CLASSIC: Idiomatic For The People, Part I

Ridiculous History

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.3 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Language is beautiful and, in many cases, continually evolving. As a result, we end up with hundreds of strange idioms and figures of speech that we use on a daily basis, with little to no understanding of what they originally meant. Join the guys and special guest, Rowan Newbie, the creator of the Pitches podcast, as they explore the bizarre origins of your favorite turns of phrase. (Ben here, with a bonus question: I went through and noted multiple turns of phrase we all used unintentionally - how many can you catch?)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	fellow ridiculous historians, this classic episode has an unexpected gift. It's a special guest,
0:07.9	longtime friend of the show, our pal, Rowan Newby. Man, speaking of Rowan Newby, he doesn't do the
0:14.6	podcast pitches anymore, but a record that he and I made together that took us many, many years,
0:20.0	just came out. It's on Spotify. Rowan Newby, it's called Some Hippie You Turned Out to Be. And the record just got picked up by a cool indie label out of Philly called Perpetual Doom. So do check it out. I think there's going to be physical versions coming soon. Yeah, and you guys did phenomenal work on that. We talked about that a little bit off air.
0:40.9	I love, oh, that lonely song.
0:42.1	Once you've been lonely.
0:43.9	Once you've been lonely, that's a banger.
0:44.7	Check it out.
0:47.0	And no do please save me a vinyl.
0:48.5	No vinyl, yeah.
0:51.3	But maybe Perpetual Doom will be putting it out in that format. And so in this episode, which is part of a on and off continuing series.
0:57.6	Mainly off, but man, it's reminding us, I think, we should bring it back.
1:01.3	We should bring it back.
1:03.1	We had ruined with us.
1:05.6	We also, later, I think, in this series, we talked to longtime friend of the show, our brother
1:10.2	in arms, Frank Mulherin.
1:11.7	About crack.
1:12.8	Not like the drug, the word, the Irish parlance.
1:16.3	Yes.
1:16.9	C-R-A-I-C.
1:18.6	So we got interested in the idea of idioms and favorite turns of phrases.
1:25.2	We can't wait for you to hear this one, folks.
	...

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