“The more languages you speak,” observes Ilan Stavans, who speaks several, “the more capacity you have either to experience this world as a multilayered place, or to live in multiple universes at the same time.”

Ilan still remembers how, when as a youngster he and his family immigrated to New York City, “the juxtaposition of languages would become remarkable to me as an aspect of how languages are born, how languages remain alive, and even how they might die.”

The word “immigrant” came up frequently in Steve’s conversation with Ilan. Its Latin root means “to move from one place to another.” In Ilan’s case, that’s not just physical places, but those other “multilayered places” and “multiple universes” he occupies.

He is, for example, the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin America and Latino Culture at Amherst College; a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary; publisher of Restless Books; and author, coauthor, and translator of more books than he’s bothered to count.

(One of them is Sabor Judio, an homage to his Mexican roots and Yiddish heritage. He coauthored it with Margaret Boyle, whom you met in Episode 75.)

His is a multifaceted, multilingual life. There is, for instance, the unusual role that The Flintstones and Star Trek played in Ilan’s first knowing English as a child in Mexico, where his first language was, of course, Spanish. Not long after that, when his family moved to the US, Ilan soon appended “American” after “Mexican.” And then came the unexpected place that Yiddish now occupies in his heart.

At one point in this episode, Steve says: “The question I really want to ask you: is there a common theme to what you do?” To which Ilan replies: “Such a question, Steve, truly.”

And such a conversation. Once you listen to it, you’ll know why we’ve dubbed him a Tocqueville for our century.