Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radioie and today I will
Speaker 1: be reading National Geographic magazine dated March twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. Radioie
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the first article
Speaker 1: titled Unlocking Nature's Miracle by Rowan Jacobson. An organic material
Speaker 1: that is five times stronger than steel. It exists in
Speaker 1: the natural world, but has historically been impossible for us
Speaker 1: to manufacture. Now, thanks to breakthroughs in genetic engineering, we've
Speaker 1: created something very close super silk, and it's poised to
Speaker 1: upgrade for more than our clothing. Somewhere in Michigan, ten
Speaker 1: thousand silkworms are spinning the future of super materials. They
Speaker 1: labor in the thick air of a warm, humid warehouse,
Speaker 1: pulling a sticky white strand from a gland in their
Speaker 1: face and weaving it into a cocoon the size of
Speaker 1: a grape. Since they were first domesticated in China thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago, their silk has been used to make
Speaker 1: the world's finest fabric, but these silkworms aren't like the
Speaker 1: millions that came before. They are spinning spider's silk, or
Speaker 1: something close to it. Pound for pound, spider silk, which
Speaker 1: is tantalized scientists for decades, combined strength and elasticity unlike
Speaker 1: anything else natural or artificial, five times stronger than steel
Speaker 1: by weight, but completely organic. It's the stuff of superheroes,
Speaker 1: says fioranzo Omenetto, director of the Silk Lab at Tufts
Speaker 1: University in Massachusetts. It exists in the same rarefied space
Speaker 1: as graphene and kevlar, human made creations with similarly extraordinary
Speaker 1: physical properties, but those can require synthetic chemicals to manufacture.
Speaker 1: Spider silk could do what they do, possibly better and organically.
Speaker 1: That in turn has led to a steady stream of height.
Speaker 1: Spider silk, if mass produced, could unlock everything from improved
Speaker 1: bulletproof vests to ultra light jet planes to next generation
Speaker 1: vaccine delivery, if only we could crack the code. Spiders, though,
Speaker 1: are cannibalistic when forced to live together, making them neither
Speaker 1: domesticable nor easily scalable. But in the past few years
Speaker 1: everything's changed. Those spider silk spinning silkworms all genetically modified
Speaker 1: live at the Lansing, Michigan Research Center of biotech firm
Speaker 1: Craig Biocraft Laboratories. Craig is just one of several companies
Speaker 1: around the world that have made breakthroughs in manufacturing spider
Speaker 1: silk or a very close analog. Those silkworms can't quite
Speaker 1: match spider silk's superhero level physical properties just yet, but
Speaker 1: there is enough spider gene in the mix to give
Speaker 1: their silk fibers special qualities. Other companies have charted a
Speaker 1: different path, one less reliant on worms munching mulberry leaf cake,
Speaker 1: but with the same goal. The goal is to mimic
Speaker 1: and eventually surpass the performance of natural spider silk, and
Speaker 1: then push it toward real world applications, says Wenbo, who
Speaker 1: a spider silk expert at Southwest University in Central China.
Speaker 1: We're getting incredibly close. For the first time, the long
Speaker 1: hyped super material dubbed super silk seems to be real.
Speaker 1: But the start ups and genetic engineers who've spent years
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars pursuing this holy grail are now
Speaker 1: having to reckon with a question they'd been able to ignore.
Speaker 1: In the quest for super silk at scale. Once you
Speaker 1: make us super material, what do you do with it?
Speaker 1: The answers, it turns out, aren't as obviously as they'd imagined.
Speaker 1: Spider self is, by any measure, one of nature's most
Speaker 1: miraculous structures. Large orb weaver spiders have been known to
Speaker 1: build webs that trap birds and bats. It may take
Speaker 1: a simple swipe of the human hand to brush through
Speaker 1: a spider web in the woods, but a hypothetically massive
Speaker 1: web with strands the thickness of a pencil could stop
Speaker 1: a seven forty seven in flight. Spider silk seemingly magical
Speaker 1: capabilities derived from two singular factors, special proteins known as spidroins,
Speaker 1: and the way those spidroins are spun into intricate fibers.
