Following our earlier conversation about nicknames, listeners are still responding with stories about their own nicknames. Two of those show how nicknames sometimes arise from a single incident, then stick around for years. In one story, a girl...
A listener in Southampton, New York, puzzles over the language at the end of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, in which the narrator assures that the story will continue so long as children are “gay and innocent and heartless.” What does...
Is the expression right on! just an outdated relic of hippie talk, or is it making a comeback? The Journal of American Folklore traces it back to at least 1911, but it gained traction among African-Americans and hippies in the ’60s and ’70s, and now...
wendy v.— «Misogyny, anti-intellectualism, vindictive political opponents, an out-of-control press—the resignation of Wendy Alexander as leader of the Labour party at Holyrood offers something to everyone with a thesis about the loss of...