Red Pen: A Grammar Podcast: Recent Episodes
Columbia Journalism Review
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.
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 NotesThe Science of Curse Words: Why The &@$! Do We Swear?, John-Erik Jordan, Babbel
How to crack the attention economy? Coldcock your readers.
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:Breaking the Laws, Mike on Nabokov, Red Pen S2 E8
Dangler Untangler: Make those modifiers sing, Mike on dangling modifiers, Red Pen S1 E5
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 Webster
Tamburlaine the Great, Part I, Christopher Marlowe
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, The Village Voice
A Brief Oral History of Wayne Barrett, the First Journalist to Doggedly Cover Donald Trump, Tricia Romano, Vanity Fair
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 the London Underworld, Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker
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 perception verbs"
The Grammar of Top Chef: What’s With "It Eats Salty"? Mental Floss on "gestalt verbs"
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 podcastPhonesthemes@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 final cover lacks Voice, Alexandria Neason, CJR
Journalists are fed up with requests to be ‘on background’ or ‘off the record,’ Ted Kitterman, PR Daily
Artforum Fires Top Editor After Its Open Letter on Israel-Hamas War, Zachary Small, The New York Times
Both Sides Now, Amanda Darrach, CJR
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 Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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 button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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 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.
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 screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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 click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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 Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.
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
Show notes:
The New Etiquette Rules, Story of the Week with Joel Stein
Do You Know How to Behave? Are You Sure? How to text, tip, ghost, host, and generally exist in polite society today. The Cut
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
Show notes:
Protest Periphrasis: How the words used to describe the actions of police hide their violence, Mike Laws, CJR
There are a great many ways to write terrible verse—lazy rhymes, half-baked conceits, catastrophic metrical breakdowns. But where others have failed, u/poem_for_your_sprog sings the subreddits electric. Look on his works, ye unlettered, and despair.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
What voguish phrase makes Mike drop his first on-air F-bomb? Which term gets Ryan's vote for word of the decade? And what contributions did you, Dear Listener, make to this godforsaken list? Smash that play button for the answers to these and other pressing queries (to wit, on Russian poisonings, the best Judas, and MTA campaigns we just can't quit).
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Show Notes:
Down In The Subway (1904)
Lyrics by William Jerome
Music by Jean Schwartz
Murray Head: Superstar/1971
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
We all use them, we all hate them: fad terms. How do they catch on? Why should careful writing eschew them? Listen as Mike attempts to answer despite a determined frog in the throat, and Ryan attempts to shame him for bingeing the Mighty Ducks reboot (while copping to watching the ne plus ultra of trash TV, Netflix's You).
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
How litigious are the rights holders of the most beloved catalogue in music? Join us as we find out, stopping along the way to dish on Dick Morris, Ugly Kid Joe, Vladimir Nabokov, Mad Men, and (oh yeah) a dense little handful of troublesome marks: questions and quotations, colons and semis, dashes and parens.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Pop quiz, hotshot: When does a period go inside a parenthesis? How many commas are too many for a sentence to bear? When do you use single quotes rather than double? Should you ever hit the space bar twice? And for extra credit: How is a poorly punctuated paragraph like pornography?
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Genitives, gerunds, postpositive adjectives—oh, my! There's still a lot to say about the tangled mess of possessive forms, so let's get back to it. You won't want to miss Producer Amanda's first on-air appearance (to dish on the royals, natch) or Mike's unforgivable misreading of a fine point in the Chicago Manual of Style. Plus: Meat Loaf, Lorde, Three Doors Down, and Three Days [sic] Grace.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
When it comes to ownership in English, even the basics get real wrinkly real fast. Best to get right into it. So what do the Simpsons, Mighty Ducks, Danish film directors, and nepo babies have to do with anything?
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
A deep dive into a "rule" that arguably never was—and certainly isn't now. So where did it come from? As usual, a poet's to blame. Digressions include the animal tranquilizer xylazine, the authorship of works credited to Shakespeare, the dubiousness of quotes attributed to Churchill, Restoration-era rap battles, and Beavis and Butt-Head.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
You might've BID on a vintage loom on eBay—but if you didn't get it, you BADE it farewell. If you did, maybe you WOVE a pair of mittens so pretty your sister WEAVED through traffic to snag them. Verbs with different senses can be tricky, but it's nothing to get HUNG about (and certainly not HANGED over!). We're here to sort out these and other dual-use words, when we're not getting sidetracked by this year's deep bench of Best Actress contenders, Owen Wilson's Central American fashion statement, and how the word "wetted" makes Ryan giggle.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
As a grammar podcast, our aim is to edify as well as entertain. <---If you didn't see anything wrong with that sentence, you need this episode in your life. (If you did, hang around for some hockey locker room talk about vegans, libertarians, what Wednesday Addams got unforgivably wrong about Edgar Allan Poe, and how Mike once managed to weird out… John Waters?!)
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
The grocery store is where good grammar goes to die. But you needn't be afeard of "less" versus "fewer." It ain't that complicated. Except when it is. Digressions include Paraguayan beef, tightly tucked duvets, streaming services' subtitles, and how young Mike got hoodwinked by those 12-CDs-for-a-penny scams.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Homing in on honing our vocab, we effect various affects, gibing and jiving about words that don't jibe. Stick around for tangents on Bush v. Trump malapropisms, the dubious staying power of Stephen Colbert's "truthiness," and whether A Clockwork Orange can teach English-speakers conversational Russian.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
"Bet," "based," "goated": we're in a brave new world of hyperfast coinage. But does this phase faze you? Are you nonplussed? Episode 2 provides the answers to help elegantly shimmy (or perhaps shinny) your way out of these uncomfortable questions. Divagations include: the merits of Goodfellas v. Casino, the shenanigans of Norman Mailer and other literary bad boys, and various ways to break out of jail.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
To whom or not to whom, that is the question. The word's going the way of the northern white rhino, but is it ever wrong to use "who" in its place? Will your fancy dinner party guests think you're a troglodyte? And what if you overcorrect and stick a "whom" where it doesn't belong? All this, plus digressions on red being the real warmest color, why it's maybe not the best idea to deputize 14-year-olds as camp counselors, and that time Ryan got perma-banned from day trading.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
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.