Understanding the varieties of conversational styles can mean the difference between feeling you’re understood and being insulted. “High-involvement” speakers interrupt or talk along with someone else to signal their enthusiasm...
What’s so special about the phrase Sit on a pan, Otis? It’s an example of a palindrome — a word or phrase that’s spelled the same backwards as it is forwards. This year’s contest known as the Oscars of the palindrome...
Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game of Name That Nursery Rhyme. The catch is the text has been run through the translation site Babelfish. What happens when Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty go from English to Spanish to Chinese and back again? This...
What does it mean to gazump someone? This phrase, specifically meaning “to swindle a customer in a real estate deal,” came about in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s before disappearing and then popping up again in England in the...
What does rolling in the deep mean, as sung by Adele? In her Rolling Stone interview from February, she traces it to British slang for close friends that have each other’s backs. This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of rhyming headlines based on the 1937 Variety issue, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix,” claiming that rural folks avoid movies about rural folks. This is part of a complete episode.