Lee from Philadelphia’s green Amazon parrot is named Alexander Hamilton, not Polly, but strangers still greet him with Polly want a cracker? The joke is old: Poll was a nickname for parrots as far back as the 1600s, and by 1848 the cracker line was...
A sampling of several kinds of wine is called a flight. But why? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Wine Flight” Martha, here’s an interesting email that we got from Steve in Southern California. He says, At a...
Your brother-in-law the motormouth beats around the bush for so long about something that in exasperation you tell him to “cut to the chase.” The hosts explain the Hollywood roots of this phrase. This is part of a complete episode...
sidezoomer n.— «Sidezoomers have a variety of strategies, each exaggerated by the configuration of the Caldecott but replicated in bottlenecks across the land: there are the ones who zoom by a few dozen cars, angling in when they see a...
synthistrator
n.— «Synthistrator. An orchestrator who creates a synthesized mock-up recording.» —“SMPTE what?” by D.R. Stewart Variety July 10, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
You’ve just read a terrific paperback novel. Would you feel any differently about it if you’d the same words on the glowing screen of an electronic book? Martha and Grant discuss the social and psychological implications of books that...
