Daniel Mendelsohn is a widely acclaimed author, critic, classicist, and professor at Bard College. A few years ago, when he was teaching an undergraduate seminar on The Odyssey (Bookshop|Amazon) his 81-year-old father, Jay, decided to sit in on the...
It’s the ultimate road trip: A father and son retrace the journey of Odysseus and find a way to navigate their relationship. Plus, the story behind the phrase a flash in the pan: It has nothing to do with cooking or gold mining. Also, what’s a...
Nancy Gabriel from Ithaca, New York, recalls her father’s no-nonsense responses to minor injuries when she was a child: After making sure she was really all right, he’d say, It’s far enough from your heart; it won’t kill you. Other times he might...
A listener named Tami contacted the show by WhatsApp to say that whenever someone would be talking about a subject that nobody else knew anything about, her father-in-law would respond with I had one of those, but the wheels came off. This is part...
Nathan in Raleigh, North Carolina, heard his grandfather, busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the family, describe the work as going steady by jerks. The expression means by fits and starts, with bursts of steady effort broken by pauses or...
A 23-year-old says that since her 75-year-old dad has now retired, he’s finally ready to learn to text and share memes. What’s the best way to introduce him to the world of social media and communicating with graphics? There are several helpful...
