This episode follows the three letters B-E-N across geography, language, entertainment, business and biology. In Gaelic, ben means mountain, as in Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest peak. Ben is also a city in Burkina Faso, a city and district in Iran and a peak in Nevada. In Hebrew it means son, it names a letter of the Armenian alphabet, and BEN is the ISO 639 code for Bengali and a three-letter code for Benin. The episode explains the sound's spread through phonetics: B is a bilabial plosive, one of the first sounds infants make, and the short syllable is easy to say and hear.
In 1972 the word titled both a Michael Jackson album and hit single, written for a horror film about an intelligent rat leading a swarm, and a self-titled album by Brazil's Jorge Ben. Macklemore released an album called Ben in 2023, and singers in Germany, South Korea and Israel perform under the name. In commerce and transit, BEN is Franklin Templeton's New York Stock Exchange ticker and the IATA code for Benina International Airport in Benghazi, Libya. The final stop is the BEN domain, a protein structure that binds DNA and helps organize chromosomes.
The Bens was an indie supergroup of Ben Lee, Ben Folds and Ben Kweller, formed because they shared the name.
Kylo Ren of Star Wars was born Ben Solo, while Ben 10's Ben Tennyson is a cartoon hero.
Ben's Deluxe Delicatessen was an institution in Montreal, and Ben's Kosher Deli operates in New York and Florida.
Ben is also the name of a Dutch mobile network and a British channel, Ben Television.
The BEN domain takes its name from the proteins BANP, E5R and NAC1, where it was first identified.
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