John, a 10-year-old from Dallas, Texas, wonders why an unpredictable or uncontrollable person can be referred to as a loose cannon. This is part of a complete episode.
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I waited days for the online posting of this episode, just so I could forward to family and friends the segment with John thus, under the Subject header “Kid caller’s word-nerd vocabulary cracks up hosts of public-radio language show”: “On ‘A Way With Words’ the other day, little John from Dallas, whose apparent age would seem to be either on the cusp of double digits or that of a descendant of one or more of the actors who played Munchkins somewhere over the rainbow back in 1939, had hosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett cracking up right from his salutation (starting at 16:35 on “Yak Shaving” episode from 8 June 2020), thence throughout their discussion of the term ‘loose cannon’, with his grad-school vocabulary.”