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.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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