Hi, I'm Anne Strain Champs, and my pronouns are she and hers.

And I'm telling you that because navigating personal pronouns these days is trickier than it used

to be.

Our culture is becoming more inclusive, which is a really great thing.

But we are also becoming more cautious about speech and quicker to take offense at other people's words.

So in this episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what happens when we start filtering free speech?

Stay tuned.

Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne Strange Champs.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for something you said?

An opinion, an expression, even a word?

Have you ever encountered the speech police?

I was in a writer's room for a few weeks in Los Angeles, a television writer's room, a show,

on one of the bit neckworks.

This is Walter Mosley, the famous crime writer.

He's about to tell a story about a word, an extremely offensive word, with a brutal history

that we all struggle with.

It's the N-word. And frankly, we really

wrestled with whether or not to even use it in this show, but we can't tell the story without it.

So if you don't want to hear it, this is the time to turn away and rejoin us in 10 minutes.

One day I get a call, I've been there about three weeks, I get a call and a young guy, nice sounding young guy, said to me, Mr. Mosley, we hear that you use the N-word in the writer's room. And I said, well, you know, I am the N-word in the writer's room.

...