If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus...
Craig from Helena, Montana, grew up hearing pop for a carbonated drink and asks where the term comes from. The word apparently refers to the popping sound of a cork or stopper leaving an early fizzy-drink bottle. Soda is tied to soda ash, sodium...
Megan from Billings, Montana, asks what to call the foam sleeve that slips over a can: cozy, koozie, coozy, kozy, or another spelling. The word traces back to tea cozy, the knitted or padded cover that keeps a teapot warm, traditionally pronounced...
Sure, it’s scary to send your writing to a literary agent. But pity the poor agent who must wade through hundreds of terrible query letters a week! One of them shares excerpts from those hilariously bad query letters on a blog called SlushPile...
Bathroom walls, missing graffiti, and social media. Where have all the cute quips on bathroom stalls gone? We wonder about the apparent decline of restroom graffiti. Are people saving their witticisms for Twitter and Facebook? And: If...
We’ve spoken on the show about the suicide drink— that thing where you mix everything at the soda fountain into one cup. And we’ve also covered the Matt Dillon, when a bartender pours whatever’s in the bar mat into a cocktail glass...

