| Term | Type | Definition | Episode |
| 48-degree experience | Concept | When two platonic friends decide to do a naked trail run together. 48 is the ideal temperature for such a run to take place (according to Urban Dictionary). | 48 |
| a bit of a ‘stitch up’ | Bad at English | the fix is in | 31 |
| ad hominem | Logical Fallacy | You attacked your opponent’s character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument. | 54, 56 |
| agreeableness | Concept | one of the ‘big five’ personality factors or traits; someone’s tendency to be or not be agreeable (usually measured on a scale) | 1 |
| all-singing all-dancing | Bad at English | Full-featured; i.e. “all the bells and whistles” | 46 |
| Amato/a | Italian | beloved | 16 |
| analysis paralysis | Concept | An individual or group ceases making progress due to inability to make a decision | 2 |
| anchoring | Bias | The first thing you judge influences your judgment of all that follows. | 55 |
| anecdotal | Logical Fallacy | You used a personal experience or an isolated example instead of a sound argument or compelling evidence. | 56 |
| appeal to emotion | Logical Fallacy | An attempt to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument. | 50 |
| apple catchers / Bridget Jones pants “Bridgets” | Bad at English | granny panties | 26 |
| ashtray on a motorbike | Bad at English | useless, could describe objects or people | 32 |
| Ask me one on showbiz | Bad at English | this is too complicated [female] | 12 |
| Ask me one on sport | Bad at English | this is too complicated [male] | 12 |
| availability heueristic | bias | Your judgments are influenced by what springs most easily to mind | 59 |
| backfire effect | Bias | When some aspect of your core beliefs is challenged, it can cause you to believe even more strongly. | 42 |
| bang-on | Bad at English | Adj./Adv. (1943): with absolute accuracy; U.S.: “spot on”; Verb (1979): talk too much | 48 |
| bank holiday | Bad at English | Similar to “federal holiday”; means day off | 59 |
| banter | Bad at English | systematic teasing people in a way that’s outwardly rude, but usually affectionate in intent | 17 |
| barking | Bad at English | crazy; sometimes used as a noun | 15 |
| begging the question | Logical Fallacy | 48, 56 | |
| belief bias | Bias | If a conclusion supports your existing beliefs, you’ll rationalize anything that supports it. | 53, 56 |
| bespoke | Bad at English | Adj., made for a particular customer or user | 2 |
| Bloom’s Taxonomy | Concept | a hierarchical model used to classify educational learning objectives. | 44 |
| bollocks | Bad at English | balls; used to express contempt, annoyance, or defiance | 11 |
| Brandolini’s Law | Concept | also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” | 43, 44 |
| Budyko Blanket | Concept | The idea of geoengineering by putting some sort of substance into the atmosphere to counteract the effects of global warming. | 33, 52 |
| bully | Bad at English | adj. very good, excellent | 54 |
| can’t be bothered | Bad at English | doesn’t want to do something; couldn’t care less | 20 |
| Chasing the dragon | Concept | Trying to get back to a high you felt before; sometimes used in relation to drugs, but here used to describe an old game (like World of Warcraft) that doesn’t give you the euphoria it used to | 59 |
| Chesterton’s Fence | Concept | A reference to the concept of second-order thinking from the 1929 book The Thing by G.K. Chesterton: in the arena of reform, before you tear down a fence, first understand why it was there. | 49, 57 |
| chin wag | Bad at English | British, informal: a friendly conversation : CHAT | 58 |
| chuffed | Bad at English | Adj. very pleased | 49 |
| clear as chips | Bad at English | Chips meaning: thick-cut french fries; Americans say “clear as mud” | 47 |
| closest crocodile to the canoe | Bad at English | Nearest problem when there’s a lot to worry about | 4 |
| Couldn’t organize piss up in a brewery | Bad at English | so incompetent as to be able to do something obvious and easy; Americans might say, “Couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.” | 25 |
| curse of knowledge | Bias | Once you understand something you presume it to be obvious to everyone. | 49 |
| daft | Bad at English | brash, silly, foolish | 28 |
| declinism | Bias | You remember the past as better than it was, and expect the future to be worse than it will likely be. | 47 |
| desire path | Concept | people tend to follow the path of least resistance which sometimes takes them off the pavement and leaves a trail in the grass; this concept can refer to dirt trails in the grass or any outward manifestation that follows this pattern | 24 |
| does what it says on the tin | Bad at English | performs as advertised | 35 |
| done and dusted | Bad at English | completely finished | 51 |
| dummy | Bad at English | Pacifier (America), Plug (Ben) | 41 |
