Listeners like you make up more than half the funding of A Way with Words through donations. And the radio show/podcast still hasn’t raised enough funds to ensure new episodes in 2025. There are less than two...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
The phrase old as Methuselah describes someone quite advanced in years. In ancient scripture, Methuselah was a man who somehow lived to the ripe old age of 969. Plus, a heartwarming book for children tells the story of how a Puerto Rican family...
A barn find is a classic car that has been discovered after being stored for a long period in a place such as a barn or shed. The term also applies to similarly stored motorcycles and aircraft. This is part of a complete episode.
The expressions your mother wears combat boots and your mother wears army boots descend from the African-American tradition of the Dozens, also known as sounding or capping or snapping, where people try to top each other’s insults. This is...
When she was a child, Chris from Santa Rosa, California, misunderstood the definition of the word vehicle—with amusing results. This is part of a complete episode.