Safe as Houses - 22 December 2025
Temperature blankets are a visual and tactile mirror of the day’s weather. Knitters use specific shades of yarn to match daily temperatures, creating ...
Minicast Bonus: Cocktail
In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant look into the myriad stories behind the word cocktail. Does the drink name come from feather...
Potatoes and Point - 15 December 2025
If there’s a logophile on your gift list, you have lots of choices, including a new trivia game for language-lovers and a murder mystery for the word-...
Minicast Bonus: Down Bucket
In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant step into the historic streets of Marblehead, Massachusetts, where the simple cry of “Down b...
Primary Colors (Rebroadcast) - 8 December 2025
Centuries ago, monks who took a vow of silence developed their own hand signs, with hundreds of gestures, that are still in use today. Plus, how do sp...
Minicast Bonus: Picketwire
In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant explore the ways foreign place names transform on official maps and in local slang. Discover...
Drop in the Bucket - 1 December 2025
A sumptuous new collection of poems about specific photographs shows how the moment in time captured by camera can inspire a verbal work of art as wel...
Deep Fried Air (Rebroadcast) - 24 November 2025
Eels, orts, and Wordle! Sweden awarded its most prestigious literary award to a book about . . . eels. The Book of Eels reveals the mysterious life cy...
No Bones - 17 November 2025
Whippoorwills, bob whites, and chickadees. How do we decide the names of birds and what to call their calls? Plus, the last syllables of Arkansas and ...
East Overshoe (Rebroadcast) - 10 November 2025
Some people work hard to lose their accent in order to fit in when they move somewhere else. But others may be homesick for the sounds they grew up wi...