Catbird Seat - 18 November 2013

<p>Online recaps of Mad Men or Breaking Bad can be as much fun as the shows themselves. So why not recap classic literature -- like, say, Dante's Inferno? A literary website is doing just that. And, you've heard about the First World and the Third World -- so where in the world is the Second World? Plus, animal stories, including how the aardvark got three A's in its name, and why the catbird seat is the place to be. Also, the origins of crackerjack, mall, mad money, and the admonition you might want horns, but you're gonna die butt-headed! <br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />Shopping malls take their name from the fashionable street now known as Pall Mall in London's St. James area. The game of pall-mall, which involves hitting a ball with a wooden mallet, was once played there.<br /><br />Listen up, Scrabble players! Zax is a real word that refers to a kind of roofing tool. <br /><br />A small eating place where the food is not particularly good is sometimes called a grab-it-and-growl.<br /><br />A crackerjack fellow is someone who's excellent or first-rate. It's most likely the same positive sense of crack found in terms like cracking good, crack team, and crack shot.<br /><br />The idiom rob Peter to pay Paul, means "to borrow someone from someone in order to repay someone else." In Nicaragua, the same idea is expressed by a phrase that translates as take Juan's clothes to give them to Pedro.<br /><br />Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of phrases involving the letter B.<br /><br />Mad money is the emergency cash a woman tucked away to get home safely if an evening out went badly. These days, it's largely been replaced by cell phones.<br /><br />There's a First World and a Third World, but what about a Second World? The Soviet Bloc countries once made up the Second World, but these terms are becoming increasingly irrelevant.<br /><br />In an earlier episode, we played a game in which we raised the ante on words with hidden "numbers" inside them. For example, forever became five-ever. Many listeners wrote to s