On the website A Poem From Us, people upload videos of themselves reading poetry from other writers. Here, David Jones reads “A Cradle Song” by William Butler Yeats. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Poem From...
If someone offered you a croaker with an old man’s face, would you accept? You should! Croaker is a slang term for a hundred dollar bill. Did you ever wonder why we turn up the air conditioning to bring the temperature down? Plus, the tricky...
A veteran broadcaster recalls a brilliant example of sesquipedalian language. Fifty years ago, he stubbed his foot on the beach and a group of college boys told him to go to his parents and get an anatomical juxtaposition of the orbicular ors...
Word birth is Deb Roy’s term for the moment a child’s babble sharpens into a recognizable word. To study it, the MIT cognitive scientist and his wife wired their home with 11 cameras and 14 microphones, plus a privacy button, and recorded their...
Crazy crossword clues, Round 2: “Letters from your parents”? (3 letters) and “Sound elicited by an electric can opener” (5 letters). This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “More Crossword Clues” Earlier...
Parents sometimes refer to their rascally kids as honyocks. Where’d we get a word like that? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Honyocks” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Ethan from Reidsburg. I have a...