Encore: You’re Using “Woke” Wrong
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
From “woke bae” to “woke-a-cola,” the word woke has taken the internet and mainstream media by storm. But how many people who use the word actually know what it means? On today’s episode, Rachelle and Madison (but, really, mostly Rachelle) explain the decades-old origins of the word, and how its meaning has evolved as it’s gone from being sung as a call to “stay woke” by the likes of Erykah Badu and Childish Gambino to being wielded as a slur by the likes of Mike Huckabee.
Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder, Derek John, and Jasmine Ellis.
This episode was originally published on June 19, 2021.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's play Whop Wars. |
| 0:04.6 | First questions. |
| 0:06.0 | Are you doing the work? |
| 0:07.4 | Um, I'm gonna go with like probably not. |
| 0:12.9 | Hi, I'm Rachel Hampton. |
| 0:14.7 | And I'm Madison Malone Kircher. |
| 0:16.2 | You're listening to I-C-Y-M-I. |
| 0:17.9 | In case you missed it. |
| 0:19.4 | Slate's podcast about internet culture. Pop the champagne. |
| 0:23.2 | Happy New Year's, bitches! We hope you're all recuperating from a fun New Year's Eve. I know we are. |
| 0:30.1 | There is glitter on the floor after the party, as my close personal friend, Taylor Swift, would say. |
| 0:35.3 | And I'm hungover. I'm assuming y'all are too. |
| 0:39.1 | So while you clear up the crate paper, |
| 0:41.9 | contemplate if you should take those resolutions seriously, |
| 0:45.7 | maybe and take a little hand the dog. |
| 0:47.9 | We wanted to bring you one of our absolute favorite episodes |
| 0:50.9 | of the last year. |
| 0:52.1 | It was published on Juneteen, |
| 0:53.9 | and it is all about the word woke. |
| 0:58.1 | In it, we explore the decades-old origin of the word woke and what people actually mean when |
| 1:02.9 | they use it and how the internet has, shocker, completely warped its meaning in recent years. |
| 1:10.2 | Basically, it's a history lesson that could help inform your New Year's resolutions. |
... |
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