| Dunning-Kruger Effect | Concept | The psychological phenomenon that occurs when you first learn about something and then you see it everywhere. It was already there, you just didn’t notice it. | 29, 30, 34 |
| faff | Bad at English | n. an overcomplicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time; v. to waste time on an unproductive activity | 21 |
| fallacy fallacy | Logical Fallacy | You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong | 46, 56 |
| false cause | Logical Fallacy | You presumed that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other. | 43, 56 |
| Fermi paradox | concept | the apparent contradiction between the high likelihood of extraterrestrial life and the lack of evidence of extraterrestrial life | 52 |
| fundamental attribution error | Bias | You judge others on their character, but yourself on the situation. | 56 |
| gambler’s fallacy | Logical Fallacy | You said that ‘runs’ occur to statistically independent phenomena such as roulette wheel spins. | 58 |
| gert lush | Bad at English | really, really nice | 27 |
| ghee | Bad at English | Ghee is a class of clarified butter that originated in ancient India. But it means vagina in Ireland. | 7 |
| gone off | Bad at English | spoiled, as in “gone-off milk” | 29 |
| good shout | Bad at English | well said | 30 |
| groupthink | Bias | You let the social dynamics of a group situation override the best outcomes. | 57 |
| haiver | Bad at English | v. talk in a foolish or trivial manner, speak nonsense | 60 |
| hard vs. soft magic systems | Concept | Hard magic systems follow specific rules, the magic is controlled and explained to the reader in the narrative detailing the mechanics behind the way the magic ‘works’, and can be used for building interesting worlds that revolve around the magic system. Soft magic systems may not have clearly defined rules or limitations, or provide limited exposition regarding their workings, and are used to create a sense of wonder to the reader. | 3, 13 |
| Hitchen’s Razor | Concept | the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it. | 44 |
| jam tomorrow | Bad at English | today is sparse, but tomorrow will be better (it won’t) | 18 |
| knackered | Bad at English | Adj. broken, tired; also: the profession of slaughtering old or sick horses | 52 |
| know your onions | Bad at English | to be very knowledeable about something | 53 |
| law of urination | Concept | the biological maxim that mammals tend to take about 20 seconds to pee regardless of size | 19 |
| like chalk and cheese | Bad at English | comparing two things that appear similar but aren’t; British equivalent of “like comparing apples and oranges” | 33 |
| Living at Her Majesty’s Pleasure | Bad at English | a ‘legal term of art’ (situational jargon) meaning: in prison | 13 |
| loaded question | Logical Fallacy | You asked a question that had a presumption built into it so that it couldn’t be answered without appearing guilty. | 56 |
| lurgy | Bad at English | a sort of catch-all phrase for a sickness that’s easy to catch but not that serious | 24 |
| Mise-en-scène | Concept | the stage design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production; pronounced: meez on sen | 7, 34, 35, 41 |
| mob-handed | Bad at English | in a large group, especially in a large, threatening group of people | 6 |
| naughts and crosses | Bad at English | Tic-tac-toe | 38 |
| negativity bias | Bias | You allow negative things to disproportionately influence your thinking. | 44, 56 |
| Orthogonality Thesis | Concept | [see video link] | 21 |
| Pareto Principle | Concept | The idea that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes (the “vital few”). Sometimes callde the 80/20 rule. | 40, 41 |
| personal incredulity | Logical Fallacy | Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it’s probably not true. | 60 |
| Pete Tong | Bad at English | Cockney Rhyming Slang for: Wrong; Usage: “It’s all gone Pete Tong.” | 43 |
| pitch up | Bad at English | v. informal; to arrive in a place | 9 |
| posh | Bad at English | fancy in a high-society way; elegant, fashionable; expensive | 36 |
| push the boat out | Bad at English | be lavish in one’s spending or celebrations | 3 |
| reactance | Bias | You’d rather do the opposite of what someone is trying to make you do. | 56 |
| reinforcement schedules | Concept | The simplest rules controlling reinforcement are continuous reinforcement, where every response is reinforced, and extinction, where no response is reinforced. Between these extremes, more complex “schedules of reinforcement” specify the rules that determine how and when a response will be followed by a reinforcer. | 47 |
| retcon | Concept | Revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events. | 51 |
| RST system | concept | Amateur radio scale for rating quality of connection by Readibility – Strength – Tone; sometimes it’s said, “I read you 5 by 9,” which means maximum score for R & S | 59 |
