Pants in the Boot

Jan 30 2023 45 ep. 16 mins 415

Pants in the Boot Podcast artwork

The United Kingdom and America are two countries separated by the same language, George Bernard Shaw never said, and we’ll be proving that in this podcast. We gather Incomparable panelists from the UK and America, as well as Canada and other English-speaking regions, and try to explain to each other the distinctions between biscuit and cookie, lemonade and fizzy water, public school and, er, public school, and why when we put our pants in our boot, we mean something altogether different.

Society & Culture Science

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

45: Pants in the Pants in the Boot

Jan 30 2023 16 mins

Glenn takes a seat while panelists discuss literal American-style pants and trousers around the world that are designed for people who identify as women—and the many styles that fail to fit many bodies! Also: missing pockets—the agents of the patriarchy never rest....

44: Expletive Delighted

Jan 18 2023 22 mins

This episode features outbursts of descriptive words of body parts and fluids—and not just in English. We talk both about stuff people are uncomfortable saying and words that they use as freely as breathing air. With our international cast of characters on this episode, spanning three continents and two hemispheres, we mix English, Dutch, Russian, and Swedish, with a dash of Scot

43: Thingumbob

Oct 10 2022 16 mins

Languages are full of, um, filler words, you know, like, what’s it? We talk in this episode about doodads, whatchamacallits, mojang, and oder, right?...

42: Crunchy Granola Family

Sep 23 2022 25 mins

We’re back with a new set of Pants in the Boots episode with our largest, most geographically and linguistically varied set of panelists—from New Zealand/Aotearoa in the southern hemisphere to 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away in Sweden, we spanned several time zones and multiple native tongues…all to talk about that most English language of things: muesli! After a recent Gamesho

41: Broek in de Laars

May 23 2022 3 mins

Two of our panelists have Dutch origins and so we veer from our usual discussion of things related to English to dive briefly into salty licorice, Christmas holiday letters made of chocolate, and stroopwafel dipping....

40: The Candy Man Can't

May 09 2022 29 mins

We’re sweet on sugar, but many of our panelists don’t cotton to American candy—including the American participants. We discuss our favorite chocolate bars and confections, Glenn forgets the word for licorice briefly, seaside rock crops up, and we drop into dipping Tim Tams. The Surgeon General warns that this episode might exceed your sugar allocation for the year. This is ou

39: Brew Who?

Apr 25 2022 20 mins

Soda, pop, soda pop, soft drink, tonic, seltzer, and other fizzy drinks form the sweet backbone of our discussion as panelists talk about their childhood drinks, fountains and soda jerks, and a special beverage from Malta....

38: Secret New Zealander

Apr 11 2022 7 mins

People who speak English with one accent trying to ape another region or country’s often sound ridiculous to the people of that other place—but convincing to those from their native land’s impression of what people in that other place sound like. Benedict Cumberbatch, just for instance. Confused? It’ll all make sense when we go to Glasgow....

37: Accents Acute

Mar 28 2022 29 mins

There’s something about the way people in different countries makes those from others swoon. But there’s often a disdain for regional accents, particularly ones that have class markers. In a language with few accent marks above letters, we talk about the dulcet tones we like from around the world....

36: All Language Is Made Up

Mar 14 2022 16 mins

Hokey crokey, Batman! We start by talking about nonsense words—words that are filler and mean nothing in the language or dialect in which they’re used—but then transition to more meaningful matters, like the way in which aboriginal and native languages in various countries have made inroads into English. The movie Brave is mentioned and, of course, Johnny Vegas of St Helens..