A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
Say you’re on a long road trip. Do you have a term for another driver who happens to be traveling the same direction and sets the pace for your car mile after mile? In an earlier episode, a Rhode Island listener left us wondering why her Swedish...
Noah in Burlington, Vermont, wonders about the catchphrase I’m too cringe for New York, too based for LA. As explained at Know Your Meme, the slang term based is now a positive term popularized by the rapper Lil B, referring to one’s...
Imagine you’re on a long road trip. Is there a word for that other driver who sets the pace for your car mile after mile? Road buddy, perhaps? A Rhode Island caller says her family calls that driver a Follow John. Social psychologist Stanley...
JJ spent much of his life in Rhode Island but now lives in Racine, Wisconsin, which has led to some hilarious misunderstandings involving the different dialects of those regions. For one thing, his neighbors in the Midwest made certain assumptions...
If you’ve never had the salad topping called Rhode Island dressing, it may be because you’ve never been to Sweden,where you can find it on grocery store shelves. This is part of a complete episode.