Need a book to lift you out of this world? Try Orbital (Bookshop|Amazon). In it, Booker-winning novelist Samantha Harvey imagines the moment-to-moment experience of living on a space station, a mixture of the mundane and the majestic, 250 miles...
The word filibuster has a long and colorful history, going back to the days when pirates roamed the high seas. Today it refers to hijacking a piece of legislation. Plus, the language of yoga teachers: When doing a guided meditation, you may hear...
In her new book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Bookshop|Amazon), Oxford University scholar Katherine Rundell notes that the 17th-century cleric’s love poems are famously difficult to unravel, but well worth the effort...
The language of guided meditation prompts a call from Laura Davidson of San Jose, California. Is there a special reason those leading a guided meditation or yoga class so often speak in present participles, using phrases like sitting comfortably and...
In an essay in LitHub, Kate Angus urges writers to be kind to themselves when they have a creative block. Sometimes you can get past it simply by letting yourself not write at all, with the hope that lying fallow for a while may be just what you...
Silence exists in more than one form. In his book Speaking and Language: Defence of Poetry, Paul Goodman eloquently evokes several of them. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Forms of Silence” You’re listening to A Way with Words...