Tony says when he was growing up in Orange County, California, he and his friends would use the exclamation Moded! meaning “In your face!” or “Busted!” This expression, and variations of it such as Molded! and Moted!, was...
An artist asks strangers to write haiku about the pandemic and gets back poetic, poignant glimpses of life under lockdown. Plus, the new book Queenspotting features the colorful language of beekeeping! Bees tell each other about a good source of...
The Orange County Museum of Art commissioned Los Angeles artist Alan Nakagawa to do a project he called “Social Distancing, Haiku, and You,” in which he invited the public to write haikus about the experience of living through the COVID...
The anatomy of effective prose, and the poetry of anatomy. Ever wonder what it’d be like to audit a class taught by a famous writer? A graduate student’s essay offers a taste of a semester studying with author Annie Dillard. Also, what...
Diego from Orange County, California, wonders: How did George Washington sound when speaking? We can make guesses about his speech, accent, and dialect based on the historical context. This is part of a complete episode.
Everyone knows about Tang as that orange kick in a glass, but could it also be an entree? A listener from Plano, Texas, found an elderly relative’s plan for family meals from 1947, which lists “tang with molasses” as a main course...