Some gems in this week’s mailbag: Following up on our conversation with a caller hoping to promote less-violent alternatives to the phrase kill two birds with one stone, a listener who grew up in India wrote in with one from her native language. In...
Alex in Bishop, California, works with an environmental nonprofit that partners with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. When his team goes out into the field for several days on assignment, they refer to that stretch of time as a...
In kayakers’ slang, a park and play is a part of a river where you park your vehicle closer to a river and enter the water to paddle around a particular water feature, then paddle back to your launch spot rather than continue downstream. If you make...
In Washington, DC, National Park Service employees refer to Ford’s Theater as FOTH, Peterson House as PEHO, and the Washington Monument as WAMO. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Attraction Abbreviations” We got a cool letter from...
Latin phrases are commonly misused, but there’s perhaps no better example than Vampire Butters’ butchering of per se, which simply means “in itself,” in this episode of South Park. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Misusing Per Se”...
The 2011 words of the year list wouldn’t be complete without occupy, as in the Occupy protests that sprang up in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park and elsewhere. And Zuccotti lung? It’s an illness that made its rounds among the camped-out protesters. This...