Speaker 1: The spidroins are composed of thousands of amino acids in
Speaker 1: a long chain, mixing both positive and negative electrical charges,
Speaker 1: as well as hydrophobic and hydrophilic sections, allowing them to
Speaker 1: stretch like an accordion while wrapping tightly around each other.
Speaker 1: Spiders then bundle those proteins into a cabled matrix of
Speaker 1: fibers that cling to each other, so tenaciously that almost
Speaker 1: nothing can break them. Threshing insects don't stand a chance.
Speaker 1: Spider silk's potential has been apparent for centuries. Ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: and Romans applied webs as wound poultices, while Solomon Islanders
Speaker 1: used web silk as fishing lures, but the first attempt
Speaker 1: to commercialize the material didn't start until the late eating hundreds,
Speaker 1: when Jesuit missionaries stationed in Madagascar took note of the
Speaker 1: island's golden orb weaver spiders and the prolific amount of
Speaker 1: silk they produced. With the help of local children, the
Speaker 1: missionaries devised a system to immobilize the spiders and cokes
Speaker 1: about five hundred yards of silk from each. All that
Speaker 1: effort yielded a stunning golden yellow bed canopy that made
Speaker 1: a stir at the nineteen hundred Paris Expo, but not
Speaker 1: much more. The process was too labor intensive, and the
Speaker 1: spiders had a nasty habit of eating each other. But
Speaker 1: spider silk continued to inspire why settle for the physical
Speaker 1: limits of cotton wool or regular silk when better options
Speaker 1: merely required ingenuity. In the nineteen thirties, inspired by the
Speaker 1: architecture of silk. DuPont developed nylon. The first commercially viable
Speaker 1: synthetic fiber. Kevlar fiber, arrived in nineteen sixty six, its
Speaker 1: strong lattice of hydrogen bonds making it nearly unbreakable. Graphene,
Speaker 1: whose one item thick sheets of honey combed carbon make
Speaker 1: it the strongest material in the world, was created in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. But while these synthetic fibers have revolutionized
Speaker 1: multiple industries, from clothing and cook wear to aerospace and electronics,
Speaker 1: they're dogged by their artificiality. They don't degrade, they require
Speaker 1: harmful processes to manufacture, and in some cases they can
Speaker 1: burden the world and our bodies with toxic compounds and microplastics.
Speaker 1: For that reason, scientists have long dreamed of producing comparable
Speaker 1: materials out of organic proteins. Spider silk has always beckoned
Speaker 1: as nature's finest model, but given their ornerary individualistic natures,
Speaker 1: spiders were always likely to be cut out of the mix.
Speaker 1: Efforts to create spider proteins without the spider began in
Speaker 1: Earnest in the nineteen nineties. According to molecular biologist Randy Lewis,
Speaker 1: then at the University of Wyoming. At first, he and
Speaker 1: his team eyed E. Coli as a potential host. Their
Speaker 1: thought process, if you could engineer the bacteria to produce
Speaker 1: spidrains as part of their regular metabolism, you could cultivate
Speaker 1: them in a fermentation tank as if you were brewing beer,
Speaker 1: then separate the spidrains from the mix, spin them into
Speaker 1: fibers and bloi la spider silk. That failed. Bacteria are
Speaker 1: so tiny that they struggled to produce comparatively comparatively huge proteins,
Speaker 1: and even when they do, they can't mimic Spider's intricate
Speaker 1: physical weaving process. Lewis turned to goats as possible spid
Speaker 1: drawing producers via their milk, and then alfalfa and silkworms.
Speaker 1: Nothing worked. The gene editing tools of the time were cumbersome,
Speaker 1: and neither Lewis nor the other researchers pursuing genetically modified
Speaker 1: organisms spider silk could engineer a host to make enough protein.
