‘A Way with Words’ a worldwide delight
Is that spare room off the kitchen called a “den” or a “family room”? Is that bane of our dental existence pronounced “car-mel” or “car-a-mel”? When an SDSU student says, “I was low-key lost in class today,” what do they mean? Inquiring professorial minds want to know.
Whether we tune in to “A Way with Words” for the history of room naming, rulings on pronunciation, or a vocabulary update from the halls of local academia, fans of this San Diego-based public-radio show and podcast can all unite around two simple words: Thank. You.
Thank you for answering our burning language questions on the air. Thank you for explaining us to each other. Thank you explaining us to ourselves.
And in this time of nonstop pandemic worries, political flareups and discourse that is anything but polite, thank you for reminding us that words do not have to tear us apart.
“(Listeners) say, ‘I am so relieved to find a place where I can stretch my brain and feel like I’m learning something, but I’m not being punched in the gut every time I listen,” said Grant Barrett,who co-hosts and co-produces the show with Martha Barnette.
As she does on the air, Barnette chimed in with the right word at the perfect time.
“We have had so many people use the word ‘oasis,’” she said. “I was just looking at an email I got this morning from someone who said, ‘I’m addicted to your show. Learning and laughter, what’s not to like?’”
Since it first aired on KPBS-FM in 1998, with Richard Lederer and Charles Harrington Elster as hosts, “A Way with Words” has been the family-friendly place to go for lively conversations about slang, hilarious family sayings and linguistic deep dives you will never find online.
The lineup has changed over the years. Barnette joined the show when Elster left in 2004, and Barrett came on board when Lederer left in 2006.
The program got a new home base in 2007, when KPBS stopped producing it due to budget cuts, and Barnette, Barrett and senior producer Stefanie Levine formed an independent company to fund and produce it themselves. That company is now a nonprofit corporation called Wayword, Inc.
As “A Way with Words” enters its 15th year of independence, the weekly show is bigger than ever. It can be heard on radio stations in 42 states, as well as stations in Canada and Mexico. The podcast version was downloaded more than 5 million times over the last year.
Thanks to podcasting and the Internet, the San Diego-grown program is now comforting wordlovers on a global scale. But as the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on, “A Way with Words” continues to take the homegrown concept to a whole new level.
As of early 2020, the show was recorded at Studio West in Rancho Bernardo. Since April of 2020, however, “A Way with Words” has
been produced and recorded from Barrett and Barnette’s respective City Heights homes, Levine’s home in Mission Hills and engineer/ editor Tim Felten’s home in Lemon Grove.
Barnette records from her closet, surrounded by the pre-pandemic clothes she doesn’t wear anymore and occasionally supervised by one (or more) of her four cats. Barrett records from a lawn chair surrounded by a noise-canceling fortress made of bookcases, bookfilled moving boxes, moving blankets and something called “mass loaded vinyl.”
“That’s what it takes. All of our colleagues are doing the same thing,” Barrett said. “Other people have so many difficulties, and we are so fortunate that we can do our jobs from home and provide this entertainment as we’re all going through this difficult time. It certainly isn’t enough to make up for it, but we hope to take the edge off.”
With the help of Zoom and Google Chat, Barrett and Barnette are able to talk up a new translation of “Beowulf,” ponder what a group of black holes might be called, and weigh in on a caller’s question about the correct pronunciation of “buoy” with their usual warmth and enthusiasm. Probably because they still feel their usual warmth and enthusiasm, along with a few other things.
“I wake up every day grateful that we get to do what we’re doing,” Barnette said. “Listeners have really sustained us. There is so much encouragement, so much support and so much curiosity.”
With 15 independent years in the books, the cohosts have plenty of hopes for the next chapter of “A Way with Words.” They would love to do a bilingual version that would explore the fascinating twists and turns of the Spanish language. They can’t wait to take a live show on the road again.
Barnette and Barrett have no idea how long they will be recording in closets and producing from lawn chairs, but they also know it doesn’t really matter. Words and word-lovers haven’t failed them yet, and what’s not to like about that?
“The cool thing is, there is an inexhaustible supply of material,” Barnette said. “You’d think after 15 years, we would run out of things to talk about. But we’re just getting started.”
“A Way with Words” airs locally on KPBS 89.5 FM. The podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and other platforms. You can also listen on the show’s website, waywordradio.org.