Straight and Narrow - 16 June 2025

“Are we ready to order yet?” Why do restaurant servers use the word “we” when they’re not eating with you or helping you pay the bill? And a story of Cold War intrigue: A young saxophone player’s clever ruse to smuggle information past KGB agents by encoding it in sheet music. Pl ...  Show more

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? Plus, those Little Free Libraries filled with book ...  Show more

Click here to read the full episode summary English spelling can be hard. We don't always spell words the way they sound and sometimes two words can sound the same and be spelled differently. Those words can have completely different meanings. Today Lindsay and Michelle show you ...  Show more

Finn and Catherine talk through some of the complexities of English spelling. 

Finn and Catherine talk through some of the complexities of English spelling. 

In the world of great debates, there is one that has been long enduring and still keeps language prescriptivists awake at night: Is it "tom-ay-to" or "tom-ah-to"? Now, this may not seem as pressing as whether nuclear fusion is possible, but to people in the linguistic trenches, i ...  Show more