The Stendhal syndrome is a term used to describe feeling overwhelmed by the beauty of a work of art. The name comes from the French writer Stendhal, who wrote about the dizzying sensation of seeing the art in Florence. It’s somewhat similar to...
Mitch in Miami works with video playback systems for theme parks and museums, where to ingest a file is to load outside video into the system. Taking it back out is more than simply deleting it, he says, because clients may assume that’s quick and...
Ever heard a school bus called a school hack? Grant and Martha explain the etymology of hack, beginning with hackney horses in England, then referring to the drivers of the horse-drawn carriages, then the carriages themselves, and finally the...
A trip to the California State Railroad Museum has Grant musing about the way language can change in the mouth of a single individual— in this case, railroad conductors. He recommends a collection of sound files from metros and subways around the...
A Milwaukee listener is curious about an expression he uses to describe underlings who can’t seem to do something right: “You give ’em books, and all they do is eat the covers!” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
punch mine n.— «The museum is a history lesson of Wheatcroft’s rich coal-mining past.…Clark shows a picture of a stooped miner entering a punch mine.» —“Mining a father’s passion” by Garret Mathews in...