Skydiving, BASE jumping, climbing the highest peaks, adventuring to remote parts of the world — pushing the boundaries of safety. For thrill-seekers, chasing the rush is what it’s all about. Where lots of us would break into a cold sweat, they experience something different: calm, focus, even moments of sublime awe. So what is it that makes thrill-seekers different? On this episode, we investigate what fuels their desire for adventure, and ask when the pursuit of kicks becomes dangerous and disruptive. We hear stories about storm chasers, rocket builders, and hikers. We also talk to a psychologist who avoids thrills in his personal life, but is deeply invested in understanding why other people love it.

In English, if we want to say that something will never occur, we say it'll happen when pigs fly or when hell freezes over. In Spanish, you can express this idea by saying it will happen "when cows fly," or el día que las vacas vuelen. In Italian, the same idea is reflected in a phrase that translates as "when donkeys fly." In Malay, that event will occur "when cats grow horns," in French "when chickens have teeth," and in Bulgarian "when the pig in yellow slippers climbs the pear tree." This rhetorical device is called an adynaton, from a Greek word that means "impossible." 


Kamela works as a nurse in Anchorage, Alaska. When she asked a patient how how he was doing post-surgery, the man responded with Well, I haven't grown gills yet. It's a jocular way of acknowledging that although he hadn't recovered completely, things could definitely be worse.


Two examples of adynaton, the rhetorical term for playful exaggeration suggesting that something will never happen, involve animals' tails. One German expression translates as "It'll happen when the hounds start barking with their tail," and a Latvian one translates as "It'll happen when an owl's tail blooms."


Alyssa from Dallas, Texas, is puzzled by some jargon she hears in her workplace. As a management consultant, she's often warned by her bosses to make sure that employees don't think that management is moving their cheese. The phrase references Spencer Johnson's 1998 bestseller, Who Moved My Cheese? (Bookshop|Amazon) This motivational fable is the story of two mice and two tiny humans caught in a maze, and how they adapt -- or don't -- when their usual food source is moved to another location.


How do you make the number one disappear? Hint: add a letter.


All the answers to this puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski are two-word phrases, and the only vowel they contain is the letter A. For example, suppose John is lounging in a shaded spot where only one variety of fruit is allowed. Where is he?


Justin in Dallas, Texas, is curious about the origin of the name William, and why the Spanish version is Guillermo. Its popularity goes back to the days of William the Conqueror. Modern languages have several versions of this name, such as German Wilhelm and Dutch Willem. For a good explanation of the phonetic changes that led to these different versions, check out Trask's Historical Linguistics by R. L. Trask, revised and edited by Robert McColl Miller. (Bookshop|Amazon)


W. H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" contains some lovely examples of the rhetorical device called adynaton, including: I'll love you, dear, I'll love you / Till China and Africa meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain / And the salmon sing in the street.


The phrase do it up brown can have two very different meanings: to "do something to perfection," as in something that is perfectly cooked, and "to swindle" someone or beat them at their own game -- metaphorically leaving them "cooked."


The phrase salt of the earth describes someone who is essential and pure of heart, a reference to the biblical Sermon on the Mount. To salt the earth usually means to render the ground useless, whether metaphorically or literally.


Following up on our discussion about the many meanings of the word regret, we share David Ray's poem "Thanks, Robert Frost," which addresses hope for the past as well as hope for the future. This poem was read with permission of the author.


Kit calls from Pulaski, Tennessee, recalls that when he played hide-and-seek as a youngster in Miami, Florida, the call he and his friends used at the end of the game to draw everyone out of hiding was All y'all come in free!. However, he's aware of other versions and wonders if they're all variations of one original phrase. There's no written record of an original version, and since this phrase tends to get passed along more often by word of mouth more than in written form, it can be highly variable. The Dictionary of American Regional English lists dozens of versions, including Ole Ole Olson all in free and all-ee all-ee ump free and all home free.


The word adynaton, which refers to a jocular phrase that emphasizes the idea of  impossibility, was adopted into English from Greek, where adynaton means "impossible," a combination of a- meaning "not" and dynatos, which means "possible." This Greek word derives from a root that means "to have power," the source also of the English word dynamic. One Hungarian adynaton translates as "when it's snowing red." A Russian version translates as "when a crayfish whistles on top of a mountain." In Serbian and Croatian, the same idea is expressed by a phrase rendered in English as "when grapes grow on willow." The Roman poet Virgil expressed the idea of something doubly improbable with the idea of "when golden apples grow on oak trees."


