With the term ‘sanctuary cities’ in the news a lot in the past few weeks, our Radiotopian sibling 99% Invisible just made a two-parter tracing the origins of the modern sanctuary movement, which provides refuge for the persecuted, the vulnerable and, lately in particular, undocumented immigrants. So I wanted to dig further into the word ‘sanctuary’, which derives from the Latin ‘sanctuarium’, a sacred or private space. Its root was the Latin word ‘sanctus’, meaning ‘holy’.

That there is a religious element in ‘sanctuary’ isn’t surprising: buildings of worship provide protection and safety during the modern sanctuary movement, as they have throughout history.

Since the mid-16th century, the word ‘sanctuary’ has carried the more general sense of a place of refuge, not necessarily a religious one.

But before then, the word had a meaning that is a pretty big contrast to the modern sanctuary movement: for at least a thousand years in England, until James I abolished it in 1623, sanctuary was not for people fleeing injustice, but for people fleeing justice.

JOHN JENKINS: If you'd committed a crime, if you could get yourself to a place of religious significance - a church, a cathedral, even things like a monastery or an abbot's house or in some respects, even just land that belonged to the church or was near to it, then you were able to effectively evade justice for a period of time.

KAITLIN PREST: It's hard to describe feelings with words, with the English language that we have.
HZ: Oh good. It's not just me.
KAITLIN PREST: No! Oh my god! I've dedicated my entire life to trying to do this and I still find it close to impossible. It's hard to take a physical experience that is quite vivid and try to filter it through our brain, which is rational and intellectual, and then come out with a piece of language that can get at even the beginning of what that physical experience is like.

HZ: Stupid useless language!

KAITLIN PREST: I have had to face the question of “how do I translate this experience in writing?” I've done a million pieces about masturbating, like how do you how do you put to words what's going on here in a way that actually translates the experience? The experience of masturbating is really sexy, but even the word 'masturbate' is disgusting. It's my favorite thing to do. Least favorite thing to say.
HZ: So do you have a word that you prefer for it?
KAITLIN PREST: But that's the thing! There's no alternative that feels right to me. No.

The War on Christmas - when did that start? Upon the birth of Jesus Christ himself, when King Herod ordered all the baby boys in and around Bethlehem be killed? In 1644, when Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans passed an ordinance prohibiting Christmas celebrations?

In 1659, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans managed to get Christmas banned for 22 years for being a pagan festival?

Or, was it in 1998, in Britain’s second largest city, Birmingham? If you picked up practically any newspaper at the time, you would have read that Birmingham city council had renamed Christmas ‘Winterval’.

ERIC MOLINSKY: It was a dark and stormy night.

I know that’s the ultimate cliché, but if there ever was a story that began on a dark and stormy night, this was it. It was the middle of June 1816, when Mary Shelley started writing a novel called Frankenstein; or the New Prometheus.

But here’s the funny thing: usually we celebrate the year a work of art came out, which in this case would be 1818 because Mary Shelley spent two years writing Frankenstein. So why are we celebrating the moment of inspiration? Because June 16, 1816 – not just what was happening in Mary Shelley’s room that night, but what was happening around the world - might actually offer us a glimpse into our future.

Each of the 50 states in the USA has its own motto. The motto might be found on the state seal, or the state flag; more often than not, it might be in Latin; it might be a phrase or a single word.

If you reside in the USA and you’re thinking, yeah, I know my state motto, it’s on all the license plates: ‘Montana: Big Sky Country’, say, in, or ‘Florida: The Sunshine State’ or ‘Famous Potatoes’- get in, Idaho.

Sorry, friends, these are not the state mottos.

ROMAN MARS: Would the Heimlich Manoeuvre be something that people knew if it wasn't attached to a name like Heimlich? No, I don’t think so.

HZ: Would it have made the news in May of this year when 96-year-old Dr Henry Heimlich himself saved a woman from choking on a piece of hamburger meat by using the manoeuvre that bears his name?

RM: So I still like eponyms in these ways that they help tell an interesting story. But I totally get why and I'm not so tied to my world view or nostalgia that I cannot accept that it would be better another way.

HZ: Well, good, because there are certainly some aspects to eponyms that I don’t think you’d like, Roman.

JENNI RODD: So what we're trying to understand is the processes that are going on in your head right now as you try and understand what I'm saying.

HZ: Jenni Rodd is a cognitive psychologist at University College London, and I think she can look right through my skull to see those processes at work.

JR: If I could do that, that would make my job a whole heap easier. Unfortunately we can't look directly into your brain, so we have to come up with cunning and devious experiments that are the next best thing.

HZ: Experiments studying how people respond to language, written or spoken, sometimes while the subject undergoes an fMRI scan - functional magnetic resonance imaging - to show what the brain is up to.

JR: But what we want to understand is for each word that you hear, or possibly read, what it is that you're doing in your head to figure out what that individual word means, and then how you put those together to understand the meaning of sentences, paragraphs, conversations and so on.

"The fact is that none of the world's writing systems apart from codes are meant to be obscure. And this is crucial. Normal writing systems that we can't read just because we haven't deciphered them doesn't mean that they indecipherable; it means that we haven't done it."

There are many reasons why languages become extinct, but to pick an extreme example: a couple of thousand years hence, after the apocalypse, the only present-day language still being spoken then is, say, Portuguese. But there’s all this written material from the lost cultures that you, the post-apocalyptic survivor, want to decrypt. Technology is totally different by then - except optical magnification, which remains fundamentally similar to how it has been since humans began using it millennia before. In the ancient ruins of Fort Mason, San Francisco, you find a Rosetta Disk, successfully engineered to remain undamaged by fire and water and air and time. Around the edges of the disk, there’s writing large enough for you to read; but you see there are more small markings on it. You put the disk under a microscope. You see text you recognise in Portuguese - huh, that text next to it is similar in size and shape, you start spotting a word that appears with similar frequency as in the Portuguese, thus you deduce what that one means, and then another, you start seeing linguistic patterns and gain some insight into what characters and writing system are being used. And if you stick with the task long enough, you figure out that language.

This isn’t some futuristic dream. It has already happened. Most famously with the Rosetta Project’s namesake, the Rosetta Stone.

HZ: Where are you speaking to me from right now?
AMY: The geographic South Pole.

HZ: If it weren’t dark outside, Amy Lowitz could look out the window and see the actual South Pole marker.

AL: I’m here at the South Pole, working for the University of Chicago on the South Pole telescope as a winter telescope operator.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Moran ... I’m on one year leave to operate the South Pole telescope down here at the South Pole and Antarctica with Amy Lowitz.
HZ: And when did you last see daylight?
AL: [laugh]
CM: April,-ish? I think at least 3-4 months of total darkness, or close to it.

HZ: And a few weeks after the sunlight disappears for the last time before the totally dark months of Antarctic winter, something odd starts to occur. People start to forget - what was it? ...Words! And they drift off without finishing their...uh...

ALLISON: It happens! It happens.

HZ: ...Sentences!

HELEN ZALTZMAN: Welcome back to the EtymOlympics, where the meaning of sport is the sport.
MATTHEW CROSBY: And of course, sport itself, from the French ‘desporter’, used to mean an amusing and fun pastime.
HZ: That’s right, Matthew. Something to remember, football fans. Supposed to be fun.
MC: That meaning was 700 years ago though. A lot has changed in 700 years. Look how much easier it is nowadays to get a soy latte.
HZ: And there's a very excited crowd out there
MC: I can only describe the atmosphere as electric.
HZ: That's because sports commentators can only describe atmospheres as electric.
MC: It's the only adjective I ever learnt.