wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

~ I learned that the best disinfectant is direct sunlight.

When I heard that it triggered an old memory of when my friend's mother (a bit of a clean freak) laid toys and bedding outside in the sun after her little sister was sick.

(Love this podcast.)

Hi Brian,
Let me first say that you and your show are GREAT. This is about your show on Learning Things Late.There were comments made on how you can tell what side of the car you pump the gas.It was said that it is on the same said that the fuel gauge is on.This is NOT the case.I have a Hyundai and my gase gauge is on the right and I pump the gas on the left.Maybe foreign cars and American cars ARE different.

I learned that 1:00PM listed at my corner mail box isn't the pick-up time.
It's to let us know mail will not be collected before 1:00PM.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty

Usually to loosen things, you should turn left; to tighten, turn right.

Poison Ivy rhyme: Leaves of three, leave it be.

Living in the city 40 years, but only discovered Lehrer/Lopate 2 years ago(!) Where have I been?

GREAT segment!

I knew there was a word pronounced "eh-PIT-o-mee", and one spelled "epitome", and that they had the same definition, but it took me waaay too long to figure out they were one and the same. Same thing with yarmulke; I thought it was some other sort of Jewish headgear, similar to but somehow different from a "yammakuh". (Clearly I didn't grow up in NYC.)

I just learned you don't have to peel off that rapping at the top of a wine bottle, you can just grab the whole thing and pull it right off the top.

For most of my life I thought that the post office logo--the old one, not the once they have now--was a cartoon woodpecker. It’s actually an eagle, but if you google it and look at it backwards--pretend that the wing is a very big pointy head, and what’s actually supposed to be the head is an elbow--then it looks just like an enormously fat, square, cartoon woodpecker dancing. I was in my twenties or thirties when I suddenly realized that it was an eagle, not a misshapen woodpecker, and it was a total “duh!” moment.

I learned not too long ago that to clean a pan with cooked on cheese and egg COLD water works much better than hot.

to:
"sue from nyc
Does anyone know about Barley Douc? It's in a war song. I think its in France.
Jul. 20 2010 11:58 AM"

My guess is that you are thinking about a song where the refrain is" Inky dinky parlez-vous". Parlez vouz means " do you speak French?"

the short and sweet of how those packaged "baby carrots" come into the world, courtesy of Western Growers, the agricultural trade association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNy948H2ta4

in my 30s I realized (all at once):

Peggy was Margaret
Hank was Henry
Betty was Elizabeth
to peel garlic, crush it 1st

Two things that have changed my life that I learned after turning 50!

First, to avoid having my bra straps get all tangled up in the washing machine, all you need to do is hook it.

Second, and this is the big one, there are little push-in tabs on the ends of aluminum foil, waxed paper, and plastic wrap boxes that when tucked in actually hold the roll in place so it doesn't come flying out!

Seamus McMahon from Nolita -- Eating cucumber slices with spicy food usually works for me. "Windex"? LOL

I love spicy food. I have tried every remedy for a burning mouth (water, bread, milk, beer, windex). Recently a Mexican friend told me the secret: salt, spread on the tongue. Unlike yogurt and other solutions, this one will certainly be on the table :)

Susan from Manhattan -- Thanks for the info on the tablespoon to teaspoon ratio. For over 50 years, I've thought it was two, too.

Speaking of song lyrics, I've always loved that song "Venus" by Television, but it was only 2 years ago that I got the irony of the line "I fell into the arms of Venus de Milo"--she has no arms!

(last week I was in Paris and saw the Venus de Milo in person at the Louvre--she really is beautiful!)

I was almost 40 when a friend told me that I'd be much more comfortable in the summer if I wore an undershirt. My father had taken his fashion cues from Clarke Gable and I suffered for it.

I just realized this year at the age of 43 that ponies aren't baby horses! As Wikipedia says, "On occasion, people who are unfamiliar with horses may confuse an adult pony with a foal, which is a young, immature horse." That's me.

