Learn the English of instructions — imperatives, must vs mustn’t vs don’t have to, the zero conditional for rules, and the precise language of rulebooks. Plus the teaching technique that fixes most bad explanations.

A poetic dive into “sacrilegious”; a word that literally means stealing sacred things, and what it tells us about how we still designate the untouchable.

The Sun blows a bubble bigger than the solar system, and we live inside it. Explore the heliosphere, the two Voyagers that flew out of it, and why leaving is so hard to define.

A poetic dive into the Portuguese expression engolir sapos, to swallow toads, and what amphibian skin reveals about the price of keeping the peace.

Advanced English listening practice for IELTS, TOEFL, and SAT. Listen to an academic lecture on Indigenous American civilizations and answer 10 exam-style questions.

A poetic exploration of “forgive and forget” — a phrase whose two halves have almost nothing to do with each other, and why the second one may be quietly ruining the first.

Soreness isn’t the signal. Lactic acid isn’t the culprit. What actually builds muscle is stranger and slower than you were told, and the English for it is worth having.

A poetic dive into 忍, the Japanese character for endurance, which draws a knife directly above a heart, and what a swordsmith’s clay can teach you about surviving the pressure.

A poetic dive into the Italian good-luck phrase in bocca al lupo — “into the mouth of the wolf” — the argument Italians are still having about the correct reply, and what predators actually do to a landscape.

A poetic dive into “dirge” — a word for the music of grief, which turns out to be the crumpled remains of a Latin word meaning guide me.