Books for sale, books for free, and wisdom passed down through the ages. Libraries aren’t just repositories for books — they’re often a great place to find gently used volumes for sale. Or you can always visit a “little free library” — a...
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 there were a...
An eponymous law is a joking bit of wisdom named after someone, like Murphy’s Law, which states “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Eponymous Laws” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the...
The good thing about lending someone your time machine? You pretty much get it back immediately. “I know, right?!” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Lending Your Time Machine” Grant, I have an aphorism that I thought you would like...
“Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” Thank you to our listeners for this and other modern proverbs. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Modern Proverbs from Listeners” I’m looking at...
Antimetabole, from Greek words meaning “turning about in the opposite direction,” is the rhetorical turn in “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” where the same words come back in reverse order. Bascom in Redding, California, collects...