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...
A Kentucky cross-country runner had a case of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, or fear of the number 666. This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a number game about things so grand, words like forever become five-ever. This is part of a complete episode.
A listener from San Diego, California, sent us two terms: pawburst, which happens when a cat reaches out to stretch, and head-to-hat ratio, or the number of jobs one person has to juggle. This is part of a complete episode.
It’s a common superstition: do not split a pole. That is, if two people are walking down the street, they shouldn’t each walk around a different side of a lamppost, telephone pole, or mailbox. But if they do, there’s a remedy: just...
Whether it’s bytes of data or intergalactic distances, humans are accumulating ever more massive amounts of data. But how do we use language to describe such mind-bogglingly huge numbers? There’s mega, as in mega-millions, and giga, as...