| Sanderson’s Laws of Magic | Concept | 1) An author’s ability to solve a conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic 2) The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its capabilities 3) Expand on what you have already before you add something new 4) LAW ZERO: always err on the side of that which is awesome! | 3, 12, 13, 18, 36, 42, 45, 46 |
| Schrödinger’s cat | concept | a thought expirement to illustrate the paradox of quantum supersition; usually used to refer to something that could be one of two states but is in a super state of being both and neither until observed | 53 |
| self-licking lollipop | Bad at English | a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself | 23 |
| self-serving bias | Bias | You believe your failures are due to external factors, yet you’re responsible for your successes. | 51, 56 |
| shaggy dog tale | concept | long, pointless, meandering story | 53 |
| Shovelware | Concept | bad licensed video games, usually rushed to concide with the release of a movie | 14 |
| slippery slope | Logical Fallacy | You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen. | 52 |
| slopey shoulder | Bad at English | When a person delegates anything given to them or slides it straight off their work load onto someone else out of laziness | 39 |
| Software as a service | Concept | a subscription-based model for providing software to consumers; usually implies continuous upgrades/improvements | 32 |
| spit out your dummy | Bad at English | Dummy meaning: pacifier, as in throw a temper tantrum in a childish way; usually used to describe adults | 57 |
| square cube law | Concept | the biological idea that as an organism’s length grows by an order of magnitude, its skin and volume are each 10 times greater again | 19 |
| stabilisers | Bad at English | training wheels | 10 |
| straw man | Logical Fallacy | Misrepresenting someone’s argument to make it easier to attack. | 41 |
| swings and roundabouts | Bad at English | n. gains and losses that offset each other | 50 |
| Tailgating | Concept | Sometimes called “Piggybacking”: following someone through a security checkpoint without independently validating your credentials | 59 |
| teaching grandma to suck eggs | Bad at English | saying something that’s probably obvious | 22 |
| technically correct | Concept | the best kind of correct | 33 |
| that’s a bit pants | Bad at English | a bummer | 26 |
| That’s a good starter for ten | Bad at English | Reference classic British TV quiz show ‘University Challenge’; means: “That’s a good start” | 14 |
| The 5 Love Languages | Concept | the idea that people express and understand expressions of love in one (or more) of the following 5 “languages”: – receiving gifts – quality time – words of affirmation – acts of service – physical touch | 9 |
| The Long Tail | Concept | The idea that if you give people more access to variety and a way to find out about it and access it, the demand for unpopular things exceeds the demand for popular things. Read the landmark article by Chris Anderson in Wired magazine (Oct ’84) in the link. | 29, 32, 55 |
| The Peter Principle | Concept | The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another. | 41 |
| the pictionary problem | concept | A game that depends on the charisma and energy of the players for its fun | 52 |
| threw his teddies out of the cot/pram | Bad at English | got angry and threw a tantrum like a baby | 5 |
| tickety boo | Bad at English | Adj. (informal, everything is good | 56 |
| to have a butchers | Bad at English | look, Cockney Rhyming Slang | 8 |
| top-down/bottom-up design | Concept | Top-down and bottom-up are both strategies of information processing and knowledge ordering, used in a variety of fields … they can be seen as a style of thinking, teaching, or leadership. A top-down approach is essentially the breaking down of a system to gain insight into its compositional sub-systems in a reverse engineering fashion. A bottom-up approach is the piecing together of systems to give rise to more complex systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. | 3, 33, 40 |
| Trolley Problem | Concept | a thought expirement where an individual has to choose between interfering in a system to prevent a tragedy that requires them to decide to injure/kill someone else deliberately to do so | 33 |
| trot on as normal | Bad at English | maintain the status quo | 37 |
| Trump | Bad at English | fart | 19 |
| tu quoque | Logical Fallacy | You avoided having to engage with criticism by turning it back on the accuser – you answered criticism with criticism. | 56 |
| uncanny valley | Concept | a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers | 2 |
| utterly redders | Bad at English | Adj., very hot (as in weather) | 55 |
| washing up | Bad at English | v. the act of doing the dishes; or n. the dishes that need to be done | 40 |
| young prodigy and late bloomer | Concept | the idea that great artists don’t all follow the same pattern: some do their best work when they’re young, and some do their best work later in life | 38 |