E136. John McWhorter Wants Us To Get Brave

Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy

Conversations with people from all walks of life.

Society & Culture, Comedy Interviews, Comedy, News, News Commentary

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2021

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John McWhorter, author of Nine Nasty Words: English In The Gutter - Then, Now and Forever , sits down for a fascinating and fun conversation with Bridget. They discuss the appeal of swear words, the evolution of language, the rise of "like" and "literally," the arc of curse words from blasphemy, to the body, to slurs, and evaluate Critical Race Theory from both sides of the argument. They examine the difference between teaching people to think and telling them what to think, how the term "racist" is now being used as a bludgeon to enforce a kind of ideological lockstep, why the victimization mindset has become so popular, share their stories of their first curse words, and discuss why you can't get what you want by calling people white supremacists on Twitter. Check out John's writing at johnmcwhorter.substack.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Walk-In's Welcome with me, Bridget Pettasy, on Podcast One, where
0:06.1	everyone is welcome.
0:08.4	This is Walk-In's Welcome with Bridget Pettasy, I'm Bridget Pettasy, and you are welcome.
0:25.9	You know the drill, please subscribe, rate, comment, share, reach out, tell your friend,
0:30.7	send smoke signals, whatever.
0:32.4	We love your feedback and we want to hear from you.
0:35.2	This week on the podcast, I am very excited to have the great John McWorter, John McWorter
0:41.5	teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University.
0:46.9	He is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and host of Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast.
0:53.0	McWorter is the author of 20 books, and he's stopped by to talk about his most recent
0:58.4	nine nasty words, English in the gutter, then, now, and forever.
1:03.6	I think you'll enjoy this conversation, Lord knows I did.
1:07.6	I'm with John McWorter, everybody, welcome to Walk-In's Welcome.
1:12.7	Thanks for having me, Bridget.
1:14.0	Thank you. I know you're a very popular, requested podcast guest for Walk-In's Welcome.
1:20.5	We've had many, many people very excited that you're coming on.
1:23.6	You have a lot of fans in my audience, yeah, they love you.
1:29.1	I really just want to talk to you about so many things, but we'll start with why we're talking,
1:34.8	which is you have a book out, a new book, nine nasty words, English in the gutter, then, now,
1:42.0	and forever. What inspired you to write this book?
1:46.8	I wanted first to write a book about language that people would really want to read.
1:54.4	To tell you the truth, it's one of the few times I've written a book with the goal of having
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