Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
John McWhorter – June 2024 Q&A
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John McWhorter – June 2024 Q&A

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Every month, John and I solicit questions from paying subscribers, pick a few we think will make for good conversation, and answer them during a special Q&A recording. This week, I decided to release our Q&A to all my subscribers in lieu of the regular episode. So if you like what you see, click below to become a full subscriber and get monthly Q&A sessions, early and ad-free podcast episodes, and more.

In this installment, John and I go at it over his loathing for Trump. He’s said some very edgy things about the former president recently, and he offers an apology without quite disavowing his statement. He also clarifies his comments regarding pronouns and gender, and I present a counter-argument. More linguistics questions abound, ranging from some fairly technical inquiries about orthographic convention and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to my own regular use of “irregardless.” We’ve also got questions about the ethics of memoir, race and academic performance, and how do deal with the aftermath of a (possibly) racially motivated murder in the family.

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0:00 Why the different format?

4:04 Joe asks John to account for his “emotional and irrational conclusions” about Trump and his recent conviction

15:28 Ground News ad

17:49 Did John really mean it when he implied he hoped someone would assassinate Trump?

23:00 Lauren wants John to justify his “casual endorsement” of gender fluidity in pronoun usage

32:37 Jerry asks why “external factors” like poverty are often used to explain lagging African American scholastic performance, those factors haven’t hindered them from achieving wildly disproportionate success in the cultural realm

38:34 Patrick calls out Glenn for his frequent use of the word “irregardless”

41:26 kgweiland asks Glenn if the Pamela Foster story in my memoir was “yours to share”

46:17 Scott Alex has some technical questions about linguistics for John

50:01 Jakon Joi asks for advice dealing with the tragic, possibly racially motivated murder of her father

Recorded June 23, 2024


Links and Readings

June 2024 thread of subscriber questions

John talking about Trump voters on Real Time in 2023

Daniel Bessner and Glenn on Real Time in 2023

Richard Dawkins interviews John

John’s book, The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language


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Discussion about this podcast

Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
Race, inequality, and economics in the US and throughout the world from Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics at Brown University and Paulson Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute