Campus & Community

Retro tech, a Tibetan gem, and a galactic empire

AppleTV+

September 25, 2025

3 min read

Linguistics professor’s tips link past, present, and future

Part of the
Favorite Things
series

Recommendations from Harvard faculty

Kathryn Davidson is a Professor of Linguistics and Director of Undergraduate Studies.

A gadget

Wired EarPods

I realize everyone else on the street has Bluetooth headphones, but I’ve gone back to using wired ones for several reasons: They’re a lot cheaper than Bluetooth ones in case you lose them; and because walking and wandering the ever-evolving streets of Cambridge/Somerville while listening to music serves as my daily form of mind-clearing, and the wired ones send a visible signal to passersby not to interrupt. Also, I don’t have to worry about the unreliability of Bluetooth revealing the reasonable chance I might be listening to country music in this town, which sometimes presents (wrongly, I think) as its antithesis. Also, the wired ones let you imagine yourself in one of those iconic “Silhouette” iPod ads from 2003. An added bonus: Untangling them provides a small daily mental puzzle!

A local shop

Tibets Jinten

My inclination toward thriftiness and the hurried pace of this life can make online shopping appealing and necessary, but overall, it still tends to lose out to an even stronger urge to connect to other human beings in real-life local stores. A special shoutout to Harvard Square’s friendliest shopkeeper, Tsering, at the enchanting Tibets Jinten store, which has over the years become the place my kids most want to stop whenever they come visit me at work. He’s got sunglasses in summer, knit hats and scarves for winter, keychains, earrings, bags, seemingly endless shelves full of meditation supplies and scents and fabric, and always a sense of calm and escape from the traffic on that section of Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central. We usually make it a combination visit with the Harvard Book Store just a block or so over — a local afternoon with people who seem to really know their stuff and engage in the community.

A sci-fi series

‘Foundation,’ Season 3

I already loved “Foundation” as an escapist show on AppleTV+: It’s based on Isaac Asimov’s epic of the same name and explores grand philosophical themes of humanity and predestiny with a strong cast. But it leveled up for me recently when Oscar-winning actor Troy Kotsur joined Season 3 as a “mentalic” leading the second foundation to fight Empire through a combination of psychic powers and ASL. In my work as a linguist, I think a lot about sign languages, and here at Harvard Linguistics I get to collaborate closely with our wonderful program in American Sign Language. Seeing such a great deaf actor appear on this show and add to an already strong narrative was awesome. Sign languages are languages too and appear wherever humans do, presumably including if we ever make it to other galaxies. In short, this show is fun, and sci-fi and sign languages make a masterful combination.

— As told to Sy Boles, Harvard Staff Writer