Carrie Ann and her cousin Danielle from Minneapolis, Minnesota, wonder about the pronunciation of the word rhetoric. Is the stress on the first syllable or the second? This is part of a complete episode.
In 1944, an Italian scientist discovered a drug that he later named for his wife. His wife’s name was Marguerite, but she went by Rita — which is why this now familiar drug is known as Ritalin. Plus, a poem about churning butter shows how a...
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
Scientists have named some recently discovered species of tree frogs after characters from Star Trek. Why? Because of the boops and trills and other sounds that these frogs make. And: naming your children with the virtues you hope they’ll...
Poet and teacher Frances Klein reports that a friend refers to the “overemphasized voice people use to read poems” as spoken Garamond. This is part of a complete episode.