Gary in Loris, South Carolina, started listening to this show on the public radio station WHQR, which broadcasts from Wilmington, North Carolina. Then he realized that because of his location, he could also pick up the show through South Carolina...
While vacationing on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, a listener encountered an Australian who used the term skylarking to mean “horsing around.” The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years and once referred to racing through the...
Gary in San Antonio, Texas, wonders if the term train of thought, meaning a line of reasoning or narrative, predates locomotives. It does indeed, going back to the idea of train meaning anything trailing behind, like a bridal train. This is part of...
“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first...
Gary Provost, author of Make Your Words Work, made a career of offering great writing advice, including: “Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The...
“Holy old jumping up baldheaded!” is a colorful exclamation with ties to both Jesus of Nazareth and Gary Busey. (In Busey’s case, the phrase was Holy Jumped-Up Baldheaded Jesus Palamino.) This is part of a complete episode.