A listener in Weathersfield, Vermont, remembers going on car trips as a young child and wondering why, toward the end of the day, her parents would be on the lookout for motels with “bacon seed.” This is part of a complete episode.
A listener in Norwich, Connecticut, is going through a trove of love letters her parents sent each other during World War II. In one of them, her father repeatedly used the word hideous in an ironic way to mean “wonderful.” Is that part...
We spoke on a recent show about the joking consolation parents offer to a crying child, “It’ll be better before you’re married.” A podcast listener in Siberia emailed to say that in Russian, a similar saying translates to...
You walk into a used bookstore, or pull down an old volume at the library, and there it is: The smell of old books. If you detect notes of vanilla in that intoxicating scent, there’s a reason. Also, why some people think the word awesome is...
If you’re sending out party invitations, what’s a sure-fire way to get hold of everyone? Email? Snailmail? Facebook? Texting? Twitter? Or a plain old-fashioned phone call? Different folks have different communication preferences, and...
Larovers to catch meddlers, layovers for meddlers, and many variations thereof, are among the comically evasive things parents say when their kids ask, “What’s that?” It essentially means, “shoo.” This is part of a...