Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
Dexter from San Diego, California, says his family used the word zoris for the footwear other people call flip-flops. In Japan, the word zori refers to a type of footwear made of grass or straw, and English speakers adopted this term in the early...
Suzanne in Williamsburg, Virginia, but grew up in Southern California, where she used the term go-aheads for the rubber-soled shoes that other people call flip-flops or rubber thongs or zoris. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Go...
A woman from Hartford, Connecticut, remembers her mom used the term clackers to denote those floppy, rubber-soled shoes otherwise known as flip-flops, go-aheads, or zoris. Anyone else use clackers in that way? This is part of a complete episode...
Slap, slap, slap, slap– the sound of flip-flops on your feet. These floppy-soled shoes go by other names like zoris and thongs, but a caller wonders why in some parts of the country they’re called go-aheads. This is part of a complete episode...

