By a Landslide (Rebroadcast) - 27 July 2026
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese t...
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A Way with Words — language, linguistics, and callers from all over
A fun weekly radio show about language seen through culture, history, and family. Co-hosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett talk with callers who have questions and stories about linguistic...
A Way with Words — language, linguistics, and callers from all over Podcast Guide
Listen to A Way with Words — language, linguistics, and callers from all over, a Society & Culture podcast by A Way with Words. Stream 980 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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20 of 980 episodes
Mischief Night - 20 July 2026
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originatin...
Big Dog (Rebroadcast) - 13 July 2026
If you’re ever near a sundial, step closer and look for a message. Many sundials bear haunting, poetic inscriptions about the brevity of lif...
Cheese Toasties - 6 July 2026
If you mistype something, that’s a typo. But what do you call it when your voice-to-text program mistypes as you’re dictating? Is that a mic...
Hot Gossip (Rebroadcast) - 29 June 2026
Gossip goes by many names: the poop, the scoop, the lowdown, the dope, the scuttlebutt, the 411, the grapes, the gore, and hot tea. Plus, Jo...
Flash in the Pan - 22 June 2026
It’s the ultimate road trip: A father and son retrace the journey of Odysseus and find a way to navigate their relationship. Plus, the story...
In the Ballpark (Rebroadcast) - 15 June 2026
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronic...
Outer Space - 8 June 2026
A writer stumbles upon a tiny, motionless creature on a country road and, against all good advice, takes it home. The resulting memoir, Rais...
Stub Your Toe (Rebroadcast) - 1 June 2026
Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experie...
Snookums and Snicklefritz (Rebroadcast) - 25 May 2026
A new book about how animals perceive their environment reveals immense worlds beyond our own. A bee can see ultraviolet light, catfish have...
If Grandma Had Wheels (Rebroadcast) - 18 May 2026
While compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, lexicographer James Murray exchanged hundreds of letters a week with authors, advisors, and v...
Match Game - 11 May 2026
Why do speakers of the same language have different accents? A lively new book called Why We Talk Funny offers a linguist’s look at how and...
Touch Grass (Rebroadcast) - 4 May 2026
High school students in Alabama share some favorite slang terms. If someone tells you to touch grass, they’re telling you to get a reality c...
Catch My Drift - 27 April 2026
If you work in tech support, you might use snarky slang for problems caused by computer users themselves. There’s the acronym PEBCAK, for ex...
Funny Papers (Rebroadcast) - 20 April 2026
There are word nerds, and then there’s the woman who set up a folding chair on sidewalks throughout the country, cheerfully dispensing tips...
Buttons on Ice Cream - 13 April 2026
How do dictionaries define colors? And why are some of those definitions so confusing, like “stronger than carmine” and “bluer than fiesta”?...
Go Bananas (Rebroadcast) - 6 April 2026
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...
What in Tarnation (Rebroadcast) - 30 March 2026
Language is always evolving, and that’s also true for American Sign Language. A century ago, the sign for “telephone” was one fist below you...
Tip of the Iceberg - 23 March 2026
Why does the term vegetarian cause so much confusion? Some people assume it means avoiding red meat but still eating chicken. And is there a...
Blue Streak (Rebroadcast) - 16 March 2026
How long can a newly married woman be called a bride? Does bride apply only as long as her wedding day, or does it extend right on through t...