The things you learn watching many episodes of smart TV shows:

Prions, those defective proteins that cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (and mad cow disease), are pronounced pree-ons. And balk---a word I have always loved---is pronounced bawk. I'd always pronounced it like the first syllable of "Balkan" (as in States, Penninsula, or Mountains). Instead, it's bawk. Like the chicken. Bawk! Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk!

How disillusioned I am. This is almost as bad as finding out "incongruous" is correctly pronounced with stress on the second syllable, not the third. Sigh. The world will never be the same.

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