Speaker 1: Then technology came to the rescue. Crisper CAST nine arrived
Speaker 1: in the early twenty tens with the ability to rewrite
Speaker 1: genes at will in living organisms. Finding hosts for spider
Speaker 1: silk became easier. The new technology significantly improved the expression
Speaker 1: level of spider silk protein. According to shengyang Gong, a
Speaker 1: transgenic silkworm expert at Suchow University near Shanghai. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, Chinese researchers were able to coax full length
Speaker 1: spider silk from a transgenic silkworm for the first time.
Speaker 1: The material had six times the toughness, the measure of
Speaker 1: a matchere ceial's capacity to deform without breaking of kevlar.
Speaker 1: For Craig biocraft laboratories, the new advances in genetic editing
Speaker 1: unlocked the ability to engineer worms with just enough spidroins
Speaker 1: to make a spider silk analog without hampering the worm's productivity.
Speaker 1: According to Craig founder and CEO Kim Thompson, the company's
Speaker 1: latest silk is a big step forward. This material is
Speaker 1: not going to stop a seven forty seven, he says,
Speaker 1: but it's better than regular silk. It's stronger and more flexible.
Speaker 1: It's not quite spider sialt but it is super silk,
Speaker 1: and most important, it's scalable. Some eight thousand miles away
Speaker 1: from Craig's Michigan Lab in the steamy silk belt of Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where there are plenty of mulberry leaves for silkworms to
Speaker 1: eat and plenty of skilled workers to rear them. Craig
Speaker 1: has established commercial scale farms where these little beasties are
Speaker 1: weaving super silk daily. Many of the company's worms, including
Speaker 1: all those in Vietnam, fluoresce green under ultraviolet light and
Speaker 1: a filter thanks to the insertion of a jellyfish chin,
Speaker 1: a way of identifying the modified worms. It took years
Speaker 1: to figure out how to keep the lap grown silkworms
Speaker 1: from dyeing under commercial scale conditions, die offs that nearly
Speaker 1: ruin the company, But the links have been worked out,
Speaker 1: says Thompson. In significant quantities of sample fabric will be
Speaker 1: shipped to major clothing brands for testing in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: After all these years, he says, we are finally going
Speaker 1: to make the shipment. For now. Craig is hoping luxury
Speaker 1: fashion houses show interest in it stronger than silk supersilk,
Speaker 1: because the clothing industry is the most straightforward, if obvious,
Speaker 1: path to driving commercial revenue. For the first time in
Speaker 1: the company's twenty years in the meantime, it continues trying
Speaker 1: to engineer silkworms that can spin pure spider silk at scale,
Speaker 1: all while Craig's Super Silk Making competition across the globe
Speaker 1: explores other applications for the material, some simple, some radical.
Speaker 1: Spider silk as a supermaterial harnessed by humans has been
Speaker 1: dogged by both optimistic hype and some material mistakes. Plenty
Speaker 1: of promising projects have burned up on the lodge pad
Speaker 1: as companies hunt for a real world application. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Japanese start up Spiber, which uses tanks of genetically engineered
Speaker 1: microbes to bruise silk proteins, designed a parka in partnership
Speaker 1: with the North Face, only to see it suffer from
Speaker 1: extreme shrinkage. Spider Silk's tendency to contract as much as
Speaker 1: fifty percent when wet is an excellent quality for keeping
Speaker 1: a web taught under the weight of dew, but not
Speaker 1: for a winter jacket. A later iteration of Spiber's silk
Speaker 1: solved the problem, but never made it to mass production.
