Two close friends from Richmond, Kentucky, call to share their hilarious dispute about how to correctly describe the one of them who’s always to blame for something. Is she the fault default or the default fault? This is part of a complete episode...
Another evocative indie bookstore name: Books Are Magic in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. And how can you resist walking into an establishment with a sign outside that says “Book People”? There are at least two stores with that name in the United States:...
A listener in Richmond, Virginia, is bothered by the overuse of the word gentleman, as when media outlets report that police have apprehended the gentleman suspected of committing a heinous crime. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Office workers in Richmond, Virginia, are having a dispute: Is the appliance that makes the coffee a coffee pot or a coffee maker? This is a classic case of synecdoche, where a single part—like the pot that holds the hot coffee—is used to refer to...
When politicians, authority figures, or bureaucrats ignore those who need help, they’re said to be sitting high and looking low. This idiom, almost exclusive to the African-American community, goes back to 1970s. It’s also used in a religious sense...
A listener from Richmond, Virginia, remembers an old game called buckeye that consists of metaphorically pulling someone’s leg, then calling Buckeye! and tugging one’s own lower eyelid. Martha suggests that it may be related to a 19th-century use of...
