“First I gave her peaches, then I gave her pears, then I gave her 50 cents and kissed her on the stairs.” If you’ve got a children’s rhyme to rival this gem, share it with us! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Children’s Rhyme”...
Is it true that the drug heroin was once marketed to families? Yes! In the 1890’s, heroin, a substitute for morphine, was hailed as a tremendous help to patients with tuberculosis, a leading cause of death at the time. Heroin eased the terrible...
Is it wrong to refer to children as kids? One discerning mother, when asked about her kids, always replied, “I don’t raise goats, but my children are fine.” Grant explains that as early as the 1600s, the word kids had popped up to refer to bratty or...
Martha relates a story from a listener in Valdosta, Georgia, about her four-year-old’s misunderstanding of a homophone in her expression “a little hoarse.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Little Hoarse” Here’s another one of...
The mother of eight-year-old twins wonders why one of her girls habitually adds “dun-dun-DUN!” to sentences in everyday conversation. The hosts suspect it’s related to the audio element known as a “sting” in television and movie parlance, like this...
If you need proof that language is powerful, here’s some. Researchers at Cornell recently reported that kids are more likely to eat their veggies if they’re told the food has enticing names like “X-ray Vision Carrots” and “Dinosaur Broccoli Trees.”...