Do you live around here or ride a bicycle?This goofy saying goes back to at least the 1920s. It’s a handy icebreaker for those fond of Dad jokes, as is this one: Does your mother have any children that lived? This is part of a complete episode.
In 1803, a shy British pharmacist wrote a pamphlet that made him a reluctant celebrity. The reason? He proposed a revolutionary new system for classifying clouds — with Latin names we still use today, like cumulus, cirrus, and stratus. Also: when...
Cara in San Diego, California, notes that the word monologue refers to something spoken by one person while dialogue involves two people speaking, and that a bicycle has two wheels and a unicycle has one. So why aren’t they monocycles and...
To transmit information during wartime, various industries used to encode their messages letter by letter with an elaborate system–a primitive version of today’s digital encryption. Grant breaks down some of those secret codes, and...
The origins of the peace symbol, why we say someone who’s enthusiastic is gung ho, a tasty spin on stuffed foccacia that originated in eastern Sicily, curling parents, sharking and other words for driving around a parking lot looking for a...
In cycling slang, on the rivet refers to putting out maximum effort, and derives from the way cyclists lean all the way forward on the hard bicycle seat, which traditionally has a flat rivet in the very front. This is part of a complete episode.