A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...
Noah in Burlington, Vermont, wonders about the catchphrase I’m too cringe for New York, too based for LA. As explained at Know Your Meme, the slang term based is now a positive term popularized by the rapper Lil B, referring to one’s...
After our conversation about mini-seasons between the usual winter, spring, summer, and fall, listeners share other examples: stick season in Vermont and mud season in Michigan. The Old English word for “February,” solmonath, may derive...
A Vermont listener says that if she has to be absent from work due to illness, she would call in sick. Her twenty-something daughters, however, use the phrase call out sick. Is this a generational difference, or a regional one, and is one more...
Fourteen-year-old Harry from Charlotte, Vermont, asks why we say something is clean as a whistle. Clean as a whistle refers not to a physical whistle, but to the purity of the sibilant sound. This is part of a complete episode.
Jean in Thetford, Vermont, remembers using the term cherry bump to refer to that moment when part of a backyard swingset leaves the ground for a moment, then lands with a thump. Another term for it is cherry bomb, which can also be used for a...