After our conversation about monastic sign language, Cameron Brick, a social psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, emailed to share his own stories about nonverbal communication and the power of silence. This is part of a...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
To get your fix of amusing typos like, “Illegally parked cars will be fine,” and other errors that can’t be mentioned on public radio, try the book Just My Typo. This is part of a complete episode.
What’s the common thread that connects the phrases pour out your heart, from time to time, fell flat on his face, the skin of my teeth, and the root of the matter? They all come from or were popularized by the King James Bible, first published...
When someone finds out where you’re from, do they ask if you know so-and-so? The cynics out there may refer to this as the six degrees of stupid, but even urban dwellers can admit that the answer is “yes” more often than the odds...
As they say in Wasika, Minnesota, “If I don’t see you in the future, I’ll see you in the pasture.” This is part of a complete episode.