It’s the ultimate road trip: A father and son retrace the journey of Odysseus and find a way to navigate their relationship. Plus, the story behind the phrase a flash in the pan: It has nothing to do with cooking or gold mining. Also, what’s a...
During our online discussion about how being focused on one’s phone or camera can distract from fully participating in an experience, a listener brought up the term chimping. As we’ve noted before, chimping refers to fiddling with the buttons on a...
How can you kick the verbal habit of saying you know and um so many times in a sentence? For one thing, get comfortable with pauses. There’s no need to fill every silence during a conversation. Also, a doctor who treats patients in Appalachia...
Skip, a sailing enthusiast from Gainesville, Florida, has been pondering radio protocols, such as the distress signal mayday!, and sécurité, which announces any of various warnings. There’s also pan-pan, repeated three times, a call that...
Deadpan, an adjective for a flat, unsmiling affect, as in deadpan humor, comes from pan as slang for “face.” By the early 1900s pan could mean the human face, so a deadpan was a face with nothing happening on it. Early uses of deadpan show up in...
According to a listener in San Diego, when a DJ plays a great set, he’s said to rinse it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Rinse It” Martha, Sasha in San Diego wrote to share a little slang with us. Sasha is a...