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world today. Over half of them are expected to vanish in the next century – along with the wealth of information they contain, the family ties they represent, and the psychological benefits they confer.
On May 11, journalist Sophia Smith Galer joins us live to explore how this mass extinction event is one of the most urgent cultural emergencies we’re facing today.
Drawing on her globe-spanning investigation, How to Kill a Language, Smith Galer will shed light on linguicide, its root causes, and what we lose when a language dies. From Ghana to Greece, Ukraine to Ecuador, her research ultimately led her back home: to Italy, where piaśintein, the Gallo-Italian language of her grandparents, is on the brink of vanishing forever.
Smith Galer will also discuss the communities bringing their languages back, from Kurdish activists in Iran to Karuk campaigners in the forests of California.
Join us live at the Kiln Theatre, and have your questions answered in the audience Q&A.
Important Information
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Ticket Prices
General Admission – £25
Premium Admission – £32
Concessions – £15
Duration
1 hour and 15 minutes (without an interval)
Dates
11 May 2026
Award-winning Journalist and Author of How To Kill a Language
Award-winning journalist, writer, speaker, and content creator, credited for pioneering short-form journalism on TikTok. She began her career reporting across the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World News and building Webby-winning BBC social media channels before joining VICE News as a senior reporter until February 2024. She produces and presents content on a range of topics including linguicide, innovation and disruption, health and technology, generational communication, gender equality, how to navigate mis-and-dis information, and the state of influencer culture and its ethics. She was awarded a British Journalism award for ‘Innovation of the Year’ in 2021, and in 2023 she became a Visiting Fellow for Brown University’s Information Futures Lab where she has developed resources for combating misinformation and misogyny in British schools. In 2024, she was named the winner of the Georgina Henry Award at the Women In Journalism awards for Digital Innovation. Her new book is How To Kill a Language.