Kicker: Ragebait reins

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s official! Oxford University Press has announced its 2025 Word of the Year. And if you’ve ever been online, you’ve no doubt been caught up in it.

The word is ragebait. You’re scrolling along in peace until suddenly, a scenario like this, explained by a lexicographer on the BBC:

DENT: We might see a cute kitten and … scroll past it, but then we see something that makes us so angry we engage, … and then it is amplified by the algorithm which maintains that level of anger.

Thus "ragebait", which to me seems a close cousin to last year’s word of the year, brainrot. So it’s clear evidence the algorithm is still working ... it's just gotten angrier.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: I nominate one for 2026, log-off.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

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