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...
A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, “Look...
What do you call a party that new parents throw to introduce a baby to family and friends? Kiss-and-cry? Try sip-and-see. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sip-and-See” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is...
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...
An Orange County, California, listener describes how both his left-handed parents were forced as children to learn to write with their non-dominant hand. Their handwriting looked unusual, to say the least. Grant discusses myths about handedness and...