Sometimes it’s a challenge to give a book a chance: How many pages should you read before deciding it’s not worth your time? There’s a new formula to help with that decision — and it’s all based on your age. • Have you ever...
What do you call a long sandwich filled with lots of ingredients? Whether you call it a sub, a hoagie, a grinder, or something else entirely depends on where you’re from. And: Martha’s visit to an Alaskan reindeer ranch reveals why you...
San Diego journalist Kelly Davis reports that an automated transcription error resulted in the phrase serious mental Elvis. This is part of a complete episode.
A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
The Rockefeller State Park Preserve near Pleasantville, New York, features a fine example of a glacial erratic, a giant rock left behind thousands of years ago by a glacier as it moved. In this case, the word erratic functions as a noun. Both the...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...