Fletcher Powell

Welcome back to You're Saying It Wrong, the podcast! 

For each episode, Kathy Petras and Ross Petras—our sister-and-brother team of language experts—send Fletcher a word. He's not allowed to look up the pronunciation, he just has to call the Petrases and tell them how he thinks he's supposed to say it. The conversation is recorded and we all get to listen in!

The word for this episode is draught.

This is You're Saying It Wrong, the podcast! If you listened past the credits of episodes 1 and 2, you know that Fletcher is good about tagging on "one more thing" to each podcast. Episode 3 is no exception.

I don’t know anything about the 1973 novel the new movie The House With A Clock In Its Walls is based on, but the movie hints at a story that’s much more melancholy and emotionally complex than what we actually get. It seems like it could have been a tale about dealing with grief and loss, set against the wonder and whimsy of magic and wizards and witches.

September is a tough month for movies. It’s not quite the dumping ground August is, but award-season movies don’t really start until October, so September is just kind of… here. But, if you look, you just might find something unexpectedly delightful.

We're back! Welcome to Episode 2 of You're Saying It Wrong, the podcast! 

A reminder of how the podcast works: For each episode, Kathy Petras and Ross Petras — our sister-and-brother team of language experts — send Fletcher a word. He's not allowed to look up the pronunciation, he just has to call the Petrases and tell them how he thinks he's supposed to say it. The conversation is recorded and we all get to listen in!

The word for this episode is comptroller.

According to national statistics, on average someone is abused by their domestic partner every nine seconds. A report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds.

These are not words I expected to be saying when I first started watching the new documentary Minding the Gap. As far as I knew, the movie was just getting good buzz and looked like it was about some kids with their skateboards.

The new mystery-thriller Searching is probably a bit better than it has any right to be, given that it’s the latest in what seems like a series of movies where almost all of the action takes place on computer screens. 

If you're looking for the inaugural episode of the You're Saying It Wrong podcast, you've found it! In this episode, our host, Fletcher Powell, will introduce us to our language experts, sister and brother team Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, who literally wrote the book on the subject: You're Saying It Wrong. (We stole the title, which is fine, because we stole them, too.)

I heard a story on Marketplace about how so many movie posters show women without heads. Like, they just show their bodies and their heads exist somewhere outside the poster’s boundaries. That story was more specifically about sexualization, but it’s also indicative of something we see way, way too often in movies, and in everyday life—women being stripped of their identity, or, if they’re allowed to have an identity, it’s usually one that exists only in relation to the men in their lives.

If you’ve heard anything about Crazy Rich Asians, you’ve probably heard this: It’s apparently the first major American studio release featuring an East or Southeast Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club. Which came out in 1993. 1993! That’s 25 years ago! That’s insane!