Nathan from Abilene, Texas, asked for a dolly at a London trade-show venue and got blank looks until he described the device, which the workers called a trolley. Names for these wheeled haulers vary even in the United States: for some people, a...
A listener from Dallas, Texas, wonders why we say “here, here” to cheer someone on, and “there, there” to calm someone down. Actually, the phrase is “hear, hear,” and it’s imperative, as in, listen to this...
Megan from Billings, Montana, asks what to call the foam sleeve that slips over a can: cozy, koozie, coozy, kozy, or another spelling. The word traces back to tea cozy, the knitted or padded cover that keeps a teapot warm, traditionally pronounced...
“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...
The idiom “two heads are better than one” doesn’t exist in quite the same form in Spanish, but there is a variation that translates to, “four eyes are better than two.” In Hungarian, there’s a phrase that’s...
Perhaps you have a panic monkey in your life. That’s someone who starts flailing their hands anytime they’re nervous. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Panic Monkey” I’m surprised I haven’t come...