BEST EVER LEMONADE!!!
NO! The secret is not simple syrup, but to "muddle" the sugar with one thinly sliced lemon so it releases the juice and the oil from the rind. Do this with a potato masher in a bowl with a flat bottom like a large pyrex measuring cup. Then stir in the water to finish dissolving the sugar. Add fresh squeezed lemon juice and then the ice. Proportions: 1 lemon thinly sliced, 1 ½ cup sugar, 2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice strained, 7-8 cups water depending on your preference and serve on ice. AMAZING!! It is a beautiful thing straight up or for more mature tastes, great with gin, vodka or as the Irish drink, a Shandygaff by adding beer of all things…. Wonderfully refreshing!

The gas tank arrow on the speedometer or fuel gage is a recent innovation. The reason you may have only just noticed it is that it wasn't always there. I just checked my 1997 Nissan and there's no arrow. I'm not ever certain that it's currently a universal feature.

On average, it takes 5 trees to print a high school newspaper.

okay, this is embarrassing but it took a move to Mexico where donkeys still carry loads of wood and soil on their backs through the streets that I realized "burrito" means little donkey....

It wasn't until teaching my young son to bake (with the help of a children's cookbook) that I learned a tablespoon is THREE teaspoons - NOT TWO. I have been making this mistake for over 35 years!

I just learned you can pinch in a tab on each side of a box of aluminum foil so the roll stays in the box instead of flying out when you pull on it.

I learned a year or two ago that aluminum foil containers have little tabs at the ends of the box that you fold in to keep the roll from fall out when you pull out a section of foil. (plastic wrap containers, too).

I am 56 and I just learned 2 minutes ago that gas gauges have an arrow pointing to which side of the car has the gas tank access.

After many years of trying to tear off the little tab on the cover of take-out coffee, my daughter pointed out that you just have to fold it back.

Who knew?

It takes a minimum of 25 YEARS (and more than one gallon of vinegar) to make less than one quart of REAL balsamic vinegar.

Re: Baby carrots. The little carrots that are in sealed cellophane bags are the ones that are shaped by manufacturing them that shape.

True baby carrots are grown specifically small. They are not sold in cello bags and have their tops attached, usually comes in small bunches of 6 -8 pieces and cost lots more!

On Baby Carrots. True, the store bought kind now- a-days are chopped down adult carrots. But the caller's grandmother probably had REAL baby carrots, simply harvested early and were softer and sweeter.

Re: Carrots

It's true about the carving. Proof: the core of the carrot doesn't taper to nothing before the bottom like it does in a natural baby (known as "finger") carrot. It stops suddenly at the cut end.

The Fed Ex logo has a hidden arrow in it.

To the caller who thought dogs got vasectomies, that's an operation too. Any word that ends with -ectomy is a surgical operation (unles it's a joke, like a cash-ectomy!).

As for my own late-life lessons, I know there are plenty, but right now I can't think of them!

Didn't know about the mare eat oats either. Thought they were two cities in England. Does anyone know about Barley Douc? It's in a war song. I think its in France.

It took me 33 years to learn how to fold a fitted sheet!

It's true! 'baby carrots' are not actually baby carrots but are cut from the strangely formed 'ugly' carrots from the field (that many shoppers will not buy because they look strange).

Every try a real baby carrot? so much sweeter!!

West Virginia is a state!

For years, I used to eat spoonfuls of peanut butter as a late night snack. I also suffered regularly from terribly painful kidney stones. A few years ago, I discovered the latter was caused by the former.

Lesson learned -- No more splurging on peanut butter, no more kidney stones.

I am 53 with a college degree in Home Economics
Education and I just found out that every roll of Renolyds Wrap Foil has a small tap on either side of the box . If you push in these tabs it will stop the roll of foil from coming out of the box when you pull on the foil !

It's sort of true about baby carrots. There is such a thing as an immature carrot, but the ones you buy in the grocery story were called "baby CUT carrots," which have been popularized as "baby carrots." They are usually carved down to that familiar shape.

Until I had a child in the public schools, I didn't learn the extent to which public education is geared toward training for service to the state. Although in a tony suburb with a reputation for excellent schools, my child's experience in schools here has quite clearly reinforced the hypothesis that W-2 wage earning consumers are the desired output of state-run education.

shake out the washed clothes before putting them in dryer and they will come out wrinkle free!

