Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
In railroad workers’ slang, the expression to bake a cake means to build up steam in a locomotive by stoking a fire. Another term for a train’s fireman is bakehead. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Railroad Baking...
If you simply read each letter aloud, you can see why O.U.Q.T.! U.R.A.B.U.T.! can be interpreted to mean “Oh, you cutie! You are a beauty!” A statement expressed that way with letters, numerals, or drawings is called a rebus, or, if...
When does a word’s past make it too sensitive to use in the present? In contra dancing, there’s a particular move that dancers traditionally call a gypsy. But there’s a growing recognition that many people find the term gypsy...
In the game of appending -ing to a movie title to change its plot, the movies Strangers on a Train and Network both become films about corporate life. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Strangers on a Training” We were...
Gifts for book lovers: Martha recommends one for lovers of libraries and another for students of Spanish. Grant suggests some enchanting novels for young readers. When it comes to books, though, you can’t always judge them by their original...