The new book Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern (Bookshop|Amazon) is a fascinating history about the colorful characters who attempted to reinvent the complicated Chinese script to adapt it for use with modern...
A tweet from Jeremy London suggests that if we named people the way they did a thousand years ago, we’d hear names like Darren the Depressed or Isaac the Uninsured. What would your name be? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Carl Sandburg once observed, “The woman who’ll kiss and tell is small as the little end of nothing.” He meant she lacked character, although the phrase the little end of nothing and variations of have long been used to mean...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle involves dropping a letter from a fictional character to form the name of a new one. For example, if the clue is: He once used the Force to turn people to the Dark Side, but now all he does is hang out in bars...
If you need a password that contains at least eight characters and one capital, there’s always Mickey Minnie Pluto Huey Louie Dewey Donald Goofy Sacramento. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Password Joke” Grant...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a literature quiz based on descriptions of characters in novels. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Literary Character Quiz” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett...