90.9 WBUR - Boston's NPR news station
Top Stories:
PLEDGE NOW
Friday, July 23, 2010

'Mad Men' Captures '60s Look, Not Always Language

The Emmy Award-winning television show “Mad Men” returns to AMC on Sunday night. The show strives to perfectly capture the look, feel and attitudes of the 1960s through the lives of executives at an Madison Avenue advertising agency.

But strive as they may, the writers sometimes fall short when trying to get the language just right. Ben Zimmer, the “On Language” columnist for the Sunday New York Times magazine, looks at the linguistics of the series to see what expressions belong to the 60s and which ones were born in, like, other decades.

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

  • Anne Hudson

    I’ve also noticed the women wear pantyhose on Mad Men. Pantyhose didn’t become commonplace until the mid- to late ’60s. In 1960-61, women wore girdles and garter belts.

With Sponsorship from:
Accelerating the pace of engineering and science
Friday, June 14, 2013
Paul Eisenstein is publisher of "The Detroit Bureau."

We usually talk to reporter Paul Eisenstein about cars, but when he mentioned he’d recently had a brush with death, we wanted to know more.

4 Comments | more »
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The sun sets behind the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant in Emmett, Kan. in December 2012. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

The International Energy Agency is warning that unless nations take urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide levels, average temperatures on the earth could rise by more than nine degrees Fahrenheit.

4 Comments | more »
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Here & Now host Robin Young (@hereandnowrobin) tweeted this picture of her bedside book tower on June 9, 2013. (Robin Young/Here & Now)

Here & Now host Robin Young reads piles of books every month and wants to know what you’re reading.

7 Comments | more »