Among London cabbies, a musher is somebody who owns their own cab, a starving musher is someone still paying for their cab, and musher’s lotion is rain. The book Schott’s Significa: A Miscellany of Secret Languages (Bookshop|Amazon)...
Jordan from Olympia, Washington, asks about oddball school mascots and the origin of the word mascot. Evergreen State College’s Geoduck — a giant clam native to the Pacific Northwest — belongs in the same memorable company as the UC Santa Cruz...
Jonathan in Santa Monica, California, grew up on Long Island saying he was going to mow food down, meaning eat it very fast. He found an Urban Dictionary entry labeling the expression Northeastern, though people from around the country also reported...
Writers and where they do their best creative work. A new book on Geoffrey Chaucer describes the dark, cramped, smelly room where he wrote his early work. Which raises the question: What kind of space do you need to produce your best writing...
We all lead busy lives—so are speed reading courses a good idea? Plus, if you hear someone speaking with a British accent, do you tend to assume they’re somehow more intelligent? And some common English surnames tell us stories about life in...
What do you call it when you’re out in public with friends but they’re all staring at their own cell phones? A listener from Santa Monica, California, suggests that the word techgether. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...