If you’re serious about writing a memoir, what topics should you include, and what can you leave out? And how honest can you really be about the other people in your life? Some of America’s leading memoirists wrote things they lived to...
A silly joke about a parrot made the rounds of 19th-century American newspaper, and may be the source for our expression “cry uncle,” meaning “to give up.” This is part of a complete episode.
English speakers borrowed the German term Witzelsucht (or “joke addiction”) to mean “excessive punning and a compulsion to tell bad jokes.” While it might sound amusing to have a word for such behavior, the word refers...
Hyperbolic Headlines Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity!!!! Or maybe not. You’ve seen those breathless headlines on the internet, like “You Won’t Believe What This 7-year-old Said to The President!” They’re supposed to...
It’s the art of constructive feedback: If you’re a teacher with a mountain of papers to grade, you may find yourself puzzling over which kinds of notes in the margins work best. Martha and Grant discuss strategies for effective paper...
Why call it a doggy bag when it’s really for your husband? Grant and Martha talk about the language of leftovers and why we eat beef and not cow. And how old is the typical public-library patron? Plus, in Afghanistan, proverbs are part of...