Skip to main content

You make this possible. Support our independent, nonprofit newsroom today.

Give Now

Words We Can't Say On The Radio

Untitled
Enlarge Icon
Flickr/DD4RC

Different periods in history have different swear words. How people throw them around says something about our who we are as a culture. Because we reserve the harshest epithets for the kind of person we most fear becoming.

Hear NPR’s linguist Geoffrey Nunberg get bleeped on the radio, today on KUOW Presents.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, Thursday, February 21:

Why you can trust KUOW