Tabitha from Palmer, Alaska, remembers her mother used to exclaim Stop wooling me!, a phrase used in parts of Appalachia, the Southeast, and the Ozarks to mean "Stop roughhousing!" or "Stop tussling!"


Quinn from Excelsior, Minnesota, is five years old -- well, five-and-three-quarters, as she makes sure to point out. She wonders why the letter Q is so often followed by U. In Old English, the alphabet didn't include the letter Q. The word quick, for example, was spelled cwic. The QU combination was introduced as a result of the Norman invasion, reflecting the influence of Latin. Latin, in turn, had been influenced by the Etruscans, whose alphabet included the letter qoppa. Two wonderful books about the evolution of the letters we use today are Letter Perfect by David Sacks (Bookshop|Amazon) and Michael Rosen's Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story (Bookshop|Amazon).


This episode is hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas.  In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region.

This week, music by family, for family, and about family, performed by various artists recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park.  Family life and ties are a big part of Ozark folk culture and music.  Come on home with us to the Ozarks as we enjoy a little “family time,” celebrating the joy of familial bonding through song.  Featured on this episode are a variety of artists including A.J. Croce, The Purple Hulls, Thom Bresh, Lukas & Eden Pool, The Gordons, The Honey Dewdrops, The Creek Rocks, The Lazy Goat String Band, The Weide Family, The Vogts Sisters, Love Hollar, and the Grandpa Jones Family Band.  We’ll hear songs by, for, and about family, many of them written by the artists themselves.

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1981 archival recording of Ozark originals, husband & wife team Jim & Denise Lansford performing the song “Are You From Dixie” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

In this week’s guest host segment, renowned traditional folk musician, writer, and step dancer Aubrey Atwater explores the strange tradition of “counting songs,” songs that feature counting numbers as part of their lyrics and meaning.  This episode includes, among other examples, the song “Bluebird,” written by folk music legend Jean Ritchie for her young sons.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Jackson Reffitt watched the Capitol riot play out on TV from his family home in Texas. His father, Guy, had a much closer view. He was in Washington, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, storming the building. 

When Guy Reffitt returned home, there were news stories about people being turned into authorities. Jackson says his dad warned him if he turned him in, he’d be a traitor, and that: “Traitors get shot.”

Jackson decided to secretly tape Guy, and turned the recordings over to the FBI. In the tapes, you can hear Guy bragging about what he did at the Capitol, saying: “I had every constitutional right to carry a weapon and take over the Congress.”

Guy was the first person to stand trial for his role in the riot, and the case has divided his family. 

https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-britney-schmidt

This week on the show: We dive underwater to visit creatures great and very, very small. Some of them are vocal, some are vital for the air we breathe and, sadly, many of them are threatened. How can we better protect life in the oceans? Plus — the environmental toll of your monthly bleed, and how menstrual products tell the story of the modern world, from capitalism to patriarchy to pollution.

ClassicalWorks (Episode 296)

George Orwell said, “It’s so easy to be witty about the British Empire.” As in the throwaway line that English people had conquered the world in a fit of absentmindedness. No big deal. But that empire was no joke. Boris Johnson, in the Prime Minister’s office today, says he can’t forget that his nation over the last 200 years “has directed the invasion or conquest of 178 countries – that is: most of the members of the UN.” Our guest, the historian and prodigious imperial researcher Caroline Elkins has written a shocker of a big book about just how the English got to rule the world for two centuries, and it’s a gruesome story, all told. The title of her big book is Legacy of Violence, about the brutality of “thinking imperially” to this day.

Think of the British Empire in its day as a colossal trading company with the world’s number-one navy to police its traffic in pretty much everything—including about 3 million slaves to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, also a variety of notably addictive substances like opium and oil, then sugar and tobacco. It thought of itself as a distinctively liberal empire, civilizing the people it exploited, and everywhere spreading the language of Milton and Shakespeare, free speech and the rule of law. That is the imperial line that our guest Caroline Elkins set out to bury with the official records of a police state and its practice of terror that ruled half a billion people at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. 

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 is a force to reckon with. Known as the "Resurrection" symphony, it features both tender moments and apocalyptic ones, dancelike melodies but also passages of near chaos, and an energy that inspires one to forge onward. In other words, it was the perfect piece to conclude the 2021 Beethovenfest. The festival even borrowed its motto "Rise again, yes, rise again" from the final movement's chorus. In the last episode of this season's Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts, the young charismatic French conductor Maxime Pascale leads the renowned Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Choir in a stirring performance of this masterpiece that will set your sprits soaring.