Speaker 1: Craig Biocraft's twenty sixteen contract with the US Army to
Speaker 1: test its material in bulletproof vests didn't pan out. Airbus
Speaker 1: teamed up with Jerminise AM Silk, which also brews protein,
Speaker 1: to experiment with supersilk based composite materials for the aerospace industry,
Speaker 1: but nothing progressed. Supersilk as a world changing textile has
Speaker 1: not had much success as a year of As years
Speaker 1: of R and D have turned into decades, companies like Spiber,
Speaker 1: Craig and AM Silk have yet have had to find
Speaker 1: applications that might provide a revenue stream now. And it
Speaker 1: turns out the most right now value of spider silk
Speaker 1: derived materials might have nothing to do with how we
Speaker 1: think about fibers. AM Silk has pivoted toward two applications
Speaker 1: with a low barrier to entry, dishwashing and laundry deterchins.
Speaker 1: Although companies micro produced proteins do not yet make superior fabric,
Speaker 1: they can still link together to form a microscopic and
Speaker 1: non toxic biofilm that repels water keeping dishes and clothes.
Speaker 1: Spotless dishwashing soap is full of chemicals right now, says
Speaker 1: Gudrun Vogtentons, AM Silk's chief scientific officer. If you take
Speaker 1: up the chemicals and add our spider silk protein instead,
Speaker 1: you get the same performance, but from a sustainability or
Speaker 1: an environmental point of view, it's way better. A planet
Speaker 1: friendly tide pod is not going to save the world,
Speaker 1: but it's doable today and advise an R and D
Speaker 1: department time to keep working on moonshots, which all the
Speaker 1: companies involved believe are right around the corner. But those
Speaker 1: moonshots may be less about the spider silk itself and
Speaker 1: more about the process of learning to design proteins. With
Speaker 1: the advancement of synthetic biology and protein engineering technologies, it
Speaker 1: is entirely possible to design artificial proteins that outperform natural
Speaker 1: spider silk, says Gong. That's Speiber's proach over the past decade.
Speaker 1: It's built a library of proprietary protein designs with amino
Speaker 1: acid sequences that have no analog in nature and allow
Speaker 1: for products specific flexibility. Some designs in this library resemble
Speaker 1: spider silk more closely, while others are closer to silkworm silk,
Speaker 1: says executive vice president Kenji Higashi. Tomorrow it might be
Speaker 1: a better dish detergent, but the new hope for spider
Speaker 1: silk lies in revolutionizing human health. One of the quirks
Speaker 1: of materials science is that the inventions often precede the applications. Teflon, aerogel,
Speaker 1: and graphene were all stumbled upon by researchers seeing what
Speaker 1: they could make, and then it was up to the
Speaker 1: world to figure out what to do with it. That
Speaker 1: may well be the case with super silk too. We
Speaker 1: thought we were chasing better bullet proof vests, but the
Speaker 1: real value lies inside our own bodies. In the case
Speaker 1: of spider silk, the quest to unlock the secrets of
Speaker 1: its strength and flexibility has led to a new understanding
Speaker 1: of protein structures and how those translate into performance. At
Speaker 1: the microscopic scale. Beyond fabric recombinant, spider silk proteins can
Speaker 1: be processed into diverse forms films, hydrogels, sponges, microcapsules, and nanoparticles,
Speaker 1: says Shimai Ki, who researches spider silk based therapeutics at
Speaker 1: Suchow University. What once seemed nearly impossible is now becoming
Speaker 1: technically and economically feasible. The applications being explored would be revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Spider's silk influenced gels and biofilms can coat catheters and
Speaker 1: surgery meshes, reducing infections in blood clots. They can line
Speaker 1: wound dressings and improved cosmetics. At the nanoscale level, they
Speaker 1: become legos, giving gene jockeys the ability to design new
Speaker 1: molecules one amino acid at a time, forming shapes and
Speaker 1: functions that go beyond anything available in nation nature's pharmacy
Speaker 1: that could revolutionize tissue engineering and drug delivery. The strength
Speaker 1: and biodegradability of spidroins make them excellent designers scaffolding upon
Speaker 1: which new ligaments, cartilage, and nerves can grow, and these
Speaker 1: genetically crafted proteins are extremely well tolerated by the body.