Baby carrots are "carved" on a lathe from regular carrots, pure marketing/packaging trick.

I learned, after years of getting out of rental cars in gas stations to check, that the side that the gas tank is on is indicated on the speedometer. Duh!

In her twenties, my daughter realized that Winnie the Pooh's friends Kanga and Roo combined to be Kangaroo!!

I went through the bulk of my 20s as a musician thinking it was Phil Collins -- and not that drummer from Def Leppard -- that had one arm. Finally, I made a Phil-Collins-one-arm joke at a party that confused and silenced the room. Two-handed apology, Phil.

I learned late in life the really importance and power of just saying "I'm Sorry" and then shutting up!

I did not know that aluminum foil or plastic wrap boxes have notches on either end of to press in to keep the rolls from falling out...

I learned to ride my bike WITH the flow of car traffic and street signs. It is far safer and easier than going in what may seem to be the fastest route.

Actresses... steer clear of actresses.

I learned too late in life, what my mother told me much earlier in life, when I wasn't listening:

"Times may change, BUT PEOPLE DON'T!"

My friend Jimmy only heard rather late in life the saying 'righty tighty, lefty lucy' regarding which way to turns screws and such. He told me it shook his world. And probably saved him some tool-realted heart-ache...in the past few years at least.

I learned too late in life, what my mother told me much earlier in life, when I wasn't listening:

"Times may change, BUT PEOPLE DON'T!"

I have learned that the words to a song are the only thing in life that is really, really true: "Everything must change. Nothing stays the same." This is comforting to know when you are having a hard time, but it's also something to remember when you think you've reached non-touchable happiness.

I have finally learned that I don't need know everything especially how others "feel" about things. And I don't need to know everything that happened in my family's past especially if I'm only getting one side of a memory!

I have learned that the world and its people do not conform to my own ideas and beliefs and opinions, no matter how strongly I believe I'm right. I have had to become less an idealogue and more accepting of other people's perspectives.

Due to a sheltered upbringing, what DIDN'T I learn late?

- The birds and the bees. How about forgetting to have kids! Just now getting around to it (at 47), using the miracles of modern medicine.

- Ballet. Still learning to perfect my pirouette and hope to get on pointe before I'm 50.

Line your cookie sheets with parchment and line your brownie pans with foil.

i'm 25 and i learned recently that I can only be who i truly am when alone and should give up on finding absolute comfort when in the presence of other people. authenticity only exists in solitude.

As a kid, I thought adults all knew what they were doing, especially if they had positions of responsibility.

As an adult, I thought college grads and various experts really knew what they were doing.

Much older now, it's clear to me:

We're all just making it up as we go along, doing the best we can with insufficient experience/resources/brain power, constantly being challenged, constantly struggling to adjust.

Just making it up as we go along. . .

I learned that love is as love does, and that it's not the "thought that counts." I'm much happier and well-loved now. And I love better, too.

"He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires." – Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I couldn't have said it better myself.

1) That it's OK if not everyone is happy with my choices (I know: duh!)
2) That credit cards should not be revolving doors of debt
3) The real lyrics to "Bennie and the Jets"

Gianni, Debbie and Judy seem to have noticed the attention that people give to themselves and their inattention to other people.

It took me 40-plus years to learn that:
a) the "real" love Italian style is sooo much better than the other kind
b) I am a nice person to visit, but I wouldn't want to live with me either
c) hugs leave no aftertaste

It took me until my 30s to learn that I should date nice guys, not arrogant jerks. :)

All my life I have given people much too much credit. I thought "they" were l much smarter about life and talent. People in general are not observant, they are not sensitive, they don't care about important things that don't affect them personally (except gossip). I think people are superficial and can be sold a bill of goods ... that's why the marketing world does such a good job.

I was in my 50s before I realized that the only warm gloves are mittens. When it is cold, I now wear an inner synthetic glove -- or a cotton one -- under my thick fleece mittens. Not chic, but warm. Much more so than any of the super expensive leather gloves I bought over the years which only kept my hands cold once they got cold.