Say you’re on a long road trip. Do you have a term for another driver who happens to be traveling the same direction and sets the pace for your car mile after mile? In an earlier episode, a Rhode Island listener left us wondering why her Swedish friend refers to such a driver as a Follow John. A listener in Malmö, Sweden, has since stepped in with an explanation. In that country, children play a game similar to “Simon Says” called Följa John, or “Follow John.” That helpful Swedish listener, by the way, is Karin Tidbeck, author of The Memory Theater (Bookshop|Amazon), which appears on the New York Times list of best science fiction and fantasy books of 2021. This is part of a complete episode.
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
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