The following podcast contains explicit language.

On the next Lexicon Valley, a look at the F word.

Not the F word, F word, the other F word.

Fagot.

Whoa, are you using that as an epithet, Bob?

No, Mike, I'm not.

But if I were, it's a lot more complicated than it sounds.

The evolution of an epithet Monday on the next

Lexicon Valley.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest, the Killer Dolphin Edition for the week of February 10th.

I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate.

I'm here in Slate DC's studios with Slate's chief political correspondent and CBS News

political director John the John Dickerson.

And joining us from New Haven, as ever is Emily Bazelon, Slate senior editor,

who's on her last week of book leave. Emily, can't wait to have you back for real next week.

I can't wait to be back. Kind of. I'm sure you really just need to finish your book or something,

but we won't even talk about that. We're going to talk instead about three important topics in the news.

The first topic will be the state of the race.

And just when you think this Republican race is in decline, there it comes back again.

It roars back.

We'll talk about the great controversy over contraception and the Obama administration and Catholic or religious organizations that are going to be forced to pay for contraception.

And finally, we will talk about what does our, oh, the gay marriage case, the gay marriage decision from California by the appeals court out in California. So those are going to be our three topics. We will have cocktail chatter. But before we even start our topics, we are, of course, doing a live show in New York next week. We are really, really looking forward to it. It's going to be a great show at 92nd Streetwide Tribeca on February 15th. Two announcements about that. One, we're going to do a pre-show cocktail chatter, which you can come to.

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