You're listening to a way with words to show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Burnett.

The funniest Twitter thread I've read in ages was started by Shannon Proudfoot.

She's a writer in Ottawa and she asked the world,

what's the most mundane but thunderous epiphany you've ever had?

Something so ridiculously dull or elementary that still bold you over when you figured it out.

Oh boy.

And there were a lot of really useful things like the fact that on a lot of dashboards of cars,

it has the little picture of the gas tank and there's a little arrow showing you which side the

opening is on. See, I knew you would know this already. And did you know that a lot of elevators

ding once if they're going up and twice if they're going down?

Oh, I love it.

I didn't believe it but I ran out to the elevator in my building and sure enough

that elevator did that.

Now, I'm bringing this up because there are also a lot of things that can give off language.

Yeah, people confessed that when they were young and heard about guerrilla warfare,

they thought it was actually big hairy beasts.

Yeah. And somebody wrote, my sister was about 22 when she realized that the AM radio stations

work after noon.

Oh, she thought AM was about morning time only, right?

Yeah, yeah. And somebody else wrote, I thought money laundering was physically washing the money

...