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Welcome to the weird, wild, scintillatingly stylish, and syntactically sound world of RED PEN—the grammar podcast that won't put you to sleep.Brought to you by the Columbia Journalism Review and hosted by old buds Ryan Davis and Mike Laws, RED PEN plucks examples from the news (as well as from novels, music, movies—wherever!) to answer all those questions you were too afraid to ask in English class.Digressions may include: Green Day's early work, the oppressive atmosphere of latter-day Batman movies, and, of course, cats. Lots of cats.
36 Episodes
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Prepare to be scandalized. Oh, your stars! Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes The Science of Curse Words: Why The &@$! Do We Swear?, John-Erik Jordan, Babbel
Come for the critical reappraisal of ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ stay for Mike’s shocking revelation. Anon, good nurse! Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes: The Duchess of Malfi, John W...
Oh, boy, are the “stick to the topic” ppl gonna love this one. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes: Underworld podcast episode on Medellin Vladimir Nabokov: Heat Seeker, Mike Laws,...
When, whether, and how often. With a little help from Humbert Humbert. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov on Google Books A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into t...
Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love nuance. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
You best believe we seen this trend. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
In which Mike finally reads the comments. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
How Padma Lakshmi schooled us all on the "middle voice." Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes: "It eats salty": middle voice on "Top Chef," Language Log on "stimulus subject percep...
And a few we hate. And, for some reason, a few that are German. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Show Notes: The Staten Island Ferry Schedule (But sign your marriage license on dry land.) Out of Office podcast Phonesthemes @germanonliners
On the record, off the record, on background, deep background: What to expect when you're expecting to be a source. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS. Show Notes: A scrappy newspaper’s fina...
It's an epidemic, people: one-word compound nouns standing in for phrasal verbs. Is Kelly Clarkson to blame? Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach
Being a podcast produced under the aegis of a university, Red Pen is about to make like the kiddies, ditching the books and reclining poolside for the summer. We'll be back after Labor Day, armed with killer tans, fresh Trapper Keepers—and an exciting slate of guests. Till then! Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Re...
Does English offer an ungendered third-person singular, and if so, who uses it? Everyone and their mother, as it turns out—going all the way back to the Middle Ages. Yinz gotta hear this one. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters...
Ghastly puns aside, English is pretty agreeable in terms of agreement—but still presents some pitfalls when it comes to the alignment of grammatical number or person. Join us as we get into all that, plus stick around for (more) chatter about ChatGPT and about the most kickass Finnish film maybe ever. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Offici...
What do the musical Rent, the movie Seven, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, Kurt Cobain, and Lisa Simpson have in common? Why, they all imparted important, improbable vocab onto a young Ryan, Amanda, and Mike, of course (of course!). Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing...
The pluckiest conjugation in the English language; the tense that won't go gentle into that good night. Reports of its death have been… somewhat exaggerated. (Though if it weren't for country lyrics, who knows where we'd be?) Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or c...
Unless you're that one guy from Goodfellas—or verses one and three of a classic pop song—it's probably not a great idea to repeat yourself. But are you doing it without realizing? Never fear: Ryan, Mike, and Amanda are here with a list of everyday pleonasms to keep an ear out for. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red...
Restrictive or nonrestrictive, essential or non-: let's dispense with the terminology and ditch the reference manuals in favor of practical advice (namely on whether and when to use those damn commas). Plus, more on everyone's favorite lovably fallible chatbot. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist. To use Red Pen chapters, swip...
The world's changing, and so are the rules for moving through it. But did New York magazine err in its recent guide to 21st-century etiquette? Join us as we hash out canceling plans the day of, blasting out iMessages at 5am, responding "k" vs. "kk" vs. "ok," and… winking? Plus stick around after the bell rings for a spirited chat about fad diets. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your fa...
Do you nictitate, or do you blink? Were the Clampetts new-money, or would you call them parvenus or arrivistes? When it comes to word choice, English draws the battle lines across a few fronts: the plainspoken versus the purple, the Saxonic versus the Latinate, Hemingway versus Nabokov. So let's get into it. Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you. Thing 1: Ryan Davis Thing 2: Mike Laws Producer: Amanda Darrach Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen O...
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Cut and dry or cut and dried? Mike says the former in one ep. but I always thought it was the latter.
I listened to one episode. Other than two guys babbling and giggling at themselves, I'm not sure what it's about. I came for discussions of grammar and editing, of which there is almost none, so one episode was one too many for me.