In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?
You’ve just read a terrific paperback novel. Would you feel any differently about it if you’d the same words on the glowing screen of an electronic book? Martha and Grant discuss the social and psychological implications of books that...
throw a Porsche at someone v. phr.— «An incident like this brings home the sheer scale of military spending. In Afghanistan, where Javelin heat-seeking missiles are sometimes launched against Taliban personnel, our soldiers call it, with...
An American cartographer for the United Nations reports that he and his British wife disagree over whether lollygolly is a real word that means “to dawdle.” Martha and Grant show the mapmaker where to draw the line. This is part of a...
A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor...
stabbity n.— «“If you get into hand-to-hand combat,” said the sergeant, tying a carrot on to the end of the broomstick, “just poke the enemy with this and say ‘Stabbity, stabbity, stab!’”» —“Re: “a Million...