Speaker 1: Spidrowing nanoparticles already meet most of the critical biomedical requirements,
Speaker 1: says she. They are biodegradable, bio compatible, safe, and can
Speaker 1: be produced under mild scalable conditions for drug delivery. She
Speaker 1: is currently working on a new generation of vaccines in
Speaker 1: which spidrilling nanocapsules could carry the delicate immune system stimulating
Speaker 1: molecules to their targets and release them at slow, sustained rates. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we hope that these silk inspired materials will bridge biology
Speaker 1: and medicine, said she. Turning one of nature's most remarkable
Speaker 1: structural proteins into a platform for human health. That transformation
Speaker 1: will not come tomorrow. Navigating the miles of regulations and
Speaker 1: clinical trials required for the approval of anything in the
Speaker 1: medical industry takes years. But yet again, super Silk's hype
Speaker 1: has found a second wind, and the payoff could be
Speaker 1: worth the weight. Until then, the hard working silkworms in
Speaker 1: Michigan and China and Vietnam will keep munching and weaving,
Speaker 1: blissfully unaware that they're pushing science forward with every fiber
Speaker 1: they spin. How a spider spins its silk, spider's silk
Speaker 1: owes its special powers to both a unique molecular structure
Speaker 1: and and arachnid's intricate spinning prosss. Scientists have spent decades
Speaker 1: trying to replicate the spiders, all natural but not so
Speaker 1: easy to make super material A spider's strongest silk. Spiders
Speaker 1: make seven types of silk, each with varying degrees of
Speaker 1: stretch and strength and produced by different glands. Dragline silk
Speaker 1: is the strongest, used for web scaffolding and catching prey.
Speaker 1: In sce Czia, spider's silk factory. Spider silk production begins
Speaker 1: with a solution of proteins called spidroins that are acidified
Speaker 1: and dehydrated, then elongated on demand. Spiders use their legs
Speaker 1: or gravity to pull the thread from their spinnerets. The
Speaker 1: secret of spider silk proteins Extraordinarily long spidroins contain two
Speaker 1: amino acid groups, one coiled for stretchability and another compact
Speaker 1: for strength. Bundled in a complex matrix of fibrils. The
Speaker 1: proteins imbue spider silk with its signature traits, making spider
Speaker 1: silk minus the spider. The production of spider silk at
Speaker 1: scale hinges on genetic engineering. Scientists have coaxed a variety
Speaker 1: of hosts into making a recumbent version that could unlock
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in everything from clothing to medicine applications. Textiles from
Speaker 1: shirts and parkas to bulletproof fabrics to car interior's recumbent
Speaker 1: silk fiber has been eyed by multiple industries as a
Speaker 1: fully recyclable and microplastic free textile option. Cosmetics, silk proteins
Speaker 1: can be added to hair and skin care products to
Speaker 1: help form a protective surface level shield. In early tests
Speaker 1: of facial products, users have reported smoother skin detergents as
Speaker 1: a non toxic ingredient indition laundry detergent. Silk proteins repel
Speaker 1: water naturally and create ultra thin, invisible coatings on dishes
Speaker 1: and glasses to prevent residue build up medicine. When used
Speaker 1: in sutures, silk proteins, which are biocompatible with our immune system,
Speaker 1: promote cell tissue regeneration. They also can be used to
Speaker 1: carry drugs to targeted areas in the body. Next an
Speaker 1: ancient vessel. From an ancient vessel, thousands of pieces of
Speaker 1: pottery crafted in Campagna in what's now Southernatalie filled the
Speaker 1: hold of erect Greek ship. The cargo went down in
Speaker 1: the world western Mediterranean, only to rise again a couple
Speaker 1: of millennia later. Thanks to Jacques eve Cousteau, famed oceanographer
Speaker 1: and National Geographic Explorer. In nineteen fifty two, off a
Speaker 1: French islet near Marseilles. Marseilles, his divers launched one of
Speaker 1: the world's first underwater excavations, and the breath of the
Speaker 1: hall was extraordinary. Alongside more than seven thousand ceramic pieces
Speaker 1: were some two thousand clay jugs called Ampheri once full
Speaker 1: of wine. They'd belonged Archaeologists later realized to two different
Speaker 1: ships wrecked at the same site. When Cousteau found a
Speaker 1: single jug still sealed, he had the cork scraped away
Speaker 1: and poured out what a crewmate called a dark brown, thick,
Speaker 1: lumpy syrup. Upon swigging the dregs of the ancient wine,
Speaker 1: Cousteau wrote, I tasted all the mustiness and age there
Speaker 1: is in this world. This article by Brian Kevin next.
