On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of.
Complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm David B.
And Cooley.
I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.
I was cursed to see every issue from both sides.
The sympathizer, a new series on HBO and Max, is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
His book is set during and just after the war in Vietnam.
It's told in the form of a forced confession written by a spy who worked for the North Vietnamese going undercover as an aide to a south vietnamese general and his staff.
It appears that part of his crime is sympathizing with the suffering on both sides.
That sympathy is in part a function of his own divided self.
The character's mother grew up in the north of Vietnam.
His father was a french colonialist in Vietnam.
Let's hear a clip from the series.
The narrator, the sympathizer of the title, has fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon and arrived in the United States.