Will, an emergency medical technician in Queens, New York, offers this bit of lingo from his line of work: skell, meaning a “lowlife.” In South African slang, the word skelm means the same thing. Will and his colleagues also use the term...
An artist asks strangers to write haiku about the pandemic and gets back poetic, poignant glimpses of life under lockdown. Plus, the new book Queenspotting features the colorful language of beekeeping! Bees tell each other about a good source of...
An adult male cat is called a tom. What’s the female called? A queen. This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a royal quiz in honor of the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William. He celebrates the wedding of the King and Queen with clues to answers that contain the letters “K” and “Q” next to each other...
Reverend William Archibald Spooner was known for transposing sounds, like raising a glass “to our queer old dean” instead of “to our dear old queen.” A caller shares some favorite spoonerisms. This is part of a complete...
In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?