Speaker 1: Can tik Tok resurrect Scots by Raw Perlin Inside the
Speaker 1: decidedly modern campaign to revitalize a lost language that some
Speaker 1: say isn't truly a language. When herkl Derkel went viral
Speaker 1: on social media a couple of years ago, most of
Speaker 1: the people using the phrase had only a fate ideal
Speaker 1: of what language it came from, but not Len Penny.
Speaker 1: Penny as a poet and Scott's language influencer with more
Speaker 1: than a million followers on Instagram, TikTok and other platforms
Speaker 1: Originally from just outside Glasgow, the twenty six year old
Speaker 1: appreciates that people connected with herkl Derkel as a fun
Speaker 1: funny sounding way to say lounge in bed when one
Speaker 1: should be up and about, just like how the cozy,
Speaker 1: convivial concept of piggey from Danish and Norwegian entered the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist years before. But old fashioned herkl derkel is not
Speaker 1: a word that most people in Scotland are going to know,
Speaker 1: says Penny, partly because it's the linguistic equivalent of a
Speaker 1: penny farthing and early type of bicycle, and partly because
Speaker 1: Scotts has been hiding in plain sight even in its
Speaker 1: homeland for decades. Lately, however, with the help of young
Speaker 1: ambassadors and activists like Penny, Scots is making itself known
Speaker 1: not just on TikTok but in everyday life. Today, Scott's
Speaker 1: is spoken by roughly one point five million people, with
Speaker 1: almost another million having some understanding of the language, which
Speaker 1: in a country of about five point five million is
Speaker 1: no small amount. Last year it was granted official status
Speaker 1: by the government, alongside Gaelic, which is spoken by some
Speaker 1: one hundred thirty thousand people. But Scott's still lives in
Speaker 1: the shadow of English, the dominant language in Scotland, historically
Speaker 1: spoken mostly south and east of the Highlands. Scotts was
Speaker 1: the nation's quasi official tongue, complete with a growing literature,
Speaker 1: until the union with England in seventeen oh seven put
Speaker 1: English decisively on top. After that it was considered the
Speaker 1: language of the uneducated. No matter how beloved Robert Burns Light,
Speaker 1: Scott's verse was within living memory. You could get corporal
Speaker 1: punishment for speaking it at school. Even now, Scott's still
Speaker 1: carries a kind of hillbilly stigma, pushing back on their
Speaker 1: attitude while battling for the hearts and minds, or perhaps
Speaker 1: the tongues and ears of non Scott's speakers. Is a
Speaker 1: younger generation of creatives, singers, writers, social media natives and
Speaker 1: others reviving and reinventing the language for the twenty first
Speaker 1: century in their twenties and thirties, hailing from all over
Speaker 1: the country. They're bringing Scott's into tiktoks and text messages,
Speaker 1: pop music covers and poetry. This has just all come
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, says Penny of her own trajectory as
Speaker 1: she steps out of the BBC Scotland Studios in Glasgow,
Speaker 1: where she hosts a four times weekly Scott's inflected radio
Speaker 1: show on arts and culture. It's not lost on her
Speaker 1: that she broadcasts from inside what was once a famous
Speaker 1: bastion of proper English. During the COVID pandemic, Penny's therapist
Speaker 1: advised her to get a hobby. Cross stitching hurt her
Speaker 1: hands too much, so she started writing poetry and sharing
Speaker 1: it online. One poem, in particular, heart love Letter to
Speaker 1: her mother and grandmother, part language lesson, went viral within
Speaker 1: its lines, and a telesized phrase in English is challenged
