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A fun radio show and podcast about language examined through family, history, and culture.

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Currently viewing the tag: "Harvard University"

Library Marvels

Posted by Grant Barrett on May 6, 2016 · Add Comment

Pulitzer-winning historian Barbara Tuchman has observed that her single most formative educational experience was exploring Harvard’s Widener Library. She captured the feelings of many library lovers when she added that her own daughter couldn’t enter that building “without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle.” This is part of [...]

A Word is Not a Crystal

Posted by Grant Barrett on May 15, 2015 · Add Comment

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, in a Supreme Court opinion no less, that “a word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.” This is part of a complete [...]

Insegrevious Paratereseomaniacs

Posted by Grant Barrett on August 23, 2008 · Add Comment

In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?

Ig Nobel Prizes

Posted by Grant Barrett on December 8, 2007 · Add Comment

A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor this year’s winners for linguistics and literature. This is part of a complete [...]

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Library Marvels

A Word is Not a Crystal

Insegrevious Paratereseomaniacs

Ig Nobel Prizes