Long before Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie (Bookshop|Amazon), she worked as a journalist, chronicling life in the Ozarks. In one of her early writings, Wilder refers to what she calls “the famous question”: How old is...
Why do we refer to “testing or going beyond limits” as pushing the envelope? In aeronautics, to push the envelope means to try to go past the edge of the aircraft’s perceived capability. In the 1980s, the phrase was popularized by Tom Wolfe’s book...
Our discussion about the phrase Go sit on a tack! prompted a listener to send us a math-minded version, Go divide 22 by 7!. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Math Way to Say Go Away” Grant, remember our conversation about all the...
Those of us in the United States and Britain may be separated by a common language, but we’re also separated when it comes to how we indicate numbers. A Numberphile video featuring linguist Lynne Murphy explains this in more depth. This is part of a...
We all lead busy lives—so are speed reading courses a good idea? Plus, if you hear someone speaking with a British accent, do you tend to assume they’re somehow more intelligent? And some common English surnames tell us stories about life in the...
For the math lovers out there: Listeners on our Facebook page recommend Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh, and In Pursuit of The Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed The World by Ian Stewart. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Books for...