Centuries ago, monks who took a vow of silence still had to communicate about everyday activities in the monastery, from gardening to equipment repair. So they developed their own hand signs, with hundreds of gestures for various words and ideas that are sometimes still used today. An excellent book on the power of silence in such places is A Time to Keep Silence (Bookshop|Amazon) by Patrick Leigh Fermor. 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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