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.
Dave I'm Dave Davies.
When the country is deeply divided and political rivals come to see each other not merely as competitors, but as enemies determined to destroy the nation, where does it take us?
My guest, journalist and historian Eric Larson, has a new book closely examining the period between the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 and the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston five months later, which sparked the long and bloody civil war between the north and south.
Larson was researching the civil war on January 6, 2021, when the assault on the US Capitol occurred.
He writes that he had the eerie feeling that present and past had merged.
It was unsettling.
He writes that in 1861, two great moments of national dread centered on the certification of the electoral College vote and the presidential inauguration.
Larson's book focuses on key players in the drama that followed Lincoln's election, as it appeared that the long simmering conflict over slavery in the United States might finally be headed towards a violent resolution.
Eric Larsen is the author of eight previous books, six of them national bestsellers.
He was last on fresh air to talk about his profile of Winston Churchill's leadership in World War two, titled the Splendid and the Vile.
His new book is the Demon of a Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War.
Well, Eric Larsen, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Oh, thank you.
You know, as I mentioned in the introduction, when the assault on the Capitol occurred in 2021, there was a resonance, you felt, with the period you were studying, which was when the nation was approaching the Civil War.