Speaker 1: by its equivalent in Scott's I'm no having children, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have wains and ye can ask with a cry
Speaker 1: them know what are the names. Penny went on to
Speaker 1: publish an award winning poetry collection in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: with a follow up volume this past fall, both in
Speaker 1: a mix of the two languages. Meanwhile, her social media fans,
Speaker 1: seventy percent of them in the United States hang on
Speaker 1: her Scott's word of the day. Recent examples include smook
Speaker 1: it or a sly crafty person as in an offy
Speaker 1: smoked wee smote and awfully sly yet insignificant person. And
Speaker 1: prinkle meaning glitter, as in his e'en eye prinkle, His
Speaker 1: eyes always glitter, squint and you can see that plenty
Speaker 1: of Scott's words are close cognates with English ones. But
Speaker 1: where Scot's has long been considered a dialect, plenty of
Speaker 1: linguists insists it's really more a sister language of English,
Speaker 1: with its own distinct vocabulary, grammar and resonance. That's complicated
Speaker 1: by the fact that it's not uncommon for speakers to
Speaker 1: move between English and Scots. There are different spellings, pronunciations
Speaker 1: and usages. The Doric Scot's dialect of the Northeast and
Speaker 1: Aberdeenshire is different to the Scots of Rsher and Galloway,
Speaker 1: and different again to Glaswegian Scots, says Emma Harper, a
Speaker 1: Scottish parliament member who championed Scott's officialization. Penny another active
Speaker 1: as off and reflect this interwoven reality, while also challenging
Speaker 1: listeners to figure certain things out for themselves. Everybody's got
Speaker 1: their own standard, Penny says. While many Scott's speakers celebrate
Speaker 1: all this variety, others hope that official recognition will provide
Speaker 1: a degree of clarity, consistency, and active protection, the kind
Speaker 1: that will guard against, say a North Carolina teenager who
Speaker 1: barely knew the language writing half of the entire Scott's
Speaker 1: language Wikipedia entry in a garbled pseudo Scots for the
Speaker 1: better part of a decade, as was discovered in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: On the other side, some worry that viralities like Herkl
Speaker 1: dirkl just continue a history of not taking the language seriously,
Speaker 1: a process of cutesy commodification that Penny links to the
Speaker 1: tartan t towel and kilt faux identity that's packaged for Taurus.
Speaker 1: Parliamentarian Harper gives plenty of credit to the new cohort
Speaker 1: of influencers for helping keep the language well youthful. Young people,
Speaker 1: like most Scot's code switch on a daily basis, and
Speaker 1: his social media has integrated itself into their daily lives,
Speaker 1: so the code they use online is their day to
Speaker 1: day one, which in most cases is Scot's, says Harper.
Speaker 1: It's a good example of government matching its actions in
Speaker 1: legislation with the reality of what's happening in society right now.
Speaker 1: Thousands of young people using Scots on a daily basis
Speaker 1: an ancient language in a very modern context, further proof, writers, musicians,
Speaker 1: and artists are taking Scots in new directions. While reading
Speaker 1: at the recent launch of his debut poetry collection, Gooni.
Speaker 1: Laswegian poet Michael Mullan thirty, wearing a fabulously decorative suit,
Speaker 1: mixed languages as fluently as a mixed talk of vodka
Speaker 1: and Iernbrue, Scotland's national soft drink and queer New York
Speaker 1: icon Marsha P. Johnson. This conclud's readings from National Geographic
Speaker 1: Magazine for Today. Your reader has been Marsha. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.