A news story about the Ho-Hum Bandit has Grant musing about the odd names that law enforcement officers give to criminals at large, usually based on their appearance or behavior, like the Barefoot Bandit, the Mummy Bandit. Or how about the Bad...
Grant shares some odd high school team mascot names, including the Wooden Shoes and the Battling Bathers. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “High School Mascot Names” Here’s some emails about school mascots. If you’ll remember, we...
If English isn’t your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak English...
You know that odd feeling when you’ve listened to a radio personality for years, but when you finally meet them, they look nothing like you’d imagined? Is there a word for that weird disconnect? Radiofreude, maybe? Hostbusters? This is part of a...
“You look like the wreck of the Hesperus!” It means you look “disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.” It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of schoolchildren familiar with this...
mortal lock n.— Note: A cinch, an odds-on favorite, a guaranteed thing or event. «It is a sure bet—a mortal lock as they say in the business— that if Robespierre was around today, we would be standing knee-deep in decapitations.» —“Five Things: Who...