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Episode 1521

Spill the Tea

If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus...

Episode 1511

Care Package

Sending someone a care package shows you care, of course. But the first care packages were boxes of food and personal items for survivors of World War II. They were from the Committee for American Remittances to Europe, the acronym for which is CARE...

Episode 1615

Takes the Cake

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...

Dodo the Baby

Trinette in Virginia Beach, Virginia, remembers that growing up in Ascension Parish in southern Louisiana, her family would use the phrases dodo the baby or let’s go dodo. Sometimes spelled dodu, the word dodo meaning “sleep” is...

Episode 1613

Blessing Box

Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...

Take “The” 405 Like a SoCal Native

Why do southern Californians refer to interstate thoroughfares with the definite article, as in the 405 or the 8? This usage is a result of the history of freeways in Southern California, and is heard in a few other places, including Phoenix...