Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, helping to make Easter dinner easy with ready to heat and serve citrus glazed ham, ogrotten potatoes, deviled eggs, and pastry trays. Make it easy with Harman's.

Stefan Fatsis is the kind of journalist who likes to live the experience of the subject he's investigating.

It was a technique the writer George Plimpton used when he trained as a quarterback for the Detroit Lions and pitched on the mound in Major League Baseball.

Fatsis trained as a place kicker with the Denver Broncos for his book A Few Seconds of Panic. For his book Word Freak, he entered tournaments to play

competitive Scrabble. And in his latest project, he embedded himself in the exciting world of

wait for it, dictionaries.

Fatsis loves dictionaries.

And he knows exactly when he fell in love.

It was his 11th birthday when he got as his present the Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language.

I'm holding it right now.

I got a dictionary on my 11th birthday from my mother.

It is a Webster's New World Dictionary, second college edition, deluxe color edition.

It's got this lovely Robbins Egg Blue hardcover.

I lost the jacket years ago.

It is bandaged, covered with clear tape, which I had to do multiple times.

I used this book when I was a kid in high school, when I was an editor and a reporter at my

college newspaper, and into my career for many, many years.

I carried this book around with me until whatever newspaper or wire service I was

working for used a different source and I had to switch it out on my desk. So it's deeply

meaningful to me. So I owe a lot to my mom. She must have been pretty prescient to buy this book and inscribe it to Stefan.

A very happy birthday, love and kisses, mother and daddy.

It started me on this lifelong love of words that kind of transformed my career and my life and my interests.

...