SmartDrivel · Jun 22, 2026 · 30:43
Listen in the Podli app 🎧
Follow your favourite podcasts, listen offline and in the car with CarPlay and Android Auto, and always pick up where you left off. Free to try.
In this episode, the boys follow a trail of words that turns out to be a lot stranger than expected. Why does bankruptcy involve a broken bench? Why is malaria named after "bad air"? What does a medieval orphanage have to do with the surnames Esposito and Innocente? And how did the word "nephew" accidentally give us "nepotism"? Along the way, we'll visit Siena's claim to Rome's founding myth, step outside the cathedral to discover the original meaning of "profane," and uncover the forgotten stories hiding inside words we use all the time. As it turns out, language remembers everything ... even when we don't.