Happy 20th birthday, IDEA!

“It was 20 years ago today” … But it wasn’t Sgt. Pepper who taught this band to play. It was IDEA Founder and Director Paul Meier (along with original designer and webmaster Shawn Muller) who launched the International Dialects of English Archive. To celebrate the anniversary, we invite you to listen to Paul’s latest edition of his “In a Manner of Speaking” monthly podcast. In it, Paul reminisces about the birth of IDEA, plays some of his favorite audio samples, discusses the essential contributions by IDEA’s many senior and associate editors, and discusses the cultural importance of the archive, which has now grown into the largest online resource of its kind — with more than 1,400 samples, and still expanding. Click here for the podcast, and here for an index of all of Paul’s previous podcasts.

As always, thanks to the nearly 100 editors and contributors who have kept IDEA going for the past two decades!