The Scripps Washington Bureau proudly presents a special series, The Scripps National Spelling Bee Podcast. Our host is none other than Paul Loeffler, ESPN Spelling commentator and a finalist himself in 1990. This year, Scripps has created this show as a way for the entire spelling community - or the orthograsphere if you will - to feel like insiders. We’ll have conversations with this year’s competitors, notable spellers from the past, and people in culture who use language in interesting ways.

Sophia Hoffman missed out on a trip to Washington last year after a grueling 66 round dead-heat final in her qualifying district. She’ll be our guest. We'll also caught up with Jacob Williamson who captivated the internet during an irrepressibly enthusiastic run to last year’s finals. Ray Hudson is beloved by soccer fans the world over for his magisterial command of the English language and the spelling family is sure to fall for him too.

Our first full episode comes out Wednesday, May 13th, and we’ll have new shows each weekday through the finals of Scripps National Spelling Bee - Thursday May 28th. We’re on soundcloud, iTunes, and virtually everywhere else you get your podcasts. And since this is a pilot - we really want to know what you think - would you listen to more of this kind of conversation? - what ideas do you have to make it better, who would you want to hear from? Email us at [email protected], we tweet at http://twitter.com/SpellingBeePod, and our website, http://SpellingBeePodcast.com, redirects to our tumblr page.

Thanks for listening!

Theme music by Paavo Ilves, https://soundcloud.com/paavoilves