Gossip goes by many names: the poop, the scoop, the lowdown, the dope, the scuttlebutt, the 411, the grapes, the gore, and hot tea. Plus, John Donne’s love poems are among the greatest in the English language, even as they’re famously difficult to...
A listener named Tami contacted the show by WhatsApp to say that whenever someone would be talking about a subject that nobody else knew anything about, her father-in-law would respond with I had one of those, but the wheels came off. This is part...
Woodshedding means practicing a difficult musical passage over and over, alone or in a small section, until the notes, rhythm, and performance details are secure. Tim in Tucson, a longtime choral singer, knew it as the frustrating repetition that...
The word curfew comes from a French expression that means “cover your fire” and goes all the way back to a similar phrase in Latin. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Curfew From a Command to Cover Fires” Hey there, you have A Way...
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
Cindy from Henderson, Kentucky, enjoys a wonderful relationship with her ex-husband’s new wife, and she’s looking for a word to indicate their special connection. The sister of your husband is your sister-in-law, of course, but what’s a good word...