Matt from Memphis, Tennessee, reports that he had a professor who would acknowledge a complication to a task that made it more challenging by saying That makes the cheese a bit more binding, doesn’t it? The expression to make the cheese more binding can also have a positive meaning, suggesting that a situation’s been enhanced, as when a deal sweetener increases the odds of a successful negotiation. A version of the phrase appears in one of the most famous “Twilight Zone” episodes of all time. This is part of a complete episode.
After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New...
Debbie from Crawfordsville, Florida, says that when she and her husband reach an impasse while working on something, they’ll say Let’s grok about it, which they use to mean “Let’s think about it.” Grok was coined by...
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