421 episodes listed below
Idioms, evidence, and cheerful side trails.
Bunny Trails is a brisk word-history show built around idioms and odd little turns of phrase. Each episode starts with a familiar expression, checks dictionaries and old sources, then traces how meaning shifts across books, newspapers, performance, pop culture, and casual use.
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Bunny Trails is a language-history show about the phrases people use without thinking. It likes the familiar stuff. "Goody two shoes," "any port in a storm," "pass the buck," "put a sock in it," and "a watched pot never boils" all become invitations to chase evidence through older English. The format usually begins with a working definition, often from a dictionary, then tests the phrase against dated examples. That structure gives the show a pleasing rhythm: claim, source, explanation, correction, modern use. It is brisk but not rushed. The speakers can joke about a mangy beard, a Columbo synopsis, or Star Trek's Q, then land back on the evidence without losing the thread. Old newspapers matter here. So do letters, poems, advertisements, archived recordings, popular fiction, television titles, and the weird half-life of public memory. The show is at its best when it punctures a tidy origin story. A sock in a gramophone horn sounds great, but the episode is willing to say the evidence is thin. "Goody Two-Shoes" becomes not just a phrase, but a case study in how a book and its stage offshoots kept an expression alive. "Pass the buck" moves through poker language, slang, Mark Twain, and newspaper explanation. "A watched pot never boils" gets pulled back to Benjamin Franklin and an earlier wording. The show also knows that words live after the archive closes. Modern examples from TV, songs, jokes, and everyday speech show how meanings keep changing. There are occasional retro episodes, including a revisit of "Beware the Ides of March" and a Grace Tierney conversation about Christmas words. The mood is warm, nerdy, and conversational rather than academic. It works for listeners who enjoy language, history, trivia, and the pleasure of finding out that a phrase is older, stranger, or less certain than it sounds. The recurring closing idea fits the whole project: words belong to their users.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy word origins, old newspapers, dictionary trails, literary references, and casual history with jokes left in. It especially suits language nerds who want source-backed answers without formal lecture pacing.
What sets it apart: Bunny Trails balances playful banter with specific evidence: dated examples, dictionary definitions, newspaper citations, literature, archived audio, and modern pop-culture uses. It is comfortable rejecting neat origin myths when the sources do not hold up.
Welcome to our whimsical adventure of idioms and other turns of phrase. Each week, we delve into the origins of phrases to find out how they came into the English language. We tell the story of how the phrase got from its beginnings to where it is today. Shauna and Dan are two big nerds, so expect some geek culture references, random trivia facts, and loads of laughs!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bunny Trails makes everyday expressions historical evidence, tracing how print, popular culture, and social use reshape their meanings.
Bunny Trails turns familiar expressions into layered histories of use, with Shawna Harrison and Dan Pugh moving from dictionary definitions to early print appearances and later popular culture.
Say 'pass the buck' and Dan Pugh takes you through Mark Twain's poker metaphor.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A familiar scold moves from humble title to print shorthand and performed virtue.
Goody Two-Shoes traces a familiar judgment from social title to cultural shorthand, keeping its focus on how a phrase gathers tone over time. The episode starts with the Oxford English Dictionary's sense of someone perfectly well-behaved, often with a charge of smugness or…
A compact trail from poker and poetry to the everyday habit of passing blame.
The episode traces "pass the buck" from Ella Wheeler Wilcox's early-1900s poem into the wider habit of shifting responsibility, with the Oxford English Dictionary definition and the poker citation as its strongest historical anchors.
A retro revisit that pairs format self-critique with archive-minded omens and public reflection.
The episode returns to "Beware the Ides of March" and takes a second look at why the format was later tightened. The host notes that the back-and-forth with Shauna can open too many bunny trails, and he also rethinks his habit of needling Shakespeare over IP.
A death euphemism tour that moves from Patton to sneakers.
Bunny Trails turns "kick the bucket" into a compact tour of death euphemisms, starting with everyday softening like "he finally passed" and moving toward the Oxford English Dictionary sense of the phrase.
Christmas words, Irish usage, and a few odd terms worth rescuing.
Bunny Trails leans into a holiday-tinged word-history conversation with Grace Tierney, whose Words Christmas Gave Us traces Christmas influence through Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Tudors, Dickens, and Santa Claus, then out into traditions, music, decorations, feasts, and more.
A clear look at a choice phrase, with a neat detour through crossroads and a 1965 song.
Bunny Trails treats "fork in the road" as a choice that can open onto two different paths, and Shana Harrison and Dan Pugh keep the discussion grounded in that plain image.
Héctor and Beto dissect Mexican grammar, slang, and news in native-speed Spanish conversations.
Author Grace Tierney joins Bunny Trails to discuss her book 'Words Christmas Gave Us', exploring the linguistic origins of holiday traditions.
Shauna and Dan trace the history of the idiom 'fork in the road' from its Old English agricultural origins to modern metaphorical uses.
This episode of Bunny Trails explores the origin and meaning of the idiom 'rack my brains'.
Dan and Shawna explore the idiom 'at a crossroads' and its meaning in life decisions.
This episode explores the idiom 'waiting for the other shoe to drop,' its meaning, and possible origins.
Bunny Trails episode 325, the series finale, traces 'end on a high note' through newspaper and book quotes from 1845 to 1956, among them a 1897 sneezing incident during El Capitan.
A wooden stake called a “pale” developed into a fence and then a territorial boundary, clarifying the phrase “beyond the pale.” Dan Piu and Shauna Harrison trace the phrase from Latin and Old French roots to the English-controlled Pale around Dublin.
Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast traces “goody two shoes” from a 1670 Charles Cotton poem to the 1765 book The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes.
Dan and Shawna explore the idiom 'any port in a storm,' tracing its nautical origins and modern figurative uses as a refuge, escape, or comfort in troubled times.
Bunny Trails: A Word History Podcast traces “pass the buck” from poker terminology to modern responsibility-shifting, starting with Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s early-1900s poem “Passing the Buck.” The episode cites a 1856 line in William Addison Phillips’s The Conquest of Kansas, then John William Keller’s 1887 Game of Draw Poker definition of “the buck” as “usually a knife or pencil” moved with the pot.
Dan and Shawna explore the idiom 'put a sock in it,' discussing its meaning and a possible but unverified origin involving gramophones.
This episode of Bunny Trails explores the idiom 'a watched pot never boils,' tracing its origin to a 1778 letter by Benjamin Franklin and discussing its meaning about time feeling longer when waiting.
Bunny Trails episode 102, reissued as a 2026 retro edition, investigates the phrase 'Beware the Ides of March,' revealing that Nicholas Udall wrote it in a 1533 Latin teaching textbook 30 years before Shakespeare popularized it in 'Julius Caesar.' Hosts Shauna Harrison and Dan Pugh explain that the Ides of March is simply the 15th of March in the ancient Roman calendar—a date that corresponds to the full moon and was Rome's New Year until Julius Caesar moved it to January two years before his assassination.
Bunny Trails episode 309 traces the idiom 'kick the bucket' from its likely 18th-century origins in animal slaughter to modern pop culture references, centered on the rarely known fact that 'bucket' once meant a wooden beam used to hang butchered pigs.
An interview with Grace Tierney about her book exploring the origins of Christmas-related words and traditions.
This episode explores the idiom 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar,' tracing its origins and discussing the effectiveness of kindness over rudeness in interactions.