Daniel - The Curious Guide

From around the year 1440 comes a long English poem, preserved in a single handwritten copy. In the middle of it is a line that, in modern spelling, reads: “Some beat the bush and some the birds take.

It’s night in the woods of nineteenth-century America. A hunting dog has chased a raccoon, and now it stands under a tall tree, barking with total confidence. The hunter runs over, looks up… and the t

Here’s a surprise: one of the most common shopping phrases in American English became famous during arguments about nuclear weapons.

Can a person really be “all ears”? Picture it for a second: no arms, no legs, just two giant ears waiting for news. It’s a funny image, and that’s exactly why the phrase works.

Sam is standing at the bus stop in the rain. A car drives through a puddle and soaks his pants. Then, as he’s wiping off the mud, his bus pulls away without him.

Priya: Tom says he’s really sorry he forgot my birthday.
Aisha: That’s nice. Did he do anything about it?
Priya: Well… he said he’d take me to dinner. That was three weeks ago.
Aisha: Hmm. Actions spe

Nina has spent ten minutes typing a message to her landlord about a leak under the kitchen sink. Where the water is coming from, how big the puddle is, which pipe looks wet. Then she stops, deletes ev

In Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman, there is a painful moment between a father and his son. Biff, the son, finally tells his father the truth as he sees it: “Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and

Here’s a question I like to ask learners: on the day something bad happens, can you call it a blessing in disguise?