It’s Book Recommendation Time! Martha’s makes an enthusiastic case for The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World (Bookshop|Amazon). It’s historian Andrea Wulf’s biography of the polymath, adventurer, and naturalist whose fame throughout Europe in his day was second only to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Humboldt’s revolutionary ideas about nature and the effects of human activity on climate helped form the basis of modern environmentalism. Wulf has also collaborated with artist Lillian Melcher on a graphic work of non-fiction on this topic called The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt. (Bookshop|Amazon) Grant recommends Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes (Bookshop|Amazon), which explains how the study of DNA is rewriting our understanding of human history, with profound implications for, among other things, the study of historical linguistics. This is part of a complete episode.
Two words from the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee prep materials: avahi, a term for a woolly lemur of Madagascar, and saltigrade, which describes spiders and other creatures that have feet and limbs adapted for leaping. Saltigrade is...
Louie from Black Hills, South Dakota, recalls the time his girlfriend fell off a paddleboard and into a lake, at which point his father declared She bit the farm! This peculiar locution is most likely his dad’s own combination of two...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
