From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWhorter, and you know, this show is going to be kind of a good old-fashioned

Lexicon Valley as hosted by me.

I want to just work with one sentence.

It's something that came to me recently.

I was watching through the fourth season of the crown, getting to a kind of late, but,

frankly, I've spent the pandemic watching so much garbage, like the 4,000 episodes of

the Jefferson's that I realized I hadn't gotten to the crown.

It's kind of weird seeing somebody playing Lady Die, although that actress is amazingly

good.

But there was just one sentence, and I just thought as it went by, wow, there's so much

history in that one mundane, shaggy, stupid little sentence.

It's that episode with this troubled gentleman, Fagan, who breaks into Buckingham Palace and

has a conversation with the Queen.

So I don't believe that actually happened, but at one point in his backstory, so to speak,

he's having trouble with some official, and the official says, you're going to have

to take that up with counsel.

You're going to have to take that up with counsel.

Instead of listening to me do a bad estuary British accent, listen to the clip from the

crown.

The episode is Fagan.

I want my kids to spend time with me.

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