What other names could a team use if they realize it’s time to give up calling themselves the “Redskins”? Also, what should we call those people who don’t turn left as as soon as the traffic light goes green? Plus, the...
The Latin phrase mens sana in corpore sano, or “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” comes from one of the Satires of the ancient Roman poet Juvenal. Fast-forward to 1977, when a Japanese manufacturer of athletic footwear was looking for a...
The Japanese have a term for the act of buying books but letting them pile up without reading them. It’s tsundoku. This is part of a complete episode.
Travis in Austin, Texas, has a dispute with friends: is the popular sorting game called paper, scissors, rock, as he believes? Or is it rock, paper, scissors? In the United States, the latter is the more common variant, although people have...
This week it’s butterflies, belly flowers, plot bunnies, foxes, and cuckoos. Also, writing advice from Mark Twain and a wonderful bit of prose from Sara Pennypacker’s book Pax. And are there word origins? Well, does a duck swim? We’ll...
The months of September, October, November, and December take their names from Latin words meaning “seven,” “eight,” “nine,” and “ten.” So why don’t their names correspond to where they fall in...