Kathy Petras & Ross Petras
Hosts, You're Saying It WrongKathryn Petras and Ross Petras, a sister and brother team, are the authors of many non-fiction books including the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means, Very Bad Poetry, and Wretched Writing. They also have compiled a series of bestselling quote books such as Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese and It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done, as well as the annual bestselling page-a-day calendar The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (now in its 24th year — with over 4.8 million copies sold) and its counterpart The 365 Smartest Things Ever Said. Their work has received the attention of, or has been featured in, diverse media outlets including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Bustle, the Atlantic Monthly, the London Times, and McSweeney’s. They have also been guests on hundreds of radio shows and tv shows, including Good Morning America, CNN, Fox & Friends, and NPR’s Here and Now.
Ross collects (and sells) rare books (chiefly early printed books in Latin and Greek). He reads, writes or speaks, with (very varying) degrees of proficiency Latin, Greek, Arabic and French, and loves reading — and watching – vintage sci fi and 1930s romantic comedy. Kathy is a noir film and novel fiend, a bad joke aficionado and committer of dreadful puns, a collector and seller of pulp art prints, and is proud to say she was on Jeopardy (but, sadly, came in third – and only won a designer watch). They both are word nuts, quote fiends and (they must admit) sometimes annoying grammar pedants. Their web site is kandrpetras.com.
-
We tackle a range of topics this week, including a brief quiz on winning spelling bee words, a common pet peeve, and some origins of fancy words. -
We wade into the conversation about AI with a look at the effects it's having on our language. Expect some grumbling! -
Get ready for some (barely) controlled chaos as we look at phrases that seem to contradict themselves, and others that just get under our skin. -
We dip back into the mailbag to answer some listener questions, including one about a famous nonsense phrase. -
This week: The thrilling conclusion of one of the most deceptively difficult spelling tests you're ever likely to come across.
-
Kathy and Ross give Fletcher one of the most deceptively difficult spelling tests you're ever likely to see. -
This week, we're looking at words with literary origins. You may not know this, but sometimes writers just make words up.
-
1985 may not seem like a long time ago, but people back then had some pretty different ideas about how to speak "properly." -
What does the stock market have to do with piracy in the West Indies? The Dutch, of course! (Really!)
-
The plural of thief is thieves, so why isn't the plural of chief chieves? And as the old woman once said, where are the beeves??? On today's show, we tackle the tricky nuance of plurals and synonyms that aren't actually synonyms.
