Very Bad Words

Guest Producer Stephanie Billman helps guide us through the feelings, emotions, and history of the most violent, loaded word in the English lexicon, The N-Word. With guests Dr. Neil Lester, Dr. David Pilgrim, Marcie Brown, Malik Crumpler, Dardalie Brooks and Ernie Mendoza

Nerf-herder? Frack? Farking Zarquon? Guest producers Forrest Phillips and Emily Block guide us through cursing in fictional Worlds. Special guests include Marc Okrand - creator of Star Trek’s Klingon language, David J. Peterson - creator of Game of Thrones Dothraki language, and host of the Imaginary Worlds podcast, Eric Molinsky.

Matt talks to Marc Okrand about cursing in Klingon. The fictional Star Trek language that has become nearly as popular as the franchise itself.

Certain topics in our society aren’t considered proper to talk about. To make it easier to talk about such sensitive subjects, we have invented terms that dance around the issues, instead of facing them directly.Join me and guests, Steven Pinker, Phyllis Sommer and Kate Burridge as we dig into euphemisms.

In this week's minicast, Matt reflects on a death that is close to him and how we use or don't use words about "dead". We talk a little with Rabbi Physllis Sommer to help explain.

Are you allowed to play swear words in scrabble? And if you really can, why aren’t they listed in the official scrabble player’s dictionary? Competitive scrabble players Stephan Fatsis and Brian Richgrubber tell us how it happened and why this is important in the competitive scrabble world.

In this minicast, Matt ponders why it's not okay to use the phrase, "Jew them down" ,but it's okay to say, "I've been gypped". Both words are considered offensive in their communities, but even people that we don't expect still use the word "gyp". We get some help from Romedia Foundation's executive director Katalin Barsony in the below clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOyG1yz9G8

On this episode of Very Bad Words, we put the last four words on George Carlin’s list on trial. Are these two 4-letter words, and two compound unequivocally indecent under all circumstances? With dirty words educator and linguist, Randall Eggert, and radio veteran, Ken Freedman

George Carlin laid out the 7 words that can never be said on television, but of course he meant, American Television. In today’s minicast, Matt talks to British linguist, Damien Hall, to find out if those words are just as taboo in Great Britain.