Getting Down & Wordy

We talk about everyone's favorite lesbian pop star, where she came from and her own impact on language and the pop music discourse.And we discuss the etymology of baby, its origins, its evolution of use over time. When and why did we start using it to mean romantic partners? In Eurovision, we discuss Latvia's 2024 entry "Hollow" by Dons, and we talk about Latvian

Since August of 2024, women in Afghanistan have been banned by the Taliban from speaking or being heard in public places. Some Afghan women have bravely released recordings of themselves singing in protest of this horrific loss of basic freedom. We discuss the ban, and we discuss Miley Cyrus's song "Wrecking Ball", a song which in many ways exemplifies the oppressive

Valentine's Day is coming up, so we talk about the thing that no one does on Valentine's Day since we're all on dates. Fart! And who better to pair with farts than Canadian pop sensation Feist? We talk about the etymology of fart, other words for fart, words you didn't know mean fart, and the science and cultural history of farting. For Eurovision, we look at Sw

We look at the sneakily successful Mark Ambor. Give his music a listen, and you may be surprised to realize that you already know it. And we look at the second of time. How did we come to call it that? What relation does it have to second as in 2nd place? Learn about the people who standardize time and how that came about. And learn about why we use a base 60 system for time. In Eu

Today we discuss one of the biggest hits of 2024, and we look into the etymology and history of the endless list of words for coffee, from coffee itself to descriptors of types of coffee like macchiato. For Eurovision, we discuss Norway's 2024 song "Gåte" by Ulveham, and we talk about Norway's coffee culture including weird coffee pairings. Find us on instagram here: https://www.

Next week we will be talking about "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter, so this week we brought on a Sabrina Carpenter fan, our friend Jess from the wonderful music news podcast Music Notes with Jess. We also talk about her podcast, music pet peeves, and the New York dialect. Find Jess's podcast anywhere you get podcasts, or at this link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/music-no

We are once again looking at the most popular song from 100 years ago! It's 1924's "Ain't Gonna Rain No More", an old folk song performed by a variety of artists, but most famously by Wendell Woods Hall, considered by some to be the first modern pop star. We'll explore some of the popular lyrics of the song, a song which has countless verses since lots of singers like to add new on

Next week we are talking about r-dropping accents - accents that say cah for car and so on, often found in British accents, and so we hunted down a real live British person to talk to about the British accent. That person is Matt from the podcast Pick a Disc. On Matt's podcast, each episode a guest tells Matt about an album they love, and they have a nice chat about it that is insi

Happy Hanukkah listeners! We're discussing apartheid, the Israel Palestine conflict, and parallels to the history of Hanukkah. To do that, we chose Dave Matthews, a man from South Africa who has spoken out against Palestinian genocide, and his song "Last Stop" about the topic. For Eurovision, we talk about Israel's 2024 entry "Hurricane" by Eden Golan and the controversy surroundi

This Thanksgiving we are diving into the slang phrase "It's giving" which is used to describe something's vibes or je ne se quoix or . . . Just listen to the podcast, we explain it. We also talk about the etymology of the word give itself. We talk about Latto, a rapper named after a racial slur? And we'll tell you who she is and how she came to be famous. And it's